Take our customer survey to evaluate your visit.
It should only take a few minutes to answer five quick questions. Just click the Launch survey button at the end of your visit to begin.
Please help us improve our website
The Xperia Z1 claims to be able to play Matroska (MKV) contained video. It doesn't.
No matter which small homemade MKV file (only using main or baseline H.264+AAC codecs) I try to copy to the device, it makes Windows Explorer crash. When I copy a random M4V file it works perfectly. But if I change the extension of the exact same video from "M4V" to "MKV" (no content modified), Windows Explorer immediately crashes again!
There seems to be plenty of Z1 owners who noticed the same problem, so I can only assume that Sony is deliberately blocking MKV files from their XPeria devices, because some powerful idiot has ordered them to do so... What a shame they forgot to mention that in the official Z1 product sheet! 
... I want my money back, because MKV playback was one of the reasons I bought this phone. 
(
... If someone can show me how to copy an MKV file to a Z1 - and send me a copy of that file, so I can see which codecs that are required, please do not hesitate to respond... Because I am pretty sure that Sony won't comment on this issue.
Hi and welcome to the community! Since you're new please be sure that you have checked out our Discussion guidelines.
Sorry to hear that you're having issues copying videos to your phone.
This works fine for me. Could you perhaps try this on another PC? This sounds more like an issue with your PC then with the phone.
If you're new to our forums make sure that you have read our Discussion guidelines.
If you want to get in touch with the local support team for your country please visit our contact page.
You were right. I was actually able to copy a Matroska file stored on my stationary PC (running Win7 64-bit Home Ed.) to my Z1 an hour ago. Sound and video plays fine when I load it in the VLC app on the phone.
But the problem exists on my Lenovo i7 (Win7 64-bit Enterprise) - I just checked it again.
The M4V file I copied from my PC to my Z1 was in the exact same video folder. I have never had problems copying MKV files to other folders, USB pen drives or external hard drives, so I really can't figure out what is causing this annoying problem. 
I will check if I have the same codecs installed on both computers. I think I have the Shark007 codec pack installed on my laptop, whereas I only have CCCP installed on the stationary.
Hard to say what could be wrong but perhaps you have a software in the computer that is set to automatically reencode video for MTP-devices and this software is not working as it should. I think i had an option for automatically converting videos when using drag and drop on a computer with an AMD card in it for example.
If you're new to our forums make sure that you have read our Discussion guidelines.
If you want to get in touch with the local support team for your country please visit our contact page.
MTP is the protocol that's used when connecting the phone with your computer. Windows (Vista and later) has native support for MTP so you don't need to install anything for it unless running XP or another OS.
I can't say for sure but what i suspect is that you have a video converter installed that automatically converts video files when they are dragged and dropped onto a portable media player (MTP-device). It might be an issue with that video converter or the codecs it tries to use which causes it to crash. If you still have the issue i would start by trying to remove and video converters and/or codec packs you've installed and see if that helps.
A workaround may be to insert a microSD in the phone and then set the phone to MSC-mode instead under Settings -> Xperia Connectivity -> USB Connectivity -> USB connection mode.
If you're new to our forums make sure that you have read our Discussion guidelines.
If you want to get in touch with the local support team for your country please visit our contact page.
