How to play MPG files on Sony Bravia - solution!

[BlueSmoke1000]

I recently bought a Sony Bravia KDL-32EX403U, and am very pleased with it except that when I plugged a USB drive into it and tried to play MPEG2 recordings I make from a satellite receiver, it wouldn't play them.  They are standard format MPEG-PS, with a standard SD resolution of 720x576.  They burn without conversion onto DVD, and play on other devices happily.

Searching the net, I found lots of people asking about this, and few satisfactory answers.  I don't want to convert the file and lose quality.  I briefly tried converting to MPEG1 video, the result was appalling.

Much research and tinkering later, and I have a solution.  I thought I'd share it here so that others might benefit.

First, get tsMuxeR software from here :http://www.afterdawn.com/software/audio_video/video_editing/smartlabs_tsmuxer_win.cfm - click on the picture of the floppy disk that says "download". This version is for Windows, I've not located a version for Macs as yet.

Unzip it into a folder, and run tsMuxeR GUI.  Drop your MPEG file onto it, and click the "M2TS Muxing" button near the bottom, choose the destination folder and filename, and then click "start muxing".  When it's done (it's fairly quick) you can copy the .M2TS file onto your USB drive, and your Sony Bravia should play it!

This program isn't converting the file contents - there's no loss of quality or resolution.  It's remuxing the file into a format the Sony Bravia is happy with.  If you use a program such as MediaInfo to compare the MPEG and M2TS files, you'll see that inside, they are the same MPEG standard.

Using this I can play SD MPEG recordings and they look very nice indeed on my Sony Bravia KDL-32EX403U.  I imagine this will work on other Sony Bravia models with USB playback that supports M2TS files.

Hope this is of use to others on here.

Message was edited by: BlueSmoke1000 to remove dead download link and replace with a working one.

[machonya]

Great solution!

Thank you very much! Bought the Sony 32EX40B (with integrated bluray) and was very confused with this problem! Some files doesn't play with AVI and MPG ext. When I tryed to play mpg files from my Sony camcoder it also doesn't work! It's awful Sony corp mistake. How can it be in a such expensive device? May be I should bought media player for 100USD and not the Sony TVBD for 1500USD.

Your solution will work and this is good but I still don't want to resort all my files with this programm... May be the good idea for Sony corp to do patch for this BUG or they can lose clients...

Once again thank you for your solution!

[Niall57]

I tried this with Sony KDL-32EX503 and its helped a lot. Thank you.

Message was edited by: Niall57

[DidiGute]

Hallo, MPEG and M2TS files are working fine. Anyway, they only do that from a USB Stick and not from an external hard disk drive (WD Elements 250GB). What kind of USB drives do you use? Is it possible to reformat the WD drive?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[BlueSmoke1000]

I've been using various USB sticks (4 and 8gb), which I've had no problem with once the file format is correct for the Sony.

But, as a starter, make sure your external hard disk is formatted with FAT or FAT32 format.  The Sony doesn't support NTFS, which might be the problem.

If your external hard disk is connected to a Windows PC, it's likely to be in NTFS format.

Plug it into the PC, open up Windows Explorer, right click on the drive letter and choose "properties" - it'll tell you in there if the external drive is FAT, FAT32, NTFS or some other format.

If you want to reformat it to FAT32, you'll probably have difficulty doing this under Windows.  If you can choose "FAT32" under "File System" in the format dialog box, great - go for it.  I suspect it won't appear. ("exFAT" won't help you - the Sony doesn't support this)

This is because Windows puts an artificial limit of 32Gb when formatting disks using FAT32.  There are technical/effieciency reasons for this, but it's frustrating.

You'll need an additional piece of software that will let you format larger disks with FAT32.  Go here :

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/guiformat.htm

And click on the picture of the program, it'll download a little program, save it somewhere useful and run it.

This software is Freeware, but if you find it useful I urge you to click on the Paypal button and donate something to the author.

Make sure you select the correct disk drive to format, YOU WILL LOSE ALL DATA ON THE DISK THAT YOU FORMAT!

It's very quick (if you choose quick format option).  You can then copy your media files to the hard disk and your Bravia should play them.

I've tested two hard disks - an old 20Gb disk connected via an IDE to USB adaptor, and a slightly less old 80Gb disk, also connected in the same way.  Both work with no problems on my Bravia KDL-32EX403, providing that the files I try to play are in a format the Bravia is happy with (see my original post in this thread about remuxing to .M2TS)

Hope this helps.

Message was edited by: BlueSmoke1000 to add details of tests done on two hard disks

[DidiGute]

Many thanks - it works finally!

Reformatting the WHOLE disk drive was the key to the success. A further attempt with a partition less than 32 GB (to be done by windows xp) failed.

So I learned it is substantial to use the recommended freeware which works perfectly.

[msxbas]

sounds interesting, but the link is dead, and I cannot find a download link?

this seems to be the new page in english:

http://www.smlabs.net/en/products/tsmuxer/

I am trying to view my avchd files from my canon camcorder on my bravia 32ex402 from usb.

mp3 works fine from that usb drive, avchd not....

[BlueSmoke1000]

msxbas wrote:
sounds interesting, but the link is dead, and I cannot find a download link?
this seems to be the new page in english:
http://www.smlabs.net/en/products/tsmuxer/
I am trying to view my avchd files from my canon camcorder on my bravia 32ex402 from usb.
mp3 works fine from that usb drive, avchd not....

Hmm, yes, the web site hosting tsMuxeR has been redesigned, and there's no download link for it anymore.  I'll see what I can find.

tsMuxeR did have problems, it would crash quite easily when encountering problems with the file you're trying to remux, however I had 100% success rate in using it to remux MPEG2 recordings from my satellite receiver and they would subsequently play on my Sony Bravia.  I also got some other formats to remux and play, when formerly they had not.  I've been using it recently to remux .VOB files and I can play those too!

I've read discussions on development of an open source project to do what tsMuxeR does, I'll see if I can find anything useful about that too.

[BlueSmoke1000]

This is a working link to download the Windows version of tsMuxeR :

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/audio_video/video_editing/smartlabs_tsmuxer_win.cfm

Click on the picture of the floppy disk where it says "download" to get the 2.8Mb .zip file, then follow my instructions at the start of this thread.

This version of tsMuxeR is the same as the one I'd downloaded from the original site.

Let me know if it works for you

[msxbas]

Thanks,

I'll give it a try.

I found a copy on a very informative site about all these video formats/codecs etc:

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/tsMuxeR

It looks like it is the same version...