Unable to open MPEG-2 Video Files Various Application

On my old Win 7 and Win Vista and Win XP laptops I've had no problems opening and viewing my old MPEG-2 video files. My new laptop running Win 8.1 will not allow me to view them.

Windows Media Player will only recognize them as audio files - not video - though the sound will play. Real Player is the same - the application will open and begin playing a file but only as audio file. I've tried the built in Toshiba media player and it shows errors and won't open the files at all.

Again - these are conforming MPEG-2 NTSC 760X480 video file (old analog home movies) captured using an ATI video card dongle to connect to my video source and an old version of capture application ULead Video Studio. These files conform in every way to MPEG-2 standard/format and will run on all of our PC EXCEPT the new one running Win 8.

I bought and loaded a video editing application from Corel and it will open and play these files perfectly so why won't Win Media Player and Real Player recognize them when running behind Windows 8?

Any and All suggestions very much appreciated.

According to Wikipedia, the maximum allowed dimensions for an MPEG-2 video are 720x480(NTSC) pixels. It's possible the ULead software driver used to capture this video was not up to spec during recording. As a result it is not correctly recognized by other media players. Since Corel is the parent company for ULead Systems they are most likely aware of this inconsistency and have created software to render the files correctly.

My guess would be that if you re-encode the file(s) using another format the file(s) will play on other media players.

Sorry - simple typo on my part
All of my captured files are 720X480

I haven't done much lately but back in the early to mid 2000s I did a lot of video recording, capture to different file formats from MPEG to AVI - depending on quality of the source.

My MPEG-2 files all conform to the NTSC standard - again, they all open flawlessly on PCs running Win 7, XP and even Vista using Real and Win Player but none of them will open as MPEG or video files on the machine running Win 8. Hopefully there is a patch or other solution.

Their are several potential solutions.

First, install an alternative media player to play the file. VLC & GOM are two I would recommend.

1) VLC - https://videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html
2) GOM Player - Download GOM Player 2.2.56.5183 - FileHippo.com

The other option would be to install a codec pack. This will allow Windows Media Player to play various formats.

1) K-lite Codec Pack - Download K-Lite Codec Pack 10.15 (Full) - FileHippo.com
2) Windows 8 Codecs - Windows8 Codecs

** Windows 8 does natively support MPEG-2. The downside is, it has a few restrictions.