WTV is the default container format used to record television shows in Microsoft Windows 7 Media Center. It’s the successor of DVR-MS, the format used to record television shows in Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition.

WTV’s video encoder supports encoding to H.264 1-pass CBR Baseline profile up to 1.5 Mbit/s, 640x480pixels at 30 frame/s, and the audio encoder supports low complexity AAC stereo at 44.1 or 48 kHz sample rate and 96, 128, 160 or 192 kbit/s bit rate.

WTV files can be played with the Windows Media Player on windows 7. An integrated conversion tool in the Media Center allows to change the files to the DVR-MS format which can be played on the common video players like VLC and analyzed with the common tools like Infomedia.

A TunerFreeMCE for the Media Center is available from Milliesoft.

A converter from wtv/dvr-ms to mpeg – mpeg2 – avi – divx – mp4 – mpeg-2 is available from DVRsoft.