[RedLine78]

I am trying to decide if I want to buy Surface RT or iPad 4. So far I am leaning toward Surface RT but from what I can gather from searching on the web from Surface RT reviews, I heard it can only play .WMV and .MKV file formats only? Can someone with Surface RT verify this? Most of my video files are in .MP4 and .AVI format so I would hate to convert them to .WMV.

[ndschris]

There's a great app on the Windows Store called PressPlay:Video, it's opened just about every video I've thrown at it. If you have Windows 8 on your PC maybe check that out before deciding between iPad or Surface.

One thing I will say though as an iPad owner (3rd gen), they're a ***** for video, you'll need to convert all your videos to an Apple-friendly format and sync through iTunes, it's far from convenient.

[power5]

There's a great app on the Windows Store called PressPlay:Video, it's opened just about every video I've thrown at it. If you have Windows 8 on your PC maybe check that out before deciding between iPad or Surface.

One thing I will say though as an iPad owner (3rd gen), they're a ***** for video, you'll need to convert all your videos to an Apple-friendly format and sync through iTunes, it's far from convenient.

There are 3rd party apps for iPad that will play more than mp4 files. I hope there are 3rd party apps or driver updates for the RT to play more than just wmv and mkv format. Can't believe it wont play .avi out of the box. Not many videos are encoded in avi of course.

[Gken]

I am trying to decide if I want to buy Surface RT or iPad 4. So far I am leaning toward Surface RT but from what I can gather from searching on the web from Surface RT reviews, I heard it can only play .WMV and .MKV file formats only? Can someone with Surface RT verify this? Most of my video files are in .MP4 and .AVI format so I would hate to convert them to .WMV.

I also believe, not super sure, but VLC will be coming out with an app for RT. Don't qoute me on that though.

[red grenadine]

Can't play MKVs out the box. Really disappointing as my HTPC has everything encoded as MKV

Pretty sure it can play MP4s

[RedLine78]

There's a great app on the Windows Store called PressPlay:Video, it's opened just about every video I've thrown at it. If you have Windows 8 on your PC maybe check that out before deciding between iPad or Surface.

One thing I will say though as an iPad owner (3rd gen), they're a ***** for video, you'll need to convert all your videos to an Apple-friendly format and sync through iTunes, it's far from convenient.

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.

[neova333]

There are 3rd party apps for iPad that will play more than mp4 files. I hope there are 3rd party apps or driver updates for the RT to play more than just wmv and mkv format. Can't believe it wont play .avi out of the box. Not many videos are encoded in avi of course.

It will play avi, mp4, and wmv out of the box.

edit: possibly other formats as well, but I haven't tried them all yet.

edit 2: A list of what the tegra 3 on windows supports: http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/tegra-3-uk.html

[rebornempowered]

Hopefully an RT Plex app is on the way shortly. That would be the best solution for most of my needs.

[ylksa]

So to summarize Surface can play some video formats out of the box, and if you do download PressPlay:Video from the Marketplace then you can play more.

Now the question if I play an MKV file on PressPlay:Video will it play it smoothly? I remember iPad 1 & 2 played MKV files with a 3rd party app but they kept stuttering, it was annoying, iPad 3 though played it smoothly. So I really hope Surface plays MKV files without any stuttering. Someone try it out and let us know.

[Digital Moe]

iPad 2 can now play MKVs very smoothly since Apple allowed devs access to the GPU and hardware acceleration. I really hope we get something similar on Surface.

[power5]

It will play avi, mp4, and wmv out of the box.

edit: possibly other formats as well, but I haven't tried them all yet.

edit 2: A list of what the tegra 3 on windows supports: Tegra 3 Processors

I just mistakenly stated something I read.

tegra 3 on w8:
H.264 (HP @ 40 Mbps)
VC-1
MPEG-2
MPEG-4
DivX 4/5
XviD HT
H.263
VP8
WMV
Real Video
VP6

I can only pick out MP4 and WMV from that list. Which decoding is avi?

[jhoff80]

Building a rich and extensible media platform - Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs



And PressPlay only plays the same formats that Windows does.

[sleepyking]

what videos are you guys trying to play by the way? I know it plays mp4 because I tried yesterday and it works.
I also tried wmv and avi, and those did not work.

also someone above mentioned not wanting to sync through iTunes. you can drag and drop if you set to manual.
the only gripe I have actually is that the movies (digital copies) I have in iTunes, I cannot get them on my Surface.

[jssqmaty]

Building a rich and extensible media platform - Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

And PressPlay only plays the same formats that Windows does.

Windows surface surpports WMV, AVI, MP4. iPad plays native MP4, M4V, MOV.

Thank you for sharing.

[charlas]

Just tried an avi I have on my plex server (just from the network share though using explorer) it fired up Xbox video, and then said unsupported file format (xvid 1280x528 25fps 5mb/s with ac3 384kbps audio)

But the next one I tried which was also xvid/ac3 but at lower spec (720x304 2mbps) works fine, so its not just a codec thing.

Bluray rips in MP4 work just fine though, donit might just be the xvid that's not 100% compatible I tried.

Pretty much everything besides that I've tried though seems to play, although I use plex web and hacked the ie flash trust to allow it, plex is just easier all ways round, and the web app seems OK till we get a propped app.

In Xbox player



In plex

[paulschapman]

I am trying to decide if I want to buy Surface RT or iPad 4. So far I am leaning toward Surface RT but from what I can gather from searching on the web from Surface RT reviews, I heard it can only play .WMV and .MKV file formats only? Can someone with Surface RT verify this? Most of my video files are in .MP4 and .AVI format so I would hate to convert them to .WMV.

Happily played my downloads of trailers from iTunes out of the box. I do want to play some of my DVDs while on the move but the one DVD I ripped would not play - even though it was a WMV.

[Phyllis11]

The reason you cannot get MKV videos working on Microsoft Surface is simple: the default and downloaded player on the Microsoft Surface Tablet cannot find a suitable decoder for the codec in the MKV file.

So to solve these problems, a great method is to convert MKV to Surface RT compatible video formats along with some help from third-party tools.

To achieve your goal smoothly, here i will take the all-in-one Video Converter as an example to help you encode MKV to MP4 for viewing on Surface talbet. The equivalent Mac version is the Microsoft Surface Video Converter Mac, which can convert MKV to Surface RT on Mac OS X (Include Lion and Mountain Lion).

[Tikhonov Alexander]

but in general there is support for playing mkv files on surface (as well as other tablets on windows rt) ?

Sorry for bad English -:)

[neova333]

but in general there is support for playing mkv files on surface (as well as other tablets on windows rt) ?

Sorry for bad English -:)

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

[tomm1ed]

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

Well, that just plain sucks. I already sold my iPad thinking I could consume the MKV's on my NAS without issue but it seems that MS has taken the Apple road... 'Just convert it' doesn't quiet cut it when streaming movies from a SMB share (something I assume is possible?)

[bartekxyz]

Both mp4 and mkv file formats are containers which contains media streams(subtitles, audio, video, chapters), not codecs. If you have some mkv files just demux them and remux again as mp4. Converting instead of remuxing mkv to mp4 is waste of time and also quality degradation.

[jhoff80]

Both mp4 and mkv file formats are containers which contains media streams(subtitles, audio, video, chapters), not codecs. If you have some mkv files just demux them and remux again as mp4. Converting instead of remuxing mkv to mp4 is waste of time and also quality degradation.

Well, that depends on the type of audio in the file. If you use DTS, you'll need to have the audio reencoded. Use something like MKV2VOB though, and it'll do that on the fly (if necessary), giving you an .mpg file that the Surface can play in the end.

I still want to see a video player for Windows RT that can handle MKV (including DTS audio, subtitle support, etc.) but this will do for now.

[tomm1ed]

Both mp4 and mkv file formats are containers which contains media streams(subtitles, audio, video, chapters), not codecs. If you have some mkv files just demux them and remux again as mp4. Converting instead of remuxing mkv to mp4 is waste of time and also quality degradation.

You are missing the point. I know MKV is 'just a container' and that I can remux the various media streams (although AFAIK I can't remux VobSubs / srts into MP4), but that's just a hassle! This is exaclty why I was so miffed with Apple when I bought my iPad2, but at least with Apple I could buy a player capable of handling MKV...
The _only_ thing missing is a MKV filter because the Tegra3 obviously can handle 99% of the streams contained in said container.

[Tikhonov Alexander]

Thanks :)

[jssqmaty]

After testing, the RT tablet supports AVI video in DIVX, XVID, MPEG code well, but if AVI in MSMPEG codec, it doesn't. I tried to use the Xbox video player, PressPlay Video and mobile.HD Video Player to play MSMPEG AVI, but I failed.