Cannot play native .WTV files...?

[Nigel Cooper]

One of the key reasons I chose Windows Phone 8 over Android was to allow me to copy .WTV recording files from my Media Center PC directly to the phone. Now I discover that the reason Zune was so slow is that neither 7 nor 8 can actually play .WTV's and they need to be converted.

What I thought would be a super-fast direct copy now I can see the uSD card like a connected device, turns in to a 50 minute video format conversion to wmv!

Anyone know if .WTV support is coming in an update...?

Is anyone else using Media Center and want to watch recorded TV on their phone whilst travelling?

 

[foxbat121]

wtv is never supported in any mobile devices. I don't think this will change anytime soon. The original wtv files from WMC recording are huge because of MPEG2 encoding. You need to slim it down anyway. So a conversion is necessary regardless if you use Zune or not.

 

[gmoore114]

I use Movie Maker to convert the wtv files. It has a template for phones, two sizes. My PC will do a 30 min show in less than 5 min.
Works well on home movies also.

 

[foxbat121]

Forgot to mention that MPEG2 codec are also not supported in most modern phones because of the licensing fee. You have to convert to H.264 anyway.

 

[christing1988]

If you stick with your play your WTV files, you can get a third-party software like Brorsoft's video converter to convert WTV files to a playable format on your Windows 8 phone.

 

[Kevin Rush]

Thank you, everyone, for all the great suggestions. I am expanding my whole house Windows Media Center (WMC) with 4 tuners (Ceton XfiniTV PCIe with cable card) to add 2 over the air (OTA) tuners (HomeRun). I have eliminated the cost of renting 3 cable TV set top boxes.

I have never played my Recorded TV files on my Windows Phone. Do you convert the WTV files and put them into a OneDrive folder, or even better, a shared folder? Which app on the phone can access them?

Best Wishes