MatFileReader cannot read 7.3 .mat files

[kartha01]

Hi,

Read a blog post about using .mat file in Scala:
http://blog.madhukaraphatak.com/matfile-to-rdd/

I know the util only supports 5.0 version but was curious to try the newer one. When I try to read a 7.3 .mat file and I am getting the following error:

Name: com.jmatio.io.MatlabIOException
Message: This is not a valid MATLAB 5.0 MAT-file.
StackTrace: com.jmatio.io.MatFileReader.readHeader(MatFileReader.java:1028)

Any thoughts/workarounds with this jmatio?
I suppose reading the HDF5 files directly via Java/Scala would be the alternative.

Thanks,
Rajesh