How to play .ts files? (and other unusual formats)

I recommend smplayer and gecko-mediaplayer, which are the best mplayer frontend and browser plugin respectively. For codecs get ubuntu-restricted-extras. I also recommend the Comprehensive Multimedia & Video Howto tutorial.

smplayer

gecko-mediaplayer

ubuntu-restricted-extras

Try this solution then, install mplayer-nogui and play your video from terminal.

mplayer-nogui

Playing video from terminal:

mplayer /path/to/your/video/file

Almost all the videos can be played here. None of the videos failed for me but I have never tried .ts video files. Let me know if it works for you.