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.
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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.