Getting HD .ts files to stream to the PS3

I think the PS3 will play .ts files natively but only if they're stored locally.  I could be wrong here but certainly I can't stream them with my current media server of choice (TwonkyMedia) so I needed some way of making them playable...

...and I found it.  It's Windows-only sadly but it works fine in my XP Boot Camp VM.  It's called "HDTVtoMPEG2" and can be found here: http://www.midwinter.com/~bcooley/

It's a tiny little app that you just unzip and drop anywhere.  The version I got was 1.07 and it was simplicity itself to use - click 'Add', pick file you want, click 'Convert' - done.

To test it, I converted a 10 minute snippet of Endeavour's take-off and subsequent orbit of the earth.  The file was 1GB and HDTVtoMPEG2 processed it in less than 5 minutes.  I didn't hold much hope - especially when the resulting MPEG wasn't playable in either QuickTime or the Old Faithful VLC - but I tried streaming it to the PS3 and it worked perfectly!

All in all and handy little app for yet another quirk surrounding video streaming...