H.264 plug-in & BTV Link question

[Pyrroc]

I tried a number of searches here in the forums and in the FAQs, but failed to find the information I'm looking for.

I have a main HTServer running BTV with 3 Link clients elsewhere in the house. I'm interested in being able to play H.264 whether it's a BTV recording or an external recording that I add to the library.

If I purchase the H.264 plug-in for the main server will the Link clients be able to view H.264 recordings in the library, or would I also have to purchase the plug-in for all of the Link clients as well? I can see spending $30 bucks for that capability, but $120 would be ridiculous. That would be more than 50% of what I paid for BTV and the Link clients in the first place.

I really could care less about the DVD burning part of it all.

[geoffstewart]

If I'm not mistaken, you don't need the plugin to playback H.264 content (recorded by BTV or not). I don't have the plugin and I'm able to playback H.264 recordings from my hd-pvr on the server and 2 link machines. I haven't tried thirdparty h.264 files, but I assume they would play too.

I think the plugin is to be able to showsqueeze to h.264 format.

Geoff

[Pyrroc]

Well, maybe it's just a question of file extension.

The H.264 content that I dropped into the library has an .mkv extension. How do I add that extension to be recognized by BTV? Renaming the files to an .mp4 or .avi doesn't do the trick... all I get back is a corrupt or missing file error. The videos play back just fine outside of BTV, so it's not a question of having the proper codec installed.

None of the forum threads turned up in searches has had a solution to this for BTV, I didn't find anything in the knowledgebase, and I haven't been able to find anything with Google.

[geoffstewart]

I think the mkv container is what is causing the problem. If you were able to use a avi or mp4 container (via conversion of some kind), it should just work. Not sure what it takes for BTV to be able to understand the mkv container.