What container formats will survive?

[JoaCHIP]

Currently i see a lot of options in terms of container formats. Besides the obviously proprietary wmv and quicktime, the most important ones seem to be:

AVI
MKV
OGM
MP4

But which ones seem to be winning lately? If i were making a DVD player and already had .avi support, which container format would be the next logic thing to implement?

[bond]

from those of your list .avi is already the most widely supported one

apart from that .mp4 is the second most supported

than comes .ogm with very few support and mkv with afaik none

[JoaCHIP]

Hmm interesting. I just got an idea and took a short peak at thepiratebay.org searching for different extensions:

avi: 30 pages of hits
mp4: 11 pages of hits
mkv: 5 pages of hits
ogm: 2 pages of hits

So mkv actually seems more wide-spread than ogm in there. But ofcourse that's just one website. ;) But it definately confirmes mp4 being the second most used container format.

Hardware wise i can't help thinking of the obvious problems this poses to people playing back these files on a hardware device. According to your splendid mp4 FAQ, the mp4 container doesn't carry AC3 or DTS sound, thus making it impossible to use a surround reciever the normal way. Ofcourse AAC can do surround, but if you output AAC over SPDIF i hardly think any surround recievers will handle it?!?

I wonder what will happen here in the future ... :confused:

[bond]

the future and past is dvd and svcd, and hddvd/bluray

[SeeMoreDigital]

I have to say I don't know of any dedicated "stand-alone" player that supports the MKV container. I do know of quite a few that support the OGM container (sporting MediaTek chip-sets)!

But as Bond mentioned, AVI still comes out top, followed by the MP4 container - my personal favourite :)


EDIT: I generate MP4 encodes with either 6Ch AAC-LC and HE audio and pass the audio to my DSS amp via analogue.

[ac-chan123]

on Harware MPEG's TS and PS format is the most widely supported format.

For Computers are much other formats then the 4 you named(e.g. flv, nut, pva, nsv) that are more or less public or free specified.

I think PS and TS will the most supported Multimedia Format for a long time, becuase ATSC, DVB, DVD, HDDVD, BlueRay and much other Multimedia systems based on them.

[SeeMoreDigital]

on Harware MPEG's TS and PS format is the most widely supported format.Really.... Can you quote some players please?

[GodofaGap]

Well all hardware DVD players have to parse VOB, which is almost the completely the same as MPEG-PS so the likelyness that most players will support MPEG-PS is rather large.

[ac-chan123]

MPEG PS and TS are supported by every DVD Player, ATSC digatial TV and DVB settopbox.
VOB is a PS with some extras. SVCD uses PS, DVB and ATSC digatl is TS based transmission.

[SeeMoreDigital]

MPEG PS and TS are supported by every DVD Player....As I just happen to have some std-def MPEG-2 within .TS and .PS files, I will see if my Pioneer DV-575A can play them... and report back!

[setarip_old]

MPEG PS and TS are supported by every DVD Player....I'd suggest to you that this "universal" statement would not always be the case, depending on the age of the standalone DVD player...

[Dark Eiri]

Only MP4 will survive in the end...

[BigDid]

Only MP4 will survive in the end...
:)
Maybe, but for now AVI is not dead and MP4 is yet to full-grow.
Reading these tests, AVI is widely spread and MP4 is emerging: http://www.divxtest.com/form/divxtest2_list.php?lang=eng
The most compatible is SeeMoreDigital (past?) favorite: Zensonic Z500

But this comparison tests only 221 players :)
You can download the test-cd and try it yourself here: http://www.divxtest.com/What-is-DivxTest-Where-can-I-find.html

Did

[Hyper Shinchan]

Only MP4 will survive in the end...
Without Ac3 support it's hard that it will happen. A lot of people is "anal" about keeping the original audio.