Roku just announced a major update coming to all of its Roku 2 players (Roku XS, HD, and XD ) with a slew of new features to.

The two biggest additions we noted were support for MKV playback and mobile support for an official Roku iPhone app. But there’s no official local streaming channel for MKV yet, only USB playback is listed. That’s not all however, as 3D game performance has been upgraded with new titles arriving soon to take advantage of it, while WiFi, Bluetooth remote battery and audio performance have all been tweaked. Hit the company blog for the official list of tweaks and keep an eye peeled for v4.2 build 1006 rolling out over the next couple of days to experience them firsthand.

You can now easily compress a DVD or Blu-ray Disc movie to MKV format and play it from attached USB drive with Roku XS, HD or XD box.

Now that you’ve been enjoying Netflix movies and tons of Internet videos with Roku box, have you noticed that your Roku streaming player can do more than that? If you’re watching movies and shows with a Roku XDS, HD-XR or the latest Roku 2 XS model, you can play media on my from USB hard drive with the Roku USB Media Player channel. Click here to learn how to set up Roku USB Media player channel. With a USB stick connected Roku plays up to 1080p videos in MP4, M4V, MOV, WMV and MKV format. Although Roku box does not directly decode AC3 or DTS 5.1 audio, it allows for audio pass-through, which means you can still enjoy 5.1 sounds with a standalone audio receiver connected. To maximize movie experience with Roku streaming media player, it is advised to put together DVD and even Blu-ray movie collections onto USB hard drive, so that Roku plays not only Internet TV channels, but also local movies. The following guide tells you how to get movies off DVD and Blu-ray to hard drive for playback with Roku 2 XS, Roku XDS, and Roku HD-XR (other models do not support USB channel).