Trouble playing SMIL files on Roku

[Julie_M]

While trying to play different types of videos served by Wowza on Roku and Roku 2, we found that Roku (the original Roku, not Roku 2) cannot play SMIL files. Namely playlist.m3u8 files that start with slashes, such as:

#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=40000
/xyz/_definst_/customer/Extremists.m4v/playlist.m3u8?wowzasessionid=817723499&wowzaaudioonly
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=240000
/xyz/_definst_/customer/Extremists.m4v/playlist.m3u8?wowzasessionid=817723499
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=540000
/xyz/_definst_/customer/Extremists.m4v/playlist.m3u8?wowzasessionid=817723499
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=1040000
/xyz/_definst_/customer/Extremists.m4v/playlist.m3u8?wowzasessionid=817723499

It is pointed out on Roku’s forum that “Currently the Roku player does not support absolute pathnames in the m3u8 (paths that start with a slash).” See forum post: http://forums.roku.com/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=34546&p=221786

Roku is able to play direct videos, which has playlist.m3u8 files like this:

#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=527539
playlist.m3u8?wowzasessionid=1775248288
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=64000
playlist.m3u8?wowzaaudioonly&wowzasessionid=1775248288

Roku 2 is able to play SMIL files, but the original Roku cannot. We would like both Roku models to support SMIL files. Is it possible for someone from Wowza to take a look at this and confirm that it is the absolute pathnames that’s causing trouble for SMIL files on the original Roku?

[Julie_M]

I wanted to follow up and say that we have gotten our Roku 1 to play SMIL files by changing the “cupertinoRelativePlaylistPlaylists” in Application.xml to “false”:

<Property>
	<Name>cupertinoRelativePlaylistPlaylists</Name>
	<Value>false</Value>
	<Type>Boolean</Type>
</Property>

This has been mentioned by Charlie here: http://www.wowza.com/forums/showthread.php?14228-Change-Wowza-Server-3-now-uses-relative-iOS-playlist-URLs

Now both our Roku 1 and Roku 2 can play SMIL files fine.