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Roku stick, The Sequel

Botch

MetaBotch Doggy Dogg Mellencamp
Superstar
419223-roku-streaming-stick-hdmi.jpg


http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2454389,00.asp

Now, with a standard HDMI plug, instead of that weirdo "MHL" thingie. It still has the issue of, since most HDMI ports are behind AV receivers and TVs, the IR link with the remote is problematic.
 
Plus it has a Roku 1 chip so it's going to be a little slow. I like the idea though.
 
Question ( to anyone who owns one, or a Roku 3):

Can these be connected to the HDMI input on a receiver and used to stream music from a PC?

I'm already doing so using my Sony Blu-Ray players, but as I've previously posted I have a lot of issues with those players' firmware, notably how long it takes to access a complete list of all of my available music, which is stored in a single "My Music" folder, which then contains individual folders for each artist / group, and then for each album by those artists / group. It can take the Sonys forever to get through the alphabetical folder list, so ZZ Top takes 20+ minutes to access, and it's getting longer as I add to the collection.

And if it's connected to a receiver, can it still use all of its video streaming capabilities? (I'm trying to understand why it would be plugged into a display directly. How do you then get the audio back to your system?)

Pardon my ignorance and thanks in advance for any help.

Jeff
 
Yes you can plug it into a receiver and use all of the functions. You'll need to power it though as the receiver's HDMI port won't supply power like newer TVs can. They demonstrate it plugged directly into a TV because that's how most people would use it. In that configuration you'd need an optical cable connected from the TVs digital output to the receivers input.
 
Roku has a great little media browser you can download for free that works with both DLNA and Logitech Media Server (Squeezebox Server). You can also use Plex, Twonky or a couple other media server clients.

Just keep in mind that Roku cannot handle lossless audio tracks. If you use lossless, you will need to have something on the server side that can transcode on the fly. This is one of the reasons why I switched from lossless to high bitrate lossy.
 
Thanks guys.

All my music files have been ripped as MP3s.

Jeff
 
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