[wbdillworth]

No, just convert to .mp4 with HandBrake. The default iPad setting works fine for the Surface.

I too use Handbrake. Can you tell me how to get the english subtitles hard-coded onto the movie? I have high-pitched hearing loss and I like to have the subs on cause I will always miss some words.

[cherry198810]

On my Surface RT, MOV, WMV, AVI, M4V, MP4 and MTS are all playable, but frustratingly, the other files like MKV, VOB, MPG, TiVo, FLV, etc are not compatible with my Surface RT. I found the way how to add video files to Microsoft Surface RT. It's helpful indeed. Now, I can play any video on my Surface RT with the built-in video player.

[TUFKAPL]

Regarding MKV: I'm using mobile.HD ( mobile.HD Media Player-App für Windows in Windows Store ), which until now played every MKV file I tried without any conversion. I watched a 1280p movie at full resolution (surface connected to external monitor) and it worked smoothly. It even supports embedded subtitles.

[alterbridge86]

Another endorsement for mobile.HD - it is a phenomenal player. The developer is responsive as well and updates fairly frequently to fix bugs and add features. So far it has played everything I've thrown at it, and that includes stupidly massive MKV's with DTS-HD MA audio (I remuxed a lot of my blurays for HTPC purposes :) ). Though I don't use this feature often, it does support subtitles as well.

The best part compared to an iOS device is that there is no iTunes for managing the content. You simply drag and drop some files, onto your microsd or internal storage, and bam, your off to the races.

[jhoff80]

Yeah, mobile.HD is pretty good, though it does have its limitations (no .FLAC audio and no hi10p video- those are going to be really niche uses though).

Obviously that came out in the months since this post was originally made. ;)

[jaimeastin]

Yeah, syncing through iTunes for me is why I don't want to get iPad 4 next. I have iPad 1 and my computer crashed last week and I had to reinstall Windows and everything including iTunes. I found out that I cannot add more stuff to my iPad via new install of iTune because library info is now different so it wants to wipe everything on my iPad before new stuff can be synced with new install of iTune.

It is good to know that there is at least 3rd party app to play commonly used video format.

I personally hate iTunes... Try copy trans manager. I have a mac and still won't use iTunes to sync my nano or my then iPad...

[Narr]

It's frustrating that Windows Media Center files don't play, converting everything I need is painful.

[Ridlah]

PowerDVD mobile for ultra is an app that plays MPEG and MKV. I love the surface and its office capabilities but to be honest some of the apps haven't been built to support arm processors, I see better performance on a windows 8 computer/laptop/tablet than on a windows rt table. That doesn't mean the surface is slow its faster than the iPad 4 but the apps in the iPad marketplace have been made to run on the iPad for example fruit ninja and jetpack joyride run smooth on my brothers iPad Mini while the two apps lag in some areas. The surface rt has a tegra quad core while the ipad has an A5 dual core