HD200 WMA Lossless support?

[mickp]

Hi there,

Sorry if this has been addressed elsewhere. A quick search didn't turn up anything conclusive that I could see.

Some time ago I recall seeing a firmware update for the HD200 which improved the WMV or WMA support.

Can the HD200 now play WMA Lossless audio?

Mick.

[mickp]

Thanks for all the responses. I'll go post a support request.

Mick.

[Brent]

I didn't respond because I'm not 100% sure. But I don't think WMA lossless is supported. WMA Pro was added in March which is similar I think

[jsonnabend]

I'm pretty sure WMAL is a "WMA Pro" codec.

I have an HD200 still in the box, completely unopened. It's hard to test it in that state.

- Jeff

[Rico66]

Originally Posted by jsonnabend

I'm pretty sure WMAL is a "WMA Pro" codec.- Jeff

No, it's not. WMA 10 Pro and WMA 9 Lossless are different(http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...ecs/audio.aspx)

[mickp]

Thanks for the responses and sorry for being such an arse in the post above.

Just got a response from support:

Unfortunately they are not supported.

This is unfortunate. I guess I'll keep wait and see what happens with the next version (hd300?).

Mick.

[jsonnabend]

Originally Posted by Rico66

No, it's not. WMA 10 Pro and WMA 9 Lossless are different(http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...ecs/audio.aspx)

Hmm. I guess it isn't. Thanks for that link. Another reason not to use the HD200, but to persevere on building a PC based unit.

- Jeff

[MrFusion]

So, this is wierd.

I have a SageTV server running on a headless Windows XP 64 machine. I use HD200 extenders as the clients.

I checked the manuals before buying

SageTV manual says: "...SageTV plays music file stored in the MPEG-1 Layer I/II/III (MP3), WAV, PCM, WMA (WMA Lossless is only supported on Windows), AC3, Ogg/Vorbis, FLAC, and AAC formats..".

Great, should play on the server.

HD200 manual says: "...The following media types can be played natively by the HD Theater... MPEG Audio, AAC, AC3, WMA, FLAC, DTS passthrough...

In addition to the native support for the formats listed above, when using the player as a SageTV extender, the SageTV server will attempt to transcode other media formats to a type that the player can use...".

Hmmm... bit ambiguous... Does "WMA" include lossless???

Maybe not, but then, since the server can play WMA Lossless, and will transcode for the HD200 running in extender mode, I should be good to go, right?

Wrong

HD200 pretends it's playing, but all I get is silence.

Can't be that hard -- my Roku Soundbridge plays WMA lossless from my TVersity server...

What gives? Aaaargh!

[MitchSchaft]

The HD200 doesn't support wma lossless.

[MrFusion]

Originally Posted by MitchSchaft

The HD200 doesn't support wma lossless.

Yeah, I sorta got that

Neither does the Roku -- server transcodes.


Hoping to get the SageTV server to transcode WMA lossless to something the HD200 understands. For example PCM.

Reading elsewhere, seems to be a way to set a property in the HD200's .properties file to either a) get it to use a plugin to play back a media type; or b) tell it that format isn't supported & trigger the server to transcode.

eg: media_player_plugin_class/wma=
miniclient/disabled_audio_codecs=

Unfortunately, not a lot of info around.