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.

As the high-end model in Roku’s line up, the Roku 2 XS streaming media player comes with more features in an even smaller box. The palm-sized Internet TV box now has more than 250 channels, including Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, Crackle, Pandora, NHL, NBA, MLB and many others. You can stream tons of movies and shows to your HDTV and play Angry Birds on the big screen at the interval. With a USB storage device attached Roku 2 XS can act like a small HD media player (Roku 2 XS model features a USB Media Player Channel), though it plays limited video formats. The USB channel makes it possible to play local movie collections with Roku 2 XS, as long as the DVDs and Blu-ray Discs are ripped onto USB stick in Roku 2 XS supported formats. This article shares with you how to get a DVD/Blu-ray movie ready for Roku 2 XS playback.

Required Tool:
Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper
Download Blu-ray Ripper for PC (Windows XP/Vista/7)
Download Blu-ray Ripper for Mac (Mac OS X Leopard/Snow Leopard/Lion, Intel only).

The following guide shows the interface of Blu-ray Ripper Mac version. With the Best Blu-ray/DVD to Roku Converter for Mac, Only few steps to enjoy Blu-ray/DVD on Roku. You can first import Blu-ray and DVD movies to the mac program, then choose an output format compatible with Roku 2 XS, finally begin the Blu-ray 1080p HD and DVD movie conversion. After that you can freely watch Blu-ray and DVD movies on Roku 2 XS with high quality. The steps below will show you how to convert/rip Blu-ray/DVD movies to Roku 2 XS for smoothly playback with subtitles.