So, you are a proud owner of a Sony Bravia TV. You are satisfied with the television and you have marveled the great picture quality, but what about the file formats your Sony model supports? In particular, can it play mkv movies?
After we have purchased our Sony BRAVIA KDL46EX720 LED TV, we started asking ourselves the same question.
First we tried to put our MKV movies on an external drive, and link it to our television via a USB cable. We discovered soon enough that Sony Bravia cannot play directly MKV files. It simply does not recognize the format. Mpeg1, Mpeg2 and Mpeg4 files were working just fine. We even managed to play some DivX movies, but the matroska mkv (container) was not recognized.
Next, we connected our Bravia model to the PC via a GForce graphic card that possessed a HDMI output. Our KDL46EX720 Sony Bravia has 4 HDMI inputs, one of which is HDMI PC input that we used for the connection. The LCD TV was set as an additional display, and we used the so called extended mode to play the movies. Now, our standard VLC media player did not show great abilities in playing the MKV codec. Instead, we had to install another player, likely a free one too.
The KM free media player is a nice audio and video player for Windows Operating Systems. It supports a lot of formats, including avi, flv and MKV files.
So, if you are in a similar position to ours, we suggest to try the same route. If you connect your Bravia LCD TV to a computer via a HDMI cable, you are no longer limited to the file formats your TV supports. Rather, your TV will play whatever your computer supports – virtually all possible music, video and file formats.
Thanx buddy. I’ll try it today. I thought was it a waste to spend so much money on Sony instead of Samsung or any other brand which lets you play .mkv files in the 1/3 cost of what sony does.
Thanx again.
Just tried it, simply amazing with 3D .mkv movies, but the problem is that the sound does not come up from the TV, but the computer’s speakers.
Thats cool, but what about the 3d films, i can’t play via hdmi because i dont have video card with 3d support. Any suggestions?
Hi Doruk Karinca,
for the sound to come out from the TV, you need to install the sound drivers that come along with the HDMI equipped video card. Then you should select the corresponding sound output and the sound will come up from the TV instead of coming up from the computer’s speakers.
matroska (mkv) is a container not a codec.
You are right billy bob. Mkv is a container, very much like avi is one. Thanks, I corrected the mistake above in the text.
Hi,
Try using “Any Video Convertor” software to convert your .mkv files to .avi. you can even set compatible framerate, resolutions etc. I have tried, it working for me. now i am enjoying all .mkv files( convereted to .avi) in my sony bravia itself.
Hi Ravi,
yes, that’s one of the options if you can afford to wait for the conversion to finish. It can be a time consuming process at least for me.
Dear friends, I wish to present to you a new very simple program which will remux mkv file with h.264 video and AC3/DTS/LPCM/AAC audio to a M2TS file which is playable on the Sony
check this out :- http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=148627
The Sony Bravia CX520 does not play HD video files in MKV format. May be there is no codec in the TV. However there is a fix for this. What you need is a network router, host pc , network cables and Serviio DLNA media server.
Solution:
Connect the TV and the PC to the network router and install Serviio DLNA media server in the PC. Serviio is one of the best free DLNA servers available. It seems like that even Sony recommends Serviio. Once this is done start the Serviio service and the console in the PC. Then share your MKV files via the media library in the Serviio console and enable Transcoding. This feature will stream your HD MKV video content to the TV in a playable format. That’s it, just browse the media server in the TV and enjoy your media content.
link : http://www.serviio.org/download
Thanks Justin for this useful comment. Yes, one of the ways to play MKV files is to use a DLNA media server. I’ve never tried Serviio personally, but it seems like a nice solution to the problem.
i contacted sony bravia customer care today and the exe gave the solution that if you use the sony pendrive of 8 gb cap (none else as it supports only sony pendrive beyond 4 gb} you can play mkv files. i have not tried yet as i dont have sony pendrive of 8 gb right now, but she said sony bravia does supports mkv.
Serviio is Great. This made life good.
But there are movies having no voice at all. what could be a reason. One movie was not playable. However it takes quite a lot of data when playing 3D Full HD movies and movie stutter. May be due to computer used as server (Core 2 Due 2.6 Ghz, 3 GB RAM etc)
Anyways it made life easier for most of it.
Streaming with PS3 Media Server worked fine for me.
ya man works great thanks alot very happy ….
Thanks for this info Bhanu! It would be interesting to see if anyone has actually tried this.
I had problems with many files that wont play on Sony Bravia to the point that I was forced to think that buying Bravia was not a good idea. Started experimenting, many answers given in this forum did not workout satisfactorily, either problem with picture quality or sound was absent or subtitles were horrible.
At last downloaded the Any Video converter from net (free version) and the settings that worked perfect are as below:
Any video converter Setting working for Bravia
Type – Matroska Movie(*.mkv) ( Under common video formats)
Video Codec – xvid
Frame size – preferably original or as required Video Bitrate 10000 for 1920×1080, choose less for lower resolutions
Video frame rate – Auto
Audio Codec – ac3
Audio Bitrate – 192
Sample rate – 44100
Audio Channel – 2
A/V sync – Basic
Subtitle – 0-Eng. (don`t use default, it gives horrible subtitles)
Enjoy!
Sony has to improve a lot in Video playback. After-all its takes lot of time converting videos. My Samsung purchased a year back happily plays almost anything.
Hi basantsri, thanks for this overview of how you convert your videos for Bravia.
Why SONY is not allowing to play MKV files? Is it possible for them to make it possible via software updates?? Bcoz all other competitors are giving options to play all kinds of format.
If we are spending more than 1 lakh for TV ..they should give us these facility through updates.
Use Yamb to convert Mkv to MP4.
This is the solution: http://www.sony.co.uk/hub/1237485339460
Install Homestream on your PC or Mac and your Bravia will play every MKV file from your computer.