Playing WMVs on Your DVD Player

Making WMV files play on your DVD is as easy as making AVI files play on your DVD – which is to say, not as easy as you’d think it would be. WMV as a whole has been a file type that isn’t accepted quite as widely as the AVI or MPEG-4 Standards. WMV-HD was supposed to change all that, but given that Matroska’s MKV file type proved much more popular and is easily converted to MP4, it went down as fast as it started.

The bad news is that DVD players don’t natively play anything other than VOB files and their associated audio counterparts. This means that you’ll either have to convert the WMV to a VOB file type, or you’ll have to find a DVD player that’s got compatibility for WMV files – something that’s about as commonly found as a unicorn. So you’re going to have to convert to either AVI to play on something like the Phillips DVP-5960 or a standard DVD that can play on anything.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times – this is the worst way possible to achieve what you’re looking for in terms of playing different media files on your TV through your DVD player. The conversion process is long (read: overnight) and the process can sometimes be destroyed by something as simple as a processor hiccup. Aside from these obvious problems, recording on optical media is something that I like to leave only as a last resort – thanks to these new 8 Gb and 16 Gb Flash drives, I enjoy being able to plug-and-play my media rather than burning it to a DVD that will then either have to be erased or will have to be trashed when I’m done.

Iif you still have a deep desire to do it this way however, there’s a nifty little piece of software (freeware) called AVI2DVD that will do everything you need it to, even to other formats besides AVI.

There’s a piece of software called STOIK that’s effective at converting from WMV to DiVX file types. The interface isn’t great however, and the conversion process can sometimes linger on (it’s free, so you can’t complain much). Conversion from WMV to AVI however, just means that you’ll need a DVD player like the DVP-5960 discussed above. The DiVX codec is much easier to work with for the DVD player, so the conversion from WMV to AVI rather than MPEG or anything else makes perfect sense. Still, you should be willing to invest at least $70 or so for that particular DVD player.

Regardless of which way you do it, the conversion is achieved (in some cases, it’ll be easier than others) and the DVD player will be able to play the file.

If you're still curious about converting from WMV to DVD, here are some great links to follow:

WMV to AVI

Blaze Media Pro Converter