Playing WTV files on Nexus 7

I'm attempting to stream some recordings from my Windows Media Center PC to my Nexus 7. The various DLNA clients will browse WMC happily, but none of them will play recorded TV from it. They all want to defer to another movie player. I've tried several. None work.

Help?

vplayer.

My Nexus 7 won't be here until late Friday, but I'll see if I can get a DLNA client to work on my Galaxy Nexus (very similar) and report back.

Okay, I've got uPNP streaming working from my Tomato router to vplayer on my Galaxy Nexus.

The uPNP client I'm using right now is MediaHouse. But this same app fails when I try it with my MythTV server.

I'll try some others.

Next up, I'm using DK uPNP/DLNA Player, streaming a video from the MythTV server to the stock Android Media Player on my handset. Unfortunately, this program has no option to select a better media player, so the video is stuttering.

Note: this one also works for streaming from the Tomato router.

I just now tried Eminent DLNA/UPnP Player, and it works fine with its built-in player, but no audio -- the only video player I have that gives audio is vplayer, and again this app doesn't have any config options to select it.

BubbleUPnP: hands down, best of the bunch. Works with vplayer or any other video player.

The freebie version has ads and other annoyances, but works very well to try things out. A License for the non-annoying version is under $5.

I suppose it is possible that WMC has locked those files down with some form of DRM restrictions. Is that the case here?

BubbleUPnP is brilliant; vplayer won't stream my WTV files. It doesn't error; it just doesn't display anything other than the swirly-go-round "hourglass" thing.

I suppose one thing to do would be to let it stream a more open format video file (.mp4, mpg, .avi) just to see if there are any network issues. If that all works, then it points more strongly at the WTV format being a problem.

What the heck is WTV format, anyway?

WTV format: essentially a proprietary single-vendor wrapper for mpeg2, with embedded DRM to prevent use on non-Microsoft products.

Just say "No!".

If MythVideo didn't suck, I'd be quite happy to say no.

The files on the WMC box.... can you try right-clicking on them and selecting "Convert to .dvr-ms Format"?

This will create a copy of the WTV file in the same directory, but in the WMC format that prior releases used. It's a bit more accepted than WTV at this point. For example, Handbrake will work with .dvr-ms but not .wtv. So, it may work for your purposes. If it does, I believe there are programs out there to automate the conversion.

I see where you're going with this, but I want to play the files, and never have to manually convert them. The point is that my Nexus 7 should just be another way to watch recorded TV. I shouldn't need to pick the shows I want.

I'll look into automating the conversion. A scheduled job should do the trick, provided I can get the converter to run with no interaction. And most of the ones I've found have got UI (and it's usually hideous).

The Nexus 7 is probably the wrong tool for the job. Although, I would wonder if there is a proper tool, either now or in the future. MS doesn't seem very interested in pushing WMC on Windows 8, so it's possible that even a Surface tablet won't work the way you want.

I'm just curious if the .wtv/.dvr-ms format is the issue or not. Once that's figured out, then we can see what to do about it. I do have a Nexus 7 and a Windows 7 Media Center. I can try to help, but I haven't played with DLNA in years (when it barely worked at all).

Here's something to automate the conversion if that's the issue:
http://wtvwatcher.codeplex.com/
http://www.hack7mc.com/2009/11/wtvwatcher-automates-wtv-to-dvrms-conversion.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITxT-E6ay9I

Even better:

http://veva.over-blog.com/article-how-to-play-wtv-files-on-android-phone-91758812.html
http://www.dvd-creators.net/wtv-converter/wtv-to-android.html

This thread (see bottom posts) suggests that MX Player groks the WTV format.

And so it does, just -- oddly -- not the file I originally chose. It takes a while to get going with the other files. This particular file is over 2 hours, and I wonder whether it's a function of length.

Does vplayer work with any of the files you've gotten working with MXplayer ? Just curious.

Thx.

Seems to work fine. Both vplayer and MXplayer are happy playing WTV files from BubbleUPnP. Except for that one track.

Good!

How about using remote potato?

remote potato

The only way I succeeded was with Remote Potato combined with Remote Media Center (Android). It lets you play .wtv, dvr-ms etc also music, pictures and all kind off movie formats.
You can even use the EPG to program tv-recording. With the commercial version I can also watch live TV.
MediaPlex is another option I tried with different results, but it uses al lot of my CPU resources (only dual core) and is not as smooth.
Another combination is MediaHouse UPnP/DLNA (Android) with Twonky (Android) on my SG2. Twonky by itself only plays a few formats, not even AVI, so I installed MediaHouse that makes it possible to use e.a. VPlayer over DLNA. Drawback, can play everything except .wtv, but it uses very little resources on my PC.
So I end up with Remote Media Center for .wtv WMC-files and EPG and DLNA by MediaHouse for other formats as this runs very smooth.

Tried to auto convert .wtv to dvr-ms, runs OK, but takes a heavy load on my CPU - combined with autoremoval of adds.

btw Another option I'm trying now is Mezzmo, a DLNA player that can also play wtv files. It's not free, but looks good, with an active usergroup.