Downloading Mkv Files

[netibiza]

I use utorrent for downloading some programmes and lately they mostly seem to be in MKV format which is ridiculous, then I have to convert them before I can watch them. Is my utorrent doing this on purpose, is there anyway I change change it before it doenloads in my settings or something, has onloy happened in the past month or so, before then it was AVI.

[snags]

Why ridiculous? MKV is just another file format. It's your video player that needs looking at, what player do use use?

[netibiza]

Sony VAIO windows 8.1

[netibiza]

And Mkv will not play on new TV or new DVD machine with USB

[Buenchico]

As Snags says, use a decent media player
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.en_GB.html
or
http://player.gomlab.com/eng/download/

Windows Media Player is pathetic!

[Buenchico]

AVI is a format which is either uncompressed or uses minimal compression (but then risks being unreadable if the recipient's media player can't access the relevant codecs). Matroska's MKV format allows compression (for smaller file sizes) and doesn't lead to codec problems. So it's understandable as to why people should use it. (However it's still too new for many non-computer devices to be able to access it).

Anyway, if you're using uTorrent, you're almost certainly downloading illegally, so you can't really complain about the way that other law-breakers decide to make the files available to you.

[netibiza]

Well I'm downloading Spanish TV progs in Spain cos they don't as yet have I players . I use vlc but these files will not play on vlc.

[ll_billym]

MKV is a very well established video container, it's not actually an encoding 'format' as such, it's just a container for various other formats of video and audio, H.264 video and MP3 audio for instance.

My LG TV, Sony Blu-ray and VLC play most MKV files fine from USB, If I run into problems it's usually because of the audio decoder (for instance my TV doesn't have a decoder for Dolby DTS).

Anyway, if you are playing them on a laptop then it's easy to get the right decoder. Install this: http://www.codecguide.com/download_kl.htm

[Old_Geezer]

utorrent is, as its name implies, merely a downloader of torrents. It has no effect on what the torrent is. It will be your friend who has created a torrent and suggested you may download it who will have defined what the downloaded file is and what format it is in.

For sure if they have used a format your present viewer can not show then you either need a better viewer, or to update the drivers for the viewer you have, or to fedback to your friend that they may have a corrupted file. Don't forget to virus scan it when you get it. Your friend might be unaware of any 'nasties' they inadvertently added to the download.