I've spent days searching the web and reading dozens of forums trying to find a way to create a TS file that would play on my Maximum T-8000 DVB-T set top box. It's of the same family as Marusys T-8000 and Elanvision 8000s (using the same small "mkrecord" Windows utility to write STB-specific headers to generic TS files to make them playable). My STB supports VLC streaming, and that way any kind of video can be viewed.
But I'm not (read: my Mrs isn't
) too thrilled about hauling the laptop & power supply over to the living room and connecting a spaghetti of power and data leads every time we want to watch our own videos. We have a zillion old home video AVI's and Mpeg's of our kids and some old movie DVD's that I'd like to convert to TS files (I have a 2-terabyte external hard disk connected to the STB but no DVD player at the moment). VLC with its powerful transcoding capabilities seems like the ideal tool for the job, but try as I might I haven't been able to produce a TS file that would play on my STB (after applying "mkrecord" for the headers of course).I first snooped around some original DVB-T TV recordings I made on the STB and found out that they use MPEG2 PAL video (25fps, 720x576) and MPGA 192 kbps audio. So I set all these to the VLC Media Player's "stream+save" settings (and selected DVBS subtitle encoding), and from one of my DVD's VLC Media Player 0.8.6c as well as 0.9.6 spat out a TS file that worked perfectly on VLC Media Player, with subtitle selection and all. I ran mkrecord on the file to insert the headers my STB wants, after which it still worked perfectly on VLC Media Player (both versions).
But trying to play the file on my STB, all I get is a black screen and no sound. The USB stick I'm using for these tests blinks its LED, and the STB*s "pause" and "play" functions display on its front panel ("pause" stops the stick LED from blinking too) so the STB is actually reading the file but unable to display any of the contents.
Looks like some Advanced settings are required, but I have absolutely no idea what they are. If anyone can tell me what exactly should be set to what values to create TS files suitable for these particular STB brands, I'd be very grateful. Thanks in advance...