Anyone know if M4V files play on PS3?

From all that I have read, no. It has something to do with DRM protection from what I recall. Some people have had success renaming the file as .mp4 and it plays on the PS3, but it depends on the original .m4v file structure for it to work.

M4V is not a "blu ray output file". It is an elementary mp4/h.264 video stream. It contains no audio and no specific transport formatting.

You need to stick the M4V into a Blu Ray acceptable container (which would be M2TS for H.264). You can do this with TSmuxeR (free download) which will stick the M4V into a M2TS container (without any re-encode) that will play on the PS3. There will be no audio though (M4V is a video stream only. For audio you will have to use the "add" button in TSmuxeR to add the audio track which will be muxed in (again, no re-encoding).

Both M2T and M2TS will work in the PS3

The M2TS is the Blu Ray standard however. It is used in the making of all Blu ray disks and will work in other BD machines... M2T will not. It should be made clear though that the PS3 will play those file types in their raw state, while on any other blu ray machine the M2TS has to be in its proper file structure.

It's a naming convention. .m4v could be h.264, or it could be mpeg-4. It's pretty common to name DVD video (only) as .m2v. aka mpeg-2 video. .m2ts is mpeg-2 transport stream.

That being said, just because your file is named m4v, doesn't tell us anything about what it is. And I'm sure that once we know that technical piece of the puzzle, we could compare it with the specifications of the PS3 to see if there's a match. Having a match doesn't guarantee that it'll play it, but if it doesn't have a match, odds are good that it doesn't. With a match, you'll likely need to rename the file in either case. Or encode it into a container, which can sometimes be done without reconverting the video file itself. mplex can join .m2v and the audio only file into a DVD compatible video for example. And other means to an end.

Is there a "standard" bluray player?

Since bluray is still fairly new stuff, there might only be a few commercial softwares that encodes to fully standards compliant results. Not to imply that all players are standards compliant. You could check your favorite bluray disc to see what it's contents was encoded to. And use the same specs as a baseline. No ideal myself as I don't yet have a bluray player or burner on my systems.

Adobe assumes you will be carrying those files forward into Encore which then takes those files and places them in the proper structure for burning to Blu Ray.

Then you must burn proper Blu Ray disks with the proper Blu Ray structure. You have CS4? Adobe Encore will do this for you. The only bad thing about Adobe is that it does not support surround sound out of the box.(You have to purchase a Dolby Digital Encoder for this) You can use the supplied dolby digital stereo encoder though.

There is a Blu Ray spec that ALL players must be able to meet. They ALL must be able for example to play back Dolby digital and DTS

Some players can do more... they can support DTS+ and DTS-HD (7.1) but this is not mandatory.

Blu Ray specs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray...ware_standards

PS3 does play m4v.. don't know if that's a recent addition but I'm watching some right now! (and have been for months now)

I recently picked up a Canon s95 digital camera and recorded some video in H.264 format at 1280 x 720 (24 fps). When I copied it to my external HDD, it wouldn't play on my PS3. Is this kind of video file really still not supported? Could something else be astray here that I'm not considering?

If it's not supported, does anyone have ideas for ways to convert without losing quality and gaining the ability to play on a PS3?

A few things to remember when trying to play video files on the PS3 The ps3 will play a lot of video file that its not ment to but .
1st make sure your usb stick/drive or sd card is formated to fat32 not ntfs of the PS3 cant read it do this is easy if you dont know how google it.
2nd copy video files to it sounds silly thing to say but ive seen people trying to play files that arnt on the drive.
3rd with usb or sd card plugged in on xmb go to video scroll to your drive (usb/sd card) press triangle and select (show all files )or somthing simlar cant rember off the top of my head .and all you files should be visable and just try to play them most will.