MKV, or Matroska as it’s officially known, is easily one of the most favored container formats available for Media Center enthusiasts. But what makes this format so special? Why not just use the old tried and true MP4 or AVI formats? Well there are plenty of small features that make up the Matroska specification that make it special to so many of us. Let go over a few of them now.

#1 – It’s Open Source

Quite frankly being open source is one of the best steps a media format can take towards acceptance. This means that anyone who wishes can add the format to their product without paying outrageous licensing fees. The end result is that the format is widely useable in most media player software and the tools for creating MKVs are extremely well polished to boot.

#2 – Awesome Free Tools

Number two goes hand in hand with number one. The free source community has some of the best programmers there are. It attracts these people as a sense of community and philanthropic duty. They also aren’t afraid to ask for help from the community and they often get it. That’s just the nature of open-source. The end result is some of the most usable, highly developed tools for utilizing a format ever created.

#3 – What It Can Hold

Matroska is a container format, which means that it only holds the content. What makes MKV special as a container is what it can hold. Matroska has the flexibility to contain almost any audio/video format, including most lossless types, making it perfect for high definition content. What sets it even farther above other formats such as MP4 though is it’s ability to also pack in multiple subtitle languages, track information, multiple audio streams and more. Everything in one file! 

Reason to not use Matroska

Even with all these great reasons for using the MKV format there are still a few caveats which need to be considered. For Media Center users these include extender compatibility. Media Center Extenders tend to not play very nicely with MKV files depending on the combination of codecs and the version of Media Center used. Reports of support for the format coming and going with each patch are common.

Also, Microsoft seems to be only a fair-weather fan of the format. Support for MKV in Windows 7 is sketchy and requires some effort to accomplish. The Windows Media Foundation’s support of the format seems to be as picky as general extender support. Though there are some options in the works from the likes of DivxLabs there’s still no comprehensive publicly available solution for Windows Media Foundation.

This means that out of the box Media Center enthusiasts need to make some adjustments to the way the system handles media playback. Far from a fault of the format this points more to a failing on Microsoft’s part in implementing it’s new “fail safe” media handler.

Conclusion

Though Microsoft’s support of the format is borderline neglectful, Matroska’s ability to utilize so many features is inescapable. The portability of the media is only bound to increase with time as the open-source format lends itself to inclusion in any future media players and devices. For those creating MKV files the tools available are some of the best, not to mention free.

If you’re just starting to convert your collection for digital storage MKV is the clear winner. Don’t hesitate to convert all your movies to MKV and keep an eye on Hack7MC, we’ll help you set up your Media Center to utilize this superior format.