Accessing the WTV Recording Metadata without Windows Media Center

Question

With the death of Windows Media Center and the announcement that Intel and AMD's latest processors will only work with Windows 10, I'm left wondering if there alternatives to reading the Recording metadata (Show name, Episode name, Original air date, etc) without Media Center.

Currently, I am unable to view this information on my windows 10 laptop or Server 2012 box. I am forced to use my HTPC, which is connected to the TV, just to view these details.

I know there are hacks to enable Media Center on Windows 10, but that is a last resort. I don't need any of the other media center features, I already have the HTPC with Windows 7 to handle those tasks, but I don't want to disrupt the TV viewing when I want to review the extended properties and see the media details.

So what I'm looking for:

• Compatibility with Windows 10 and Server 2012 (both preferred, 1 is acceptable).
• Access the WTV extended properties on Windows 10
• Lightweight - I don't need any other features, just want to see the metadata for the recording
• Accessible from the file Properties window, just like in Windows 7 (not a necessity, but would be really be a big benefit).

Answer 1

If you download FFMPEG from the Windows Builds FTP server and unzip the downloaded file you should find a tool called ffprobe which allows you, from the command line, to get a huge amount of metadata from various/most media file formats including WTV.

Of course you will also get ffmpeg which can, (admittedly with a huge number of options), convert almost any media format, again including WTV, to a large number of other formats. Spend a little time reading about it and playing and you will find a set of settings that will allow you to convert all of your wtv format files to a still supported format such as MPEG or MP4, then you will be able to play them on other devices and see the meta data in file explorer.

The ffmpeg library of utilities is:

• Free, Gratis & Open Source
• Cross platform available for Windows, OS-X & Linux

I have to admit that I have not been able to try the above as I don't have any wtv files to hand. But give it a try as you have nothing to loose but some download time & a little disk space my installation is 112 MB and the latest download is a 45MB zip file - tiny for the amount of power.