DVR-MS is a proprietary

Proprietary software

Proprietary software is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. The licensee is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, while restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering.Complementary...

 video

Video

Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...

 and audio

Sound

Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...

 file

Computer file

A computer file is a block of arbitrary information, or resource for storing information, which is available to a computer program and is usually based on some kind of durable storage. A file is durable in the sense that it remains available for programs to use after the current program has finished...

 container format

File format

A file format is a particular way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file.Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa. There are different kinds of formats for...

, developed by Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 used for storing TV content recorded by Windows XP Media Center Edition

Windows XP Media Center Edition

Windows XP Media Center Edition is a version of the Windows XP operating system designed to serve as a home-entertainment hub. The last version, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, was released in October 2004.-Versions:...

, Windows Vista

Windows Vista

Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...

 and Windows 7.

Multiple data streams (audio and video) are wrapped in an ASF

Advanced Systems Format

Advanced Systems Format is Microsoft's proprietary digital audio/digital video container format, especially meant for streaming media...

 container with the extension DVR-MS. Video is encoded using the MPEG-2

MPEG-2

MPEG-2 is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods which permit storage and transmission of movies using currently available storage media and transmission...

 standard and audio using MPEG-1 Layer II

MPEG-1

MPEG-1 is a standard for lossy compression of video and audio. It is designed to compress VHS-quality raw digital video and CD audio down to 1.5 Mbit/s without excessive quality loss, making video CDs, digital cable/satellite TV and digital audio broadcasting possible.Today, MPEG-1 has become...

 or Dolby Digital AC-3 (ATSC A/52). The format extends these standards by including metadata

Metadata

The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...

 about the content and digital rights management

Digital rights management

Digital rights management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that...

. Files in this format are generated from the Stream Buffer Engine (SBE.dll), a DirectShow

DirectShow

DirectShow , codename Quartz, is a multimedia framework and API produced by Microsoft for software developers to perform various operations with media files or streams. It is the replacement for Microsoft's earlier Video for Windows technology...

 component introduced in Windows XP Service Pack 1.

Playback and editing

The DVR

Digital video recorder

A digital video recorder , sometimes referred to by the merchandising term personal video recorder , is a consumer electronics device or application software that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card or other local or networked mass storage device...

 feature of Windows XP Media Center Edition

Windows XP Media Center Edition

Windows XP Media Center Edition is a version of the Windows XP operating system designed to serve as a home-entertainment hub. The last version, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, was released in October 2004.-Versions:...

, Windows Vista

Windows Vista

Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...

 and the Windows 7 version of Windows Media Center

Windows Media Center

Windows Media Center is a digital video recorder and media player developed by Microsoft. It is an application that allows users to view and record live television, as well as organize and play music and videos...

 create files in this format. If a recorded broadcast

Broadcasting

Broadcasting is the distribution of audio and video content to a dispersed audience via any audio visual medium. Receiving parties may include the general public or a relatively large subset of thereof...

 is marked as copy protected

Copy protection

Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy obstruction, copy prevention and copy restriction, refer to techniques used for preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media, usually for copyright reasons.- Terminology :Media corporations have always used the term...

, the resultant DVR-MS file can only be played back on the recording device. Unprotected DVR-MS files (files not marked in this way) can be played back on any device running Windows XP with Service Pack

Service pack

A service pack is a collection of updates, fixes or enhancements to a software program delivered in the form of a single installable package. Many companies, such as Microsoft or Autodesk, typically release a service pack when the number of individual patches to a given program reaches a certain ...

 1 or later Windows operating systems, hotfix 810243 for Windows XP RTM (which adds DVR-MS support to DirectShow), and on Windows Mobile 6. For older Windows operating systems, any third-party media player which supports the DVR-MS format through DirectShow

DirectShow

DirectShow , codename Quartz, is a multimedia framework and API produced by Microsoft for software developers to perform various operations with media files or streams. It is the replacement for Microsoft's earlier Video for Windows technology...

 on Windows or by other means on Windows or other platforms can be used for playback.

Although it is not possible to edit unprotected DVR-MS files through older software programs such as Windows Movie Maker

Windows Movie Maker

Windows Movie Maker is a video creating/editing software application, included in Microsoft Windows Me, XP, and Vista. It contains features such as effects, transitions, titles/credits, audio track, timeline narration, and Auto Movie. New effects and transitions can be made and existing ones can be...

 for Windows XP

Windows XP

Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...

, the files can be edited using Windows Movie Maker

Windows Movie Maker

Windows Movie Maker is a video creating/editing software application, included in Microsoft Windows Me, XP, and Vista. It contains features such as effects, transitions, titles/credits, audio track, timeline narration, and Auto Movie. New effects and transitions can be made and existing ones can be...

 for Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 Vista

Windows Vista

Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...

 or Sonic

Sonic Solutions

Sonic Solutions, acquired by Rovi Corporation in 2010, was a computer software company headquartered in Novato, California. In addition to having a number of offices in the U.S., the company also maintained offices in Europe and Asia.-History:...

 MyDVD. A simple registry tweak/hack also exists for allowing the Windows XP version of Windows Movie Maker to natively import/edit DVR-MS files. Some early freeware applications which convert the files can be found from third parties such as at The Green Button. Microsoft's Developer Network (MSDN) has an article with sample code and binaries demonstrating how to use DVR-MS and convert them to WMV. Also, Windows Media

Windows Media

Windows Media is a multimedia framework for media creation and distribution for Microsoft Windows. It consists of a software development kit with several application programming interfaces and a number of prebuilt technologies, and is the replacement of NetShow technologies.The Windows Media SDK...

 Player

Windows Media Player

Windows Media Player is a media player and media library application developed by Microsoft that is used for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile-based devices...

 10 shipped with a transcoder to convert DVR-MS to WMV only when syncing with portable devices such as a Portable Media Center

Portable Media Center

Portable Media Center is a defunct hard drive-based portable media player platform developed by Microsoft. Announced at the 2003 Consumer Electronics Show , and released in early 2004, it was originally positioned as a competitor to Apple's iPod.The platform was conceived in line with Microsoft's...

.

MediaPortal

MediaPortal

MediaPortal is an open-source media center software project, often considered an alternative to Windows Media Center. It provides a 10-foot user interface for performing typical PVR/TiVo functionality, including playing, pausing, and recording live TV; playing DVDs, videos, and music; viewing...

 also uses this format and comes with the plugin My Burner, which can be used to (automatically) convert DVR-MS files to regular MPEG-2

MPEG-2

MPEG-2 is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods which permit storage and transmission of movies using currently available storage media and transmission...

. Also, Orb

Orb (software)

Orb is freeware streaming software that enables users to remotely access all their personal digital media files including pictures, music, videos, webcams and television...

 uses the DVR-MS file format for recording and streaming audio and video via its web-based DVR.

Some universal transcoders may be able to convert DVR-MS to other formats. DVR-MS can also be converted to another format changing only the container format (extracting the original MPEG-2

MPEG-2

MPEG-2 is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods which permit storage and transmission of movies using currently available storage media and transmission...

 data without any visual loss) using FFmpeg

FFmpeg

FFmpeg is a free software project that produces libraries and programs for handling multimedia data. The most notable parts of FFmpeg are libavcodec, an audio/video codec library used by several other projects, libavformat, an audio/video container mux and demux library, and the ffmpeg command line...

 and VLC media player

VLC media player

VLC media player is a free and open source media player and multimedia framework written by the VideoLAN project.VLC is a portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to...

's transcoding wizard.

Phasing out of DVR-MS

Starting with Windows Media Center TV Pack 2008 and moving forward, Microsoft has indicated that DVR-MS is being replaced with the WTV format

WTV (Windows Recorded TV Show)

WTV is a proprietary video and audio file container format, developed by Microsoft used for storing TV content recorded by Windows Media Center. It is used in Windows Vista starting with Windows Media Center TV Pack 2008, and all Windows Media Center editions of Windows 7...

.

An update is available for Windows Media Player 11 in Windows Vista to add playback support for WTV. Microsoft does not, however, provide a generic DirectShow filter to enable playback support in third party DirectShow-based media players on Windows Vista or on Windows XP Media Center Edition.

Windows 7 includes built-in support for converting non copy-protected WTV files to DVR-MS. Third party tools also exist to convert WTV to DVR-MS such as Andy VT's ToDVRMS and 3LS's ConvertWTV.