WTV to WAV Converter

How to Convert WTV to WAV Online

1. Upload Your WTV File: Drag and drop, or click "+ Add Files" to pick recordings from your Recorded TV folder. Batch upload is supported, and processing stays withon our servers.
2. Pick Audio Channel and Sample Rate: Leave both on "Original" to preserve the broadcast track verbatim, or downmix to Mono for voice/dialogue work and Stereo for music. Set Audio Sample Rate to 48000 Hz to match the WTV broadcast source (ATSC and most digital cable use 48 kHz), or 44100 Hz if the output feeds a CD-mastering chain.
3. Trim (Optional): Use the Trim control to clip commercial breaks or isolate a single segment. Enter start and duration in HH:MM:SS.MS, or leave it unchanged to extract the full audio track.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert." The output is uncompressed PCM WAV — drag the result straight into Audacity, Reaper, Adobe Audition, or any DAW for editing.

Why Convert WTV to WAV?

WTV (Windows Recorded TV Show) is the container Windows Media Center wrote when it recorded live TV — typically MPEG-2 video paired with either MPEG-1 Layer II or Dolby Digital AC-3 audio. WAV, defined by Microsoft and IBM in 1991, is a RIFF-based container that holds uncompressed Linear PCM. Extracting WAV from a WTV recording strips out the video and decodes the broadcast audio into the cleanest, most editor-friendly format available.

• Archive radio and audio-only TV broadcasts — Media Center could record radio via a TV tuner card, and the resulting WTV files are mostly audio with a black video track. Converting to WAV drops the dead video and keeps a clean PCM master.
• Editing for podcasts, supercuts, and reels — DAWs and NLEs handle PCM WAV natively without any re-decode pass, which keeps edits sample-accurate and avoids the generation loss you'd get re-encoding AC-3.
• Salvage old Windows Media Center libraries — Windows Media Center was dropped from Windows 10 in May 2015, and the EPG service shut down on January 14, 2020. WTV files from that era won't open in most modern players, but the audio is still usable as WAV.
• Speech-to-text and transcription pipelines — Whisper, AWS Transcribe, and Otter all prefer uncompressed PCM at 16 kHz or 48 kHz mono. Pulling WAV straight from a recorded news segment, interview, or talk show skips a lossy intermediate.
• Restoration and audio repair — iZotope RX and similar tools need uncompressed PCM to do meaningful de-noise, de-click, and EQ matching on old broadcast captures.
• Compatibility with legacy and offline gear — WAV plays on every desktop, every DAW, every CD burner, and every embedded audio device. No codec packs, no plugins.

WTV vs WAV — Format Comparison

Sample Rate and Channel Quick Guide

Frequently Asked Questions

Will DRM-protected WTV recordings convert?

No. Recordings flagged "Copy Once" or "Copy Never" by the broadcaster — common for premium cable and some over-the-air HD broadcasts — only play back on the PC that recorded them and the linked Media Center Extender. The DRM has to be removed at the OS level before any converter (online or desktop) can read the audio stream. Unprotected over-the-air ATSC recordings convert without issue.

Why is the WAV so much larger than the WTV?

WTV stores audio as compressed AC-3 or MPEG-1 Layer II at roughly 192–384 kbps. WAV stores Linear PCM, which at 48 kHz / 16-bit stereo runs about 1,536 kbps — roughly 5–8x larger. A 30-minute broadcast that takes 80 MB inside the WTV container becomes about 330 MB as 48 kHz/16-bit stereo WAV. If size matters more than editability, convert to MP3 instead or compress the resulting WAV.

What sample rate should I pick for WTV audio?

48 kHz. US digital broadcast (ATSC) and most digital cable carry audio at 48 kHz. Choosing 48000 Hz means no resampling, so you keep a bit-true copy of what the broadcaster transmitted. Pick 44.1 kHz only if the final destination is CD or a streaming service that targets 44.1 kHz.

Will I lose quality converting WTV to WAV?

No additional loss is introduced by the WAV side — PCM is lossless. The original WTV audio was lossy (AC-3 or MP2 from the broadcaster), so the WAV is a faithful uncompressed copy of an already-lossy source. You can edit, mix, and re-export it without any further generation loss as long as you stay in PCM or another lossless format like FLAC.

My WTV file is over 4 GB — will the WAV still work?

Standard WAV has a hard ~4 GiB cap because the chunk size field is a 32-bit unsigned integer. For a 48 kHz/16-bit stereo PCM stream that's about 6.8 hours. Most TV recordings are well under that, but a multi-hour movie marathon or all-day radio capture can exceed it. If you hit the limit, trim into segments first, drop to 16 kHz mono for speech, or use a format that supports 64-bit sizes (W64 or RF64). xconvert outputs standard WAV, so very long recordings should be trimmed in step 3.

What audio codec is inside a typical WTV file?

Most US digital TV broadcasts carry Dolby Digital (AC-3) at 192–448 kbps in 2.0 or 5.1. European DVB sources more often use MPEG-1 Layer II at 192–384 kbps stereo. The converter decodes either to PCM transparently — you don't pick the input codec, it's detected from the WTV container.

Can I keep 5.1 surround when I convert?

The default output here is stereo. WAV does support multichannel PCM, but most playback chains and DAWs expect 2-channel WAV for general work. If the source is 5.1 AC-3 and you need surround preserved, pick the channel option that matches your project (or downmix to stereo for a normal listening copy).

How does this compare to converting WTV to MP4 first and then extracting audio?

It's the same audio either way, but going WTV → WAV directly is one step instead of two and avoids a needless video transcode. If you also want a watchable copy of the broadcast, convert WTV to MP4 for the video and run a separate WTV → WAV pass for the editable audio master.

Can I cut commercials out before converting?

Yes — use the Trim control in step 3 to define start time and duration, and only that range gets written to the WAV. For multiple non-contiguous segments, convert the whole thing first and then use Audio Cutter to split the WAV into the segments you actually want.