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This was used by MS starting around 2002. Able to open in Windows and copy to a Floppy Disc which extension was .jpg. I no longer use Windows and now use only Ubuntu 18.04.I have spent considerable time researching and emailing various companies to no avail. I have about 130 albums.pva which would represent about 2600 photos. My question is how to open the album.pva and view in Ubuntu?

Melville Reade
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  • Here it says it's a video format: https://fileinfo.com/extension/pva . What software were you using in Windows to convert to JPEG? –  May 14 '19 at 18:45
  • The MS TV Photo Albums.pva were converted automatically to .jpg when you copied the album to a floppy disc (1.44MB). Could only copy to floppy disc as it would not copy to cd or hard drive. The last version I used was Windows 7. – Melville Reade May 14 '19 at 19:21
  • Sorry to disagree but they weren't because they couldn't have been unless mediated by some software. –  May 14 '19 at 19:26
  • My original photos would have been .jpg but when you created the album using the "Microsoft TV Photo" software the album was created with the .pva extension. Once copied to the floppy, the photos were .jpg. There seems to be more than one type of .pva? Only works in Windows. Max photo size in album must be no more than 640 pixels x 480 pixels. Hauppauge as a matter of intrerest also could not help me? – Melville Reade May 14 '19 at 20:50
  • It's starting to make sense. You used a software (full name "Microsoft TV Photo Viewer") to convert photos to a slideshow which by definition is video so pva as a video format is as good as any other but it's very likely the software added proprietary data that can only be interpreted by that software and that part is what it uses to convert the video back to individual pictures. Here's the problem: That software was discontinued by Microsoft a long time ago, you probably couldn't install/use it in Windows today even if you had the installer, let alone in a foreign OS >>> –  May 14 '19 at 21:08

  • https://news.microsoft.com/2001/09/20/microsoft-tv-photo-viewer-provides-a-simple-new-way-to-view-digital-photos-on-home-television-sets/ mentions the device supporting it and it makes sense to use a file format similar to the one used by the TV tuners. How to convert the slideshow back to jpg will be almost impossible without the original software.

     –  May 14 '19 at 21:15
  • I still have the original MS TV Photo install disc. All albums.pva are also backed up onto DVD but obviously I cannot open then in Ubuntu. I was able to open them using oracle virtual machine and Windows 7 as the guest O/S. However; as a newbie to ubuntu I some how corrupted my system and had to reinstall. This actually happened 2-3 times and I do not want to go through that again. Since I have the original software do you think there is any way to come up with a photo Viewer or other workarounds? It must be proprietary for Windows as all my earlier versions worked as well!! Thnk u Gabriela – Melville Reade May 14 '19 at 22:27
  • You may try Wine, a sort of emulator for Windows software, but of course no guarantees whatsoever. Install as usual with the software store app or sudo apt install wine and the the typical Windows .exe should open with the Wine installer. With some luck this is all you need. But creating a VM is also trivial, provided your PC is powerful enough and supports virtualization, otherwise your options are very limited. Feel free to post other questions about any of the options if you're stuck. –  May 15 '19 at 00:26
  • I was just reviewing Wine when your reply came in!! However; I did not locate our required app mentioned anywhere. May try install anyway. Thanks for your help and interest Gabriela – Melville Reade May 15 '19 at 00:38

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