I was disappointed when I tried to play a Windows Media Video (WMV) video file on my Amazon Kindle Fire. It didn’t work and I was greeted with an error that said:
“Cannot play video. An error occurred while trying to play your video. The video may have been interrupted or is an unsupported format. Please try again.”
What was even more strange was that some of the WMV videos would actually play sometimes, but not very well. The audio was choppy and sometimes the video would go black.
Many of the tutorials you’ll find one the Interwebs about this problem walk you through converting the MWV files to a format that the Kindle Fire supports. I’m not a fan of converting video files since it takes a lot of time and the conversion usually results in poor quality videos being made.
Fortunately, you can play MWV files on your Kindle Fire without converting the files. Just pick up a copy of VLC Player. Once installed, VLC Player provides a solid interface for viewing WMV video files as well as many other formats such as AVI, FLV, MP4, and M2v. Videos I tested with the software played smooth and I had no problems at all.
Brian MacFarland says
I’m trying to do this from a HooToo Tripmate NAS and VLC doesn’t recognize it. Grrr…
Looking to just plug in my hard drive with WMVs into the Tripmate and let my kids stream whatever they want on their independent tablets.
John A says
Many Thanks Mitch. This works great. You have saved me a lot of wasted time in unneeded file converting. I have already been using VLC on my mobile phone and now I can use it on my Fire HD Tablet too now. Problem solved ! Bravo ! Thanks again Mitch for your useful advice here.