Latest Season of Gilded Age fails, though I can download other titles from HBO Max

[0xFeedBeef]

All Rokus that can play 4K can play HEVC, doesn't matter when you bought your Roku, what matters is what technology is inside (e.g. you can still buy DVD-only players- decadeS old technology)...

The reason why you get lower bitrates with HEVC over AVC is exactly the same as you getting lower bitrates with AVC over MPEG-2- coding complexity changes, and you need WAY lower bitrates to transmit same quality

[SFBaysailor]

I beg to differ, I have one Roku Ultra 4k that does play HEVC, but the 2 older 4460x Roku Ultra 4k cannot play HEVC, as I said, it took almost 2 hours with Roku tech to find this out. The older Roku's are advertised as being able to play 4k, but it may be limited to HDR10 4k, I am not sure.

The description of the older Rokus:
Roku Ultra | HD/4K/HDR Streaming Media Player Voice Remote, Remote Finder & USB. Now includes Premium JBL Headphones. (2018)


Chat with RoKu Product Specialist:

Roku Advisor: [8/16/25, 4:23:52 PM] Upon checking 4660x do not support Player HEVC.

[jpp72]

I beg to differ, I have one Roku Ultra 4k that does play HEVC, but the 2 older 4460x Roku Ultra 4k cannot play HEVC, as I said, it took almost 2 hours with Roku tech to find this out. The older Roku's are advertised as being able to play 4k, but it may be limited to HDR10 4k, I am not sure.

You are confusing codecs with Dynamic Range.

HEVC is a Codec and HDR10 is the Dynamic Range.

HEVC/H265 is used for 4K content because the compression is way better than AVC/H264. A full 4K movie in H264 could be like 100 GB instead of 30 GB with H265.

I really doubt that the Roku supports H264 HDR10 as there probably isn't any hardware that supports 10-bit H264 aside from maybe professional equipment. The bitrates needed to encode 2160p H264 HDR10 would be insane.

If anything, it may support 4k H264 at Level 5.1 but absolutely not with HDR10. I still don't understand the logic of using H264 for 4K though...

[SFBaysailor]

Ah, I am not surprised I was confusing something. I know that the old Rokus are supposed to be able to play 4k, which I never use anyway. I only want 1080p in h264 so I don't have to convert h265 1080p in order for the old rokus to be able to play it. They can't play any HEVC. If a good sale comes up, I may replace the old ones and that will take care of that problem.