Best File format for movies - MKV or MP4

[DarkTXKnight]

Im trying to rip a movie collection to disc and it seems most people recommend MKV or MP4 for this. Im trying to find the best reasons for me to go one way or the other given my current media equipment and some near future purchases.
What Ive got:

Phillips 50 in 720p Plasma HDTV (wife is thinking of us getting 65 in 1080p plasmain media room)
Xbox 360 used as media extender from a PC with the software below
Playon ,Tversity Windows home server and Windows media Center 7 (for DVR)
Sony 5.1 audio system
My backend media server is a dual P4 3.0 XEON with 8 GB RAM

My goal is to rip the media files,share them out to the various extenders and replace most of my cable.When I rip to MKV video look sgood, but has been choppy so far. I dont know if it's the hardware or soemthing else butI have an AM2 board and 4 GB DDR2 RAM on their way back from RMA,and im thnking of replacing the dualxeons with the hardware and a newer processor.
Ithink the MP4 format is natively supported by the XBOX, however if MKV is the better format and playon\tversity\PS3 Media can cleanly translate the MKV,then I'll be happy with that too. Any advice is appreciated

 

[mmntech]

How many movies do you have? 1tb drives are pretty cheap today and they can store approximately 117 (theoretical maximum) uncompressed (their native MPEG2) DVD movies. It's a better way to do it IMO since compressing them to MP4 takes a long time, plus it preserves the quality so playback is identical to using the disc.

For container format, I personally don't think there's that big of a difference. MKV and AVC (MP4) both look good. AVC is more widely supported though.

 

[DarkTXKnight]

Well I have quite a few movies we'll watch over and over, and Id like to rip some of those and some of our newer ones ( kind of like a homemade ONDemand service) so that they can be watched throughout the house.
So if youre saying I can leave them uncompressee, is that the same as leaving them ripped into the audio\video TS folders? or is there another step I must take?
I was thinking of the MP4 only for the extra device compatibility. Im also wondering if MP4s are more or less resource intensive during playback than MKV?

 

[0roo0roo]

its just a container.
resource intensiveness depends on the format within and settings used to encode.
mkv is more open sourcy... more community support ...getting to the point where its becoming the new avi..

 

[Slick5150]

As stated above, the only difference between MKV and MP4 is compatibility. They can both use a variety of codecs (h.264 of some sort generally) and have the exact same quality as one another. Just depends on the hardware you want to play it back on as to whether it likes one over the other. I'd say MKV has broader support though if there is a difference.

 

[slackerinabox]

mp4 playback on xbox is sans multi-channel audio, fyi. I converted my mkvs to MP4 just to play them on my xbox 360.. Picture quality was great but I lost D.D./DTS.. Eventually i just got a set top player and was quite annoyed that I had to re-encode videos from their original sources in order to get 5.1 back.. I say stick to MKV

 

[DarkTXKnight]

I am leaning towards sticking to MKV since it does seem to have a broader suport. So I tested an mkv last night and while the picture clarity was great, playback and searching were kinda choppy - is this because of my backend media server perhaps? It's a Dual P4 Xeon 3.4 with 8GB RAM. It's deinfatley older, but I was hoping to use it since it was lying around. I have a 939 X2 4400 windows home server that I might install playon on to do double duty, but I also have an AM2 board and 4 GB DDR2 1066 RAM coming back from RMA. Maybe I should buy a new chip to sick into that guy and build a media server around it? thoughts?

 

[DarkTXKnight]

maybe this?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103716

or this?

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2023795

 

[slackerinabox]

I am leaning towards sticking to MKV since it does seem to have a broader suport. So I tested an mkv last night and while the picture clarity was great, playback and searching were kinda choppy - is this because of my backend media server perhaps? It's a Dual P4 Xeon 3.4 with 8GB RAM. It's deinfatley older, but I was hoping to use it since it was lying around. I have a 939 X2 4400 windows home server that I might install playon on to do double duty, but I also have an AM2 board and 4 GB DDR2 1066 RAM coming back from RMA. Maybe I should buy a new chip to sick into that guy and build a media server around it? thoughts?

Are you playing to a PS3/Xbox? If so then, yes, you're transcoding and you'll need a faster processor. I had a amd x2 and that didn't cut it, upgrading to an X4 worked.

I recommend an asus o-play or wd live instead for playback. Since they support native mkv playback you won't need to transcode, so your dual p4 will be fine.

 

[DarkTXKnight]

yes im playing to a couple of PS3's that are for gaming\htpcextenders. It's probably cheaper to buy a better processor than another media device to teach everyone else to use unless the boxes support other media interfaces

 

[slackerinabox]

yes im playing to a couple of PS3's that are for gaming\htpcextenders. It's probably cheaper to buy a better processor than another media device to teach everyone else to use unless the boxes support other media interfaces

Welps, I took your route at first - upgraded my dual core to quad (only $99 - I suspect your upgrade will be more since you're coming from P4). That worked for about an hour before freezing up again.. That's when I said fuck it and ordered a $99 o!play, which streams perfectly, with dts /dolby digital in tact..

Go ahead, upgrade to your hearts content, but transcoding is a work around and not a solution.

 

[DarkTXKnight]

ok, so how do these other devices fit in with an htpc dvr box ive built and my windows home server where im storing movies - and what interface to use with the harmony remotes?

 

[slackerinabox]

ok, so how do these other devices fit in with an htpc dvr box ive built and my windows home server where im storing movies - and what interface to use with the harmony remotes?

Well, here's my set up:

AMD X4 Server/HTPC (used as a local HTPC in my bedroom) ---> Windows 7 Network Neighbor connection / Windows XP Share drive ---> Play!on

Yes, a upnp server (tversity/ps3 media server) isn't required. The asus works fine with my harmony - I just added it like any old device. The WD Live seems to be a better unit, but just check on harmony's site to make sure it's supported