Amazon device to direct play MKV

[wakeboarder141 29]

I am looking to recommend an upgrade from the original Fire Stick for some of my users, and I am having a hard time finding out if any of the Amazon devices will natively play MKV container movies without any transcoding.  The old Fire Stick requires that I encode the movies to mp4 to avoid transcoding, and also won't play a few of the audio codecs directly.  Thanks.

[Luke 37054]

HI, yes they can play mkv, but not it's so much about about the container but rather the codecs used inside the container. That's what you'll want to look at and see which models support the codecs that your files use.

[Carlo 4330]

I only have the Firestick 4K but it plays my library which is 99+% all MKV/HEVC *8 & 10 bit).
I've got a test library with many assorted files and this device seems to play them back fine for me.

The only thing I don't like about it is that it's WIFI only which is fine for a stick.  My Shield TV is connected directly to ethernet and my MiBox-S use an $12 Ethernet dongle. Both also seem to work fine on WIFI.

I'm not fond of the Amazon UI which I think is confusing for finding your apps and prefer the MiBox-S UI better (for similar price). The Shield TV has by far the best home screen IMHO. Of course it's also 3 to 4X in price as well.

Keep in mind it's not just about the container and codecs but your sound system as well.  If you have anything above a 5.1 sound system I'd only consider the Shield TV.

[wakeboarder141 29]

3 hours ago, cayars said:

I only have the Firestick 4K but it plays my library which is 99+% all MKV/HEVC *8 & 10 bit).

It was my understanding that the original Firestick most of my users have does not support the MKV container, regardless of codecs.  It seems like anything with MKV will either transcode, or at least direct stream no mater how I encode it.  I have determined that using mp4 with 5.1 AC3 audio with a backup Stereo track, and then setting their device settings appropriately is the only way I can get them to consistently direct play everything.  I am with you, and have Nvidia Shields or Shield Pros in every room, but I have a 7.2.4 sound system where most of my users are just using either TV audio or sound bars at best.

[Luke 37054]

The video player in our Android app supports mkv regardless of device. It really comes down to the codecs inside.

[wakeboarder141 29]

12 minutes ago, Luke said:

The video player in our Android app supports mkv regardless of device. It really comes down to the codecs inside.

Interesting.  So the Fire Stick doesn't even need to support MKV natively?  I will need to figure out which codecs were causing the transcoding.  I know they were x264, but I'm not sure what else was tripping it up.

[Carlo 4330]

That's the only FireStick I've had so I can't say anything for older versions, but have had many other android devices and never had an issue with mkv contains.  As Luke mentioned it's not a container issue but the audio and video codecs OR the subtitle if used that can cause transcoding for different reasons.

Best thing to do is get them to play back some and then grab the ffmpeg log generated and read it for the reason OR upload it here and we can show you how to read it to know what's going on.

[rbjtech 4255]

To add to the complexity of the whole 'media file' lottery - even supported codec's have multiple 'profiles' - which may or may not be supported.... Arrgghhhhhh 

I still have Gen2 FireTV sticks and being honest, they have direct played pretty much everything I have thrown at them - excluding HD Audio.

Amazon have a very decent web site listed all the specifications, codecs and profiles supported by each device here :-

https://developer.amazon.com/docs/fire-tv/device-specifications.html