On 9/22/2017 2:19 AM, NY wrote:
"VanguardLH" wrote in message
...
WTV (Windows Recorded TV Show) is a Microsoft proprietary file format.
It is a container using MPEG-2 compression and audio uses either MPEG-1
Layer 2 or Dolby Digital AC-3 compression. It may contain metadata
along with DRM (Digital Rights Management) control. If the show
contained ads, they might use DRM to make sure you see them when you
play the show so you cannot simply skip past them. If you are recording
shows using Windows Media Center, it uses the SBE (Stream Buffer Engine)
to create the .wtv file. Because you are capturing streamed media from
a server, quality can vary wildly and what the server delivers can
change if you re-stream later. WMC can be converted back to the older
.dvr-ms proprietary format but I don't know that will progressing
forward or backward regarding quality of content or resolve your
problem. Note: Microsoft abandoned the WTV media file format which
irritated many users encouraged by WMC to create WTV files. Since WMC
was intended as the only player for WTV files, and since WMC got dropped
by Microsoft in Windows 10, it's an orphaned media format. I went to
wiki.videolan.org and search on "wtv". Looks like it hasn't even been
mentioned since 2015 (and that was only to propose a mentor, or
proponent, of the media format to add support for it).

The one big advantage that WTV and DVR-MS formats have over TS (the
default for most other recording software) is that it contains metadata
for the episode title, plot summary etc. Software that records to TS (*)
doesn't do this (maybe the TS standard doesn't allow metadata) so they
solve the problem by producing a separate XML file for the metadata,
which means if you rename the TS file you have to rename the XML to keep
things together.

It's a shame that Win10 doesn't include Windows Media Centre (and that
if you update from Win 7, WMC is forcibly removed) because it was a good
program, even if it didn't allow multiple overlapping recordings on the
same multiplex which Next PVR does.



(*) eg NextPVR
Thanks, guys, for the inputs.
Summary...
I had a system that worked.
It's now broke.
I did my best to reload it the way it was.
I never installed any updates.
Repeating that and expecting a different result is
optimistic.
I doubt that it's the fault of any program. It's likely
an error in misconfiguration.

I have a second identical computer. I replaced some caps and it
now works. I think I'll have the option to go thru a lot of configuration
files pre and post rebuild to look for differences. I can diddle
it without messing up my active media computer.

The reason for media center is that it just works.
The interface is intuitive.
Tuner drivers exist for windows.
The issues with Rovi are minor compared to alternative
FREE program guides for USA ATSC broadcasts.
If you're time-shifting, the file size is irrelevant.
..wtv files seem to have fewer motion artifacts than
alternative compressed formats.
It just works...if you don't fork it up rebuilding the system.