MKV vs MPEG-4
First off, both are just containers for various streams (audio, video, etc.)
MKV allows you to put in just about what-ever you want in it. This in itself is a blessing and a curse. It allows someone to put in high quality stuff that takes up a lot of space for the audio/videophile types, or you can put in a highly compressed stuff that doesn’t take up much space, to anything in between, which leads to what some have called DLL/CODEC h3ll.
Because of the all choices you have with MKV container you run into the problem of having to install CODEC’s of various types of to be able to view/listen to what’s in a MKV file. Which can be a royal PITA. You have to go searching the net for that one CODEC or you can download a CODEC pak that has just about every CODEC out there for you. But that’s a lot of space being used up on your device (tiny mobile to your PC), and a bit of configuring. Because sometimes it’s just not a CODEC DLL you get, but you get a program that allows you to configure your CODEC for “optimal output”. On top of that, some of the CODEC pak’s out there, sometimes include nefarious software (aka viruses, worms, Trojans, rootkits, etc.) which sucks, period.
OK, now let’s look at MPEG-4 container; it technically only gets the following:
Video: MPEG-4 Part 10 (H.264) and MPEG-4 Part 2
Audio: Advanced Audio Coding (AAC)
Subtitles: MPEG-4 Timed Text (also known as 3GPP Timed Text)
OK, there are some other data streams allowed, but if you have H.264 video, and AAC audio in it you’re good. Wow, not a very much in choices, which is its blessing, and curse. The beauty of this is that you can put the CODEC on a chip, and let it do all the work instead of the CPU. Also, it is a STANDARD, which is accepted by just about every device manufacturer out there.
So let’s stand back for a second and look at this from Microsoft’s (or a hardware manufacturer) point of view:
We have a choice, of supporting MKV or MPEG-4.
- We need to keep things simple.
- Use as little of battery power as possible.
- Keep it cheap (ok there are some licensing required).
- Use something that’s readily acceptable across various devices and platforms.
Hmmmm…. What to do, what to do… (Do you see where it’s going?) Let’s support MPEG-4 ( .mp4, .m4a, .m4p, .m4b, .m4r and .m4v)!!!!
Supported media codecs for Windows Phone
And for those of you who do download “questionable” content, I hate to say it but even that group has also gone through this thought process, and they came up with same conclusion (but they were deciding over XVID/AVI at the time)
BitTorrent Pirates Go Nuts After TV Release Groups Dump Xvid | TorrentFreak
So the conclusion is: MPEG-4 has won out. If you look around at all the
current devices on the market, DVD players, Smart TV’s, AV units, computers, mobile devices (phones, PMP), etc. the odds are they will support MPEG-4 over MKV. So sit back find a nice converter program and let it convert your content for you.
If you are inclined to download “questionable” content, try to find stuff that is MP4/M4V that contains the following: Video encoded with x.264, has 2 audio tracts. One audio tract in AAC Stereo, the other in AAC 5.1 Surround (if you have Surround sound at home, you understand the importance of this) and a SRT file (subtitle) in your preferred language (it's nice to have so if you can't quite hear the dialog you can turn on the subtitle to read what's going on).