Sony Bravia TV - mkv files and files > 4 GB

With "Sony Bravia HD 3D LED KDL-40HX750" TV I faced the problem of playing '.mkv' files. Sony Bravia didn't support the .mkv file formats.

The other problem I faced is, playing the media files greater than 4 GB in size. The flash drive I used had the fat32 file system in which a single file cannot be more than of 4 GB in size.

Here I have summed up the solutions I found on internet to overcame the above two problems.

1. tsmuxer
2. Serviio DLNA media streaming server.

Playing the .mkv files in Sony Bravia

mkv is a multimedia container file format. This shall be converted to m2ts (MPEG-2 Transport Stream) multimedia container file format. Sony Bravia supports the m2ts file format.

tsmuxer (Transport Stream Muxer) shall be used to mux the mkv file format to the m2ts file format. 

(http://www.videohelp.com/tools/tsMuxeR)

I downloaded the tsmuxer from http://www.videohelp.com/download/tsMuxeR_1.10.6.tar.gz.

And I used the downloaded tsmuxer (on my ubuntu 10.04 lucid) as follows:

$mkdir tsmuxer

$cd tsmuxer/

$mv ../../Downloads/tsMuxeR_1.10.6.tar.gz .

$tar zxvf tsMuxeR_1.10.6.tar.gz 

$./tsMuxerGUI 

The tsMuxer GUI would look like as shown below.

In the input tab, add the mkv file to be muxed to m2ts file. In output, select the option "M2TS muxing" and point to the destination folder into which the muxed file to be placed. Then click "Start muxing".

Now thus obtained m2ts file can be played by the Sony bravia.

Playing the media files greater than 4 GB in size

For this there are two solutions for Sony Bravia KDL-40HX750.

1. Format the USB flash drive for exFAT format. 
2. Serviio DLNA media streaming server.

1. Format the USB flash drive for exFAT format. 

Sony Bravia KDL-40HX750 supports exFAT file system. And in exFAT filesystem we can have files greater than of 4 GB in size. 

Format the USB flash drive for exFAT file system. Since I couldn't format the USB flash drive to exFAT in my Ubuntu system, I used a windows XP (a service pack has to be installed to support exFAT) system to format my USB flash drive for exFAT file system.

There-after, I am able to use the USB flash drive with my Ubuntu system by using the fuse-exfat package. The fuse-exfat package was installed in my system as follows:

$sudo add-apt-repository ppa:relan/exfat

$sudo apt-get update

$sudo apt-get install fuse-exfat

After installing the fuse-exfat package the USB drive with exFAT file system can be mounted as follows:

$sudo mkdir /media/exfat

$sudo mount -t exfat /dev/sdc1 /media/exfat

Now the read and write on the USB flash drive can be done. After usage, the USB flash drive can be unmounted as follows:

$sudo umount /media/exfat

Now with this solution, I am able to play the media files greater than 4 GB in size.

2. Serviio DLNA media streaming server.

Sony Bravia KDL-40HX750 is DLNA enabled. The media files can be streamed from the computer using the Serviio DLNA media streaming server. Given that the TV and the computer are connected to a router, now the TV would be able to access the media content from the computer.

I downloaded the Serviio for my ubuntu system from the link given below:

http://download.serviio.org/releases/serviio-1.1-linux.tar.gz

Installed and started the servio console as follows:

Extracted the downloaded the package.

$tar zxvf serviio-1.1-linux.tar.gz 

Created the file "serviio.conf" in the directory "/etc/init/" with the following content in it.

start on started networking

script

   /home/ck/serviio-1.1/bin/serviio.sh

end script

Then on terminal do the following:

$sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

$sudo start serviio

$cd serviio-1.1/

$bin/serviio-console.sh 

The serviio console would look like as shown below. The Status tab would show the devices connected to the server.

For sharing the media files through the server, include the path to the media files in the Library tab as shown below.