MKV vs AVI

I have read that MKV is the best video format to use for Blu-Ray quality video.  I have had NO problems with MKV files.  However, I am ripping some old DVDs (1930s and 1940s) that aren’t available in Blu-Ray, but only the regular DVD format (720x480).

I did some experimenting and ripped a 2-hour DVD to MKV using MakeMKV and then ripped it to AVI using Xilisoft DVD Ripper.  The MKV is 6.9 GB, while the AVI is 1.8 GB.

My question is, the AVI program is being ripped at full quality.  Is there any benefit to using MKV in a situation like this (ripping regular DVDs)?  If there’s no difference in quality (I can’t tell just by looking at the two), would AVI be just as good since I would be able to pack more video on the primary hard drive I use for WD?

By the way, I LOVE the WD TV Live Streaming device.  I’ve tried the new ROKU 3, but the WD plays everything I throw at it with no buffering or quality loss.

Never mind.  I did some closer inspection of the video in the two formats and the MKV definitely is sharper.  The AVI program must be compressing the file.  I’m sticking with MKV.

whtreslr wrote:

I did some experimenting and ripped a 2-hour DVD to MKV using MakeMKV and then ripped it to AVI using Xilisoft DVD Ripper.  The MKV is 6.9 GB, while the AVI is 1.8 GB.

 

My question is, the AVI program is being ripped at full quality.  Is there any benefit to using MKV in a situation like this (ripping regular DVDs)?  If there’s no difference in quality (I can’t tell just by looking at the two), would AVI be just as good since I would be able to pack more video on the primary hard drive I use for WD?

 

MKV (Matroska) and AVI are simply multimedia container file formats.  Either one can hold video/audio tracks of different types and different qualities.  MKV is newer and addresses some issues that AVI has, so is generally going to be a better choice.

The question you need to ask is what your ripping programs are giving you in the containers they produce.  DVDs generally have MPEG-2 video format, but even then, a program could transcode either to MPEG-2 or some other format with lower quality (lower bitrate).  You need to download a program like mediainfo and use it to investigate the tracks in the containers files that your different rippers are producing.  Look at their formats and bitrates.  DVDs are already pretty poor quality on large-screen HDTVs, so I sure wouldn’t want to be ripping to something even worse in video quality!

At 6.9GB the MKV file must not be compressing the video at all! That sounds about the size for a long movie on DVD. I would have expected around the same size as the AVI for an DVD rip to MKV.

BTW, if you use a program like DVD Shrink in combination with AnyDVD(free for a month) you could rip only the movie from the DVD into an ISO file which the WDTV box can play. Who needs menu/extras anyway?

It’s arguably the quickest way to rip a DVD(as fast as your DVDRW is - usually 5-10 min) but its only for those with a lot of room to spare.

If you need a how to for DVD Shrink let me know.

There’s plenty of guides at dvdshrink.info.

   By the way, I LOVE the WD TV Live Streaming device.  I’ve tried the new ROKU 3, but the WD plays everything I throw at it with no buffering or quality loss.

This comment is a comparison of Apples and Oranges, and therefore a totally misinformed and misleading comment.   These are two very different kinds of media players.  They are both very nice gadgets, and I have a couple of each –  Rokus for streaming from hundreds internet sources, and WDTVs for playing my own media content.

mike27oct wrote:

   By the way, I LOVE the WD TV Live Streaming device.  I’ve tried the new ROKU 3, but the WD plays everything I throw at it with no buffering or quality loss.

 

This comment is a comparison of Apples and Oranges, and therefore a totally misinformed and misleading comment.   These are two very different kinds of media players.  They are both very nice gadgets, and I have a couple of each –  Rokus for streaming from hundreds internet sources, and WDTVs for playing my own media content.

Boy talk about being misinformed.

I stopped buying / recommending the WD after the Roku 3 came out.  If you have a decent PC and crank up Plex in settings, it can stream just as well as the WD, great picture quality and the Roku is 1080.  How it does it technically is totally different, but who cares?  It works great and lol it knows who to network!

The Roku 3 crushes the WD in all other categories, it is so much better.

About the only reason I can think of going with the WD is if the PC hosting media is too slow for Plex, so  if for some reason you are determined to host media on an old, slow PC, WD would be the way to go to avoid buffering on the Roku 3.    I am sure there are some other odd cases where you’d want a WD over the Roku 3, but the typical user will not have any issues streaming via Plex to a Roku 3.

@dcb917

To each his own.  I’d prefer not to need to use a PC just so I can use Plex for a Roku, when a WDTV can have drives attached, and no streaming needs to takes place, either.  I consider using Plex a “kludge” compared to using a WDTV.

Well heck if you have drives attached you don’t need a PC then.  Attach the drive to the Roku 3 then.

The only reason my WDTVs are not on EBAY right now is I want to see how well Plex Chromecast works once out of preview.  It is just a matter of time before that happens and the WDTVs will be swapped out for more Rokus or Chromecast. 

We can debate which is a more elegant technology all day, but I could care less. The Roku 3 is clearly a superior product and just works.  It also supports N 5ghz.

dcb917 wrote:

The Roku 3 is clearly a superior product and just works. 

Why are you still using the WD?

  Well heck if you have drives attached you don’t need a PC then.  Attach the drive to the Roku 3 then.

Uh, then how does a Roku play MKV, ISO, etc. files?  Besides, a Roku doesn’t even have a decent menu structure, and it can’t play playlists, etc.  like a WD.  Be serious; a Roku is a media player “wannabe”, which is not a bad thing, it’s just the way things are; just like a WDTV is a “wannabe” media streamer unlike a Roku. which has jillions of channels to stream.

I don’t need a Roku to support 5GHz – it, and the WDTV, are wired to my gigabit system.  In my environment, wireless is for mobile devices only.

I also have a Chromecast, (I didn’t buy the piece of junk; it was a useless gift) and the Avia app for the device still cannot stream from a Kindle to the Chromecrap even after many app “updates”.  In addition, the Avia app cannot even stream to the WDTV, and this has nothing to do with a Chromecast working or not working!  Fortunately, I don’t need it to, because I have other apps that WORK!

And, “I could care less”  if your WDTV is on eBay, in the garbage, or being put to good use in your system.

No more comments from me about any of this – it’s not at all significant to this thread.

TonyPh12345 wrote:


dcb917 wrote:

The Roku 3 is clearly a superior product and just works. 


Why are you still using the WD?

The only reason my WDTVs are not on EBAY right now is I want to see how well Plex Chromecast works once out of preview.

mike27oct wrote:

  Well heck if you have drives attached you don’t need a PC then.  Attach the drive to the Roku 3 then.

 

Uh, then how does a Roku play MKV, ISO, etc. files? 


 

 

Plays MKV fine.  How? Google is your friend.  Looks like it will play ISOs also, but I dropped that format a few years ago and converted what I had to mkv so I have not personally tested it.> The only reason I responded was you had chastised a prior poster after he had commented on the Roku 3…"therefore a totally misinformed and misleading comment. ".  I don’t agree, I think you are dead wrong and misinformed.

It’s OK to let someone know he is misinformed; even you can tell me that, and I can tell you same!

Now that we all know we are misinformed, we can get on with other things.  Bye!

dcb917 wrote:

The only reason my WDTVs are not on EBAY right now is I want to see how well Plex Chromecast works once out of preview.

Maybe I’m dense, but what does the Chromecast do with the WDTV?

Yer not dense, nor “misinformed”  Tony, but the OP is talking about using the Plex app to sent media to a Chromecast (that goes into aTV’s HDMI socket (to waste a perfectly good port better used for something else) and displaying on the TV.  (A Chromecast has appeal because it is cheaper than a Roku or WDTV, and for someone who has these, the Chromecast is redundant.  The only unique use I can come up with for it would be when traveling so as to hook up to a hotel TV to watch Netflix and YouTube , etc).

I was mentioning it, because he brought it up, and because the Android app for a tablet (Avia) is supposed to stream media from the home network (e.g. a WDTV’s drives, PC etc.) to the Chromecast for display on TV.  Problem with Avia is it seems to work with generic forms of Android tablets, but it does not work with Kindle Fire HD.  An Avia support guy has been blowing smoke at me for a month or two – in the last message he was blaming Google’s platform for the problem!

dcb917 wrote:

The Roku 3 is clearly a superior product.

While it might be superior to YOUR needs, it’s completely useless to anyone that:

 – Wants DVD navigation

 – Wants to stream from Samba or NFS shares

 – Wants to navigate independently of a DLNA server’s orginization schema

 – Wants to quickly SEARCH your network-based media

 – Wants to watch VC-1 or MPEG2 video (According to Roku’s published specs) or use AVI, M2TS, TS or several other video containers / file formats

 – Wants more audio decode support than MP3 / AAC.   (According to Roku’s published specs).

 – Wants metadata support / scraping without outboard and proprietary server requirements

 – Needs composite video output or want to multiplex audio to analog outputs and digital outputs

I’m not bashing Roku – I have a Roku 3 and use it pretty much only when I want to watch NetFlix or a few other channels.  My WDTVs continue to be my “Go To” players for every other case.

dcb917 wrote:

Plays MKV fine.  How? Google is your friend.

Uh, well I googled this as you suggested.  The main thing I found was lots of complaints about it playing files but without sound, not playing many MKv’s, crashing with others, having no way to switch among audio tracks, and on and on.  Brilliant!  To say that the Roku “plays MKV fine” is just a load of rubbish, guy.  Yes, it is possible to produce MKV files that Roku’s are capable of playing, but that is hardly what most people mean when they say that a media player can “handle MKV files.”  If it cannot play MKV’s containing all the legal DVD and Bluray A/V track formats then it is a useless **bleep** to me.  Clearly superior to the SMPs?  Hah.  Oh, but wait, all I need is a computer running Plex?  So a Roku plus a PC (!) gives me the media player capabilities of the SMP??  What a bargain.  Why do I need the Roku then though???

TonyPh12345 wrote:


dcb917 wrote:

The Roku 3 is clearly a superior product.


While it might be superior to YOUR needs, it’s completely useless to anyone that:

 – Wants DVD navigation

 – Wants to stream from Samba or NFS shares

 – Wants to navigate independently of a DLNA server’s orginization schema

 – Wants to quickly SEARCH your network-based media

 – Wants to watch VC-1 or MPEG2 video (According to Roku’s published specs) or use AVI, M2TS, TS or several other video containers / file formats

 – Wants more audio decode support than MP3 / AAC.   (According to Roku’s published specs).

 – Wants metadata support / scraping without outboard and proprietary server requirements

 – Needs composite video output or want to multiplex audio to analog outputs and digital outputs

 

I’m not bashing Roku – I have a Roku 3 and use it pretty much only when I want to watch NetFlix or a few other channels.  My WDTVs continue to be my “Go To” players for every other case.

Video Support

  • MP4 (H.264)
  • MKV (H.264

Audio Support

  • MP3
  • AAC
  • Dolby Digital (MP4, MOV and MKV pass through only)
  • DTS (MKV pass through only)

  http://www.roku.com/products/compare#  (at the bottom)

“Wants to stream from Samba or NFS shares”  that is wrong,  I have been streaming from NFS shares via Plex since day 1.  If I couldn’t that would be a show stopper.

The Roku 3 streams at 1080 over 5ghz N from my shares with the above audio/video support.  I play MKV, MP4, AVI, and WMVs.  I suspect I can play a lot more as it isn’t so much what Roku supports as it is what Plex will convert.  Anyway, that’s all I need.  Plus I get:

A responsive , much better designed user interface.  The Roku 3 via Plex supplies cover art automatically, picking what you want to watch is simple.  Nice big pictures intstead of a text based folder system.  No custom theme development /  implementation needed.  The delivered WD user interface is primitive in comparison.  I hate it.  It is embarrassing.

Networking is plug and play.  I installed the Roku and Plex in about 15 minutes.  I changed one setting to use more cpu for rendering after noticing that some old AVIs didn’t look as good as they did on the WD.  That’s it.  I think we are both very aware of the hundreds of posts on this forum about networking issues with the WD product.  No regstry changes needed or fear that adding a new device on my network will resurrect a WD endless spinning circle. The Roku 3 just works.

The Netflix app is better designed and more user friendly.  Not a huge deal, except my kids watch a lot of Netflix.

Youtube works.  I even played 4k videos over wifi without any bufferring.

ESPN3 and ESPNU apps. 

Hundred of other apps, I have barely scratched the surface there.

So here is thing.  I put up with WD’s numerous shortcomings because it could play my shares.  Now I have the best of both worlds.  The Roku plays the files off my server via Plex with the same quality as the WD and I get all that other stuff.  For what I need it is a no brainer decision.

A lot of the stuff you listed is antiquated and/or I don’t use. 

Like DVD chapters,  I could care less, I converted all my DVDs to MKV a few years ago. 

Quickly search?  The WD doesn’t do anything quickly and I have my shares organized where I don’t need to “google” them to find something.

“Wants to navigate independently of a DLNA server’s orginization schema”…I am not even sure what that means.  Under Roku3/Plex you create  folders organized anyway you want and point Plex at them.

In terms of output, HDMI works for me.  We are all HD, no need for composite.  I have a decent home theater, maybe if I had $10k in audio equipment the WD would have something I want.  In my setup I can’t tell the difference between the WD and Roku when it comes to HD video or the audio.    I actually played the same bluray rip on each box side by side when I first got the Roku.  No one in the family could tell the difference.

To clear up the Chromecast comment.    I would have replaced my two WDs with Roku 3s months ago were it not for the Chromecast.  Plex has a Chromecast version in preview right now.  Once it goes mainstream I will check it out and replace the WDs with Rokus or Chromecasts.  I am pretty sure I’ll go with Roku, but since it is Google I am going to wait and see.

I think it is appropriate now to display the “ultimate” media player I described a few months back when I said in a thread, to just “duct tape” my two favorite players together, and voila!   Forum member Pearl immediately went into his workshop and produced a prototype and posted a photo of the results in the thread. 

I love this little thing and have made two for myself using my own players.  Here it is:

ultimate media player.jpg