That happen not for me, it worked to convert the file I tryed with.

You could try Format Factory which works pretty well. I like Any Video Converter due to using subtitles but, it doesn't always work well with more than one file.

I have Tipard Blu-ray Converter v6.3.60.19603 [ Giveaway / installed - 8 Mar 2013 ]
which I discovered Does convert .WTV files

I found out this by just dropping a .WTV on the program window to add it -
even though WTV is not listed as an Input Option !
[ Aiseesoft converter of same vintage not work ]
I haven't tried any others since then.

Just try dropping a .WTV file on the programs You have.

Cheers & Thanks to Giovanni, Karl, XP-Man & other helpful commenters
Neil

To convert .WTV files, you right click on the file and convert it to .DVR-MS format.
Then you can convert this file with almost any converter fome here.

Very many broadcast streams carry a DRM flag. If that flag's set, Windows won't let you decrypt it unless it's to play it back in WMC.

Hi Paul,

I'm Livy from WonderFox Soft. Our Video Converter Factory Pro perfectly supports WTV video converting, multiple audio tracks and multi-subtitle settings. Hope it will be helpful to solve your problems.

And VideoReDo does an excellent job of converting .wtv files, however it does cost money - but it does do a very good job. A large choice of outputs, including i-devices and tablets.

and to burn for TV you use VOB - but AVI is popular too.

You can play mp4 files in your TV if it has a USB port which usualy means that your TV may have a mp4 player

* from a USB flash disk

In your case Charles it doesn't matter which converter you use to be able to watch your videos on a TV , the important thing is to know what format your TV support, because not all TVs support the same format . I have three TVs in my home and the all different than each others . Therefore have a look at your TV manual and find out what kind of videos it's capable of playing then convert your videos to that particular format and you are done. Hope that helped you .

Found that even really cheap Android tablets with an HDMI port and the ability to plug-in SD cards is a really good way of viewing videos.
Not had a TV for 20 years but on my sisters the quality looks even better than when played on my PC monitor.

And you're in the majority if all you want is the easiest way to get YouTube etc. on your TV. And Generally the answer is something like the Chromecast. Plug in the wire for power, plug it into an HDMI port, set it up to access your home network, done. Then instead of downloading a YouTube video, saving it, trying to convert it & play it etc., your TV plays the on-line original.

As a bonus you can also play on-line video that you can't save to your hard drive to convert, like Hulu & Netflix.

Charles, If you want to download videos and burn them to DVD to play on TV, then you usually have to use a 2 stage method.
1) Download your video, then convert it from .flv to .MP4 or .AVI in a converter program.
2) Then use software such as Leawo DVD creator, import your new file into it, and then that program will burn the file to DVD-R or DVD+R disc.
(It will also convert it to .vob before burning disc.)
Your DVD player might play the - type or the + type or maybe both. This works,
BUT NOTE; if you try Leawo DVD creator ir will import the Youtube video (in .flv format) without conversion.
I have no connection with any software companies whatever.

I do, Mr Fishbone, and I really don't think, I'm the only one, who's grateful to, Karl, for his daily reviews. Btw the developers with a name and an adress are remembered because of name and brand, so that does matter. Thanks, Karl, that you take your time to try the software and give it a fair review.

Who cares? Well--115 yes votes for Karl's comment, 58 no votes for yours.

Let's do the math...

If your question is: can it convert mpeg-2 to x264, the answer is yes. If it's: will I have a HD quality video after conversion, the answer is NO, because it is purely impossible to get higher quality from a lower input with a normal converter.

@Irene, don't tell the "upscale" guys at Sony, LG, etc... They been selling players for years that "upscaled" sd to hd. But no, you can't get blood from a turnup but you can "improve" the quality. Just look at what 'smothing' does to pictures. Funny thing is, the last video converter pawned off here on GOTD would "compress" HD/Bluray files to smaller files. My experience with that app was it also drummed down the quality of the video. Sure, it just went from 11gb to 5 but the colors were washed out, sound wasn't a 'crisp' and it took for ever to convert. I think Morris question was understandable as is. And FYI.. x264 isn't the ONLY format out there. ;-)

It's not possible to add data to videos or photos, you have to work with what you have.

In photography you have interpolation where the software adds additional pixels based on what is in the adjoining ones.....I can only assume upscaling videos can at best do something similar

Irene is 100% correct FWIW... If you want a HD or 4K frame, you have to get the pixels from somewhere. The preferred source is a camera -- that way each pixel represents real data in the real world. The alternative is to make up for the pixels you don't have by guessing "what pixel went here? "What pixel went there?". Even if you guess right 90% of the time [which would be pretty impressive], it's clearly better not to guess at all. :)

OTOH you have hardware that, while it may rely on its own software [firmware], functions in a different way than most any program you can use in Windows. And when that hardware [electronics] is built into the display, it can be further optimized for that particular display -- the tech behind the screens is imperfect, electronics tries to minimize limitations, integrating up-sizing as part of the display electronics can make the undesirable effects of up-sizing less noticeable.

That said, there is no such thing as a lossless video or audio conversion -- it's often called generational loss. But beyond that, the important question from a quality standpoint is are you throwing away pixels? If you're reducing frame size, then most certainly you are. If you're going to a more efficient method of encoding, that will reduce file size but you'll only suffer generational loss -- provided you allot enough bandwidth or bit rate. Cutting the bit rate too much is like moving the quality slider to low when you save a jpg image -- it throws pixels away.

Another way to lose quality is if the software isn't optimized to keep it [quality], which can carry the penalty of requiring more computations to make the software slower. But it's also possible with more advanced formats to lose quality because of pre & post processing. Both made the picture look better, & both take more processing & processing horsepower. Reduce either or both and encoding & playback will be easier/faster.

Using an encoder with more settings might let you include more pre/post processing,which might increase quality -- depending on the source, it normally does. OTOH playing that file without performing that processing [e.g. if the hardware or player can't handle the load] can make it look worse.

@ XP-Man
did You miss "Leawo Video Converter Pro" giveaway last November ?
It will accept both external [ie .srt ] & internal [eg. .sub or .srt inside .MKV files ]

I found most converters only handle the latter type.

The Leawo converter is My preferred software [now] because of this , & it seemed to be a little faster than the Aiseesoft converter I had installed at the time.

BTW - thanks to GOTD & all donor companies, I could never afford all this software

Have a nice day all,
Neil

Thanks to XP-Man for flagging up to others the existence of one of the nicest teams of developers out there: the friendly little gang at Moo0. I've known of their work for quite a while and have recommended 'em on here in the past, but it's always good to hear from a respected GOTD contributor like XP-Man that his experience is the same as mine. It's possible that one day, the Moo0 team will maybe move into paid-for software but for the moment, their work -- which embraces a wide range of apps -- is well worth checking out by anyone with an interest in quality freeware. Thanks also to today's developer for the kind offer and as usual to GOTD for facilitating both the giveaway and useful comment threads like this.

If it helps anyone at all...

Subs or CC embedded in the file itself are less common than they used to be -- in my experience Nero Recode 10 is the last version of the only app I've found that would reliably embed them in an AVC file, & then only if/when converting a DVD [w/out DRM] that included subs. And then very few players can display them -- VLC is one.

Many players, including many [most?] that come with Android devices, will display subs as .srt files with the same name as the video file. As more players support it those .srt files are becoming more common, so more players support it in a sort of reinforcing loop. Those .srt files are plain text files using a special markup to tell the player when to display an individual subtitle.

AFAIK .srt files were originally developed as an aid in creating the graphics-based subs on a DVD -- a DVD &/or Blu-Ray disc has what you might think of as a transparent overlay track with the subs as pictures. There is work going on developing ways to create things like .srt files using voice recognition, and of course they can be created by typing the dialog the same way transcriptionists do CC, but I think most home users get them either by stripping & converting the embedded CC in recorded broadcast programming, or using an app like Subtitle Edit to OCR the graphics-based subs on a DVD or Blu-Ray.

The main advantage of using .srt files from the perspective of the viewer, besides being able to turn subs on/off, is that the player renders them in the appropriate size &/or resolution for the display. Otherwise like the rest of the video frame, any text as graphics are resized [by the player or hardware] if or as necessary, & while the video usually doesn't look too bad, those subs can look downright nasty.

Back before the current software tools & players some people superimposed DVD subs over playing video, mimicking the way playing a DVD worked, in part frankly because DVD software was a bit rare & expensive. Sometimes those subs where permanently added to the video during encoding. That idea evolved to include .srt files as a source in some of the converters & rippers like today's GOTD. It tends to be something you won't see much of in current open source & freeware video apps, as older tech that's been abandoned in favor of displaying a .srt file if you want/need subs. That doesn't mean it's bad necessarily, & if you works for you, great.

I use a program called Any Video Converter when dealing with subtitles. Don't know if it would work for you but, it's worth a try. I'll look into THIS one and see what I think later.

You're new to the free software game, aren't you? That's the only reason I can think of for getting excited about old software that replicates the functionality of software that we all have already.

Grizzled old veterans, however, appreciate the heads up.

Many thanks, Karl, for your always excellent reviews. They are highly informative and - like today - they help to save a lot of time.