I've amassed a nice little collection of music videos, and decided I would like to see how they play out on big screen TV, as opposide to my tiny PC monitor. I have an XBox 360 and PS3 in the living room. I don't play a bunch of games on them, but thought either would be fine for playing videos... especially because both have 'play video file' options (in addition to playing DVDs and/or Blu-Ray discs)...
My first attempt failed to play on either system. I wasn't suprised since the videos were recorded as non-standard .VOB files similar to those on DVDs, but missing DVD-specific codes. In particular, the .VOB files have no associated .IFO files. I think because of this, they will not play in Windows Media Player on any version of Windows I have.
I've been using .VOB files until now because I can play them in any version of Windows using DVD software. Well, at least any version since '95 cuz I don't have any DVD software for Win3.11... but anyway...
I noticed in my file associations, going all the way back to Windows 98, there is M2V format. This is simply an MPEG-2 video stream. Or a simplified .VOB if you prefer... exactly what my videos are. Well I was pleasantly suprised the M2V format plays on all Windows versions I've tested.
Well since Microsoft makes both Windows and the XBox 360, I was pretty sure the videos would play on the Xbox, but wasn't sure about the Sony PS3...
Bill Gates strikes again! To my utter confoundment, the videos are not even recognized by the Xbox
... but they do play on the PS3...
Not only do the videos play on the PS3, but they look better on my TV than on my PC... I think the PS3 is doing some kind of up-conversion or something... they were recorded at a mediocre bit rate to start with because they were intented to be down-coverted for the C128 Media Player. So anyway, because of the mediocre bit rate, they only look okay on my PC... but Sony seems to be using really nice video enhancement, because they look fantastic on my TV.
The only problem with the PS3 is that it ignores the play list, and the videos are played in alphabetical order (that, or the same order they were written to the file system). Another annoyance is the audio is really loud. Not so loud as to cause distortion, but loud enough I had to turn the volume of my TV down by about 40%
Which makes me wonder what type of videos will Xbox play? Hard to believe it would be MP4 since most versions of Windows will not play them without special software, like Apple Quick Time. I'm guessing old MPEG-1 video or proprietary WMF...
UpdateI went back and checked. Even though Windows has file associations for MP2, MP2V, and MPV2 in old operating systems, they do nothing... trying to run them in Windows Media Player on a system with no DVD software installed will give you the 'download codec' prompt... So maybe there was some type of licensing issue with Windows? That might explain that ...
But if Windows has DVD software installed, then Windows Media Player will happily play M2V files...
Because the Xbox 360 will definately play DVDs, I don't know why it won't play M2V files ... my head hurts...
