What format for a new viedo library?

[daschneider]

I'm planning to soon start transferring our video library from various sources onto a home network server (probably Windows Home Server). I'd like to settle on a common file format and encoding for all our videos. From the reading I've done there doesn't seem to be an obvious choice. I'd appreciate to hear people's recommendation of a file format and encoding for a new library of HD 1080p videos. What would you use?

Thanks in advance.

 

[sivart]

I would use MKV for HD videos and ISO for DVD images. However with the availability of codec packs, you shouldn't have much of an issue if you have 12 different formats.

I would say most of my videos are:

TV recordings - DVR-MS (all HTPC's are Windows Media Center)
DVD's - ISO
Low Quality video - AVI
Movie Trailers (HD) - MOV

 

[Bryf50]

If you plan on encoding everything again i would just stick with h264 probably in the mkv container. Even for low res video theres no reason to use an inferior codec as your still going to be getting better quality per mb.