Tips for using VLC on the Mac to watch TV from Windows Media Center or DVBLink

With the release of VLC 2.0 for the Mac adding support for Windows Media Center WTV files I thought it may be a good idea to collect a couple of tips together for watching Media Center TV on the Mac using VLC. First you need VLC 2 (obviously) which you can get from videolan.org and you need some recorded TV shows on a Windows PC plus if you want live TV on the Mac you will need DVBLink installed on your Media Center PC.

There are a few ways of getting Media Center TV shows playing:

First playing files locally:

Really simple, just drag the file into the playing window and the file plays. If you find there is no audio when you playback the file try switching the audio track to Track 2, that seem to work for most of my files with the exception of BBC 1HD recorded shows, I guess this is because of a codec missing in VLC.

Streaming Recorded TV from a Windows Media Center PC

With VLC you can stream video shows from a DLNA server, I found I could browse my Windows Media Center PCs and browse the Recorded TV folder and playback TV shows, as with local file playback you may have to change the audio playback track.

I also found that the show title shows the episode name of the show and not the program name shows e.g. “Casualty:Love Is” is listed as “Love Is”

Streaming Live TV from DVBLink

If you have DVBLink setup on your network you can stream live TV to the Mac via the UPNP server. Just browse for the channel you want and it plays in VLC, no need to change the audio settings on these streams.

Overall VLC 2.0 is great for Media Center users with Macs or to use as a client for DVBLink. Download the app from videolan.org