Posted in: Desktop software, Windows

Windows 8′s Xbox Video app now natively supports MKV files

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Blu-ray won the optical format wars while MKV won on the digital side. That’s why there was plenty of cheers (by which we mean grunts “Finally!”) when it was revealed that Windows 10 will support MKV files natively. It turns out we don’t have to wait so long – Windows 8.1 now supports them too.

The pre-installed Xbox Video app has been updated and it can now play “most MKV files,” provided they don’t use an unsupported codec.

For those who don’t make a distinction, MKV is a container format which packs together video, audio, subtitles and other tidbits, while codecs are what actually play the audio and video streams. So even if Xbox Video can open MKV files, if they contain media with an unsupported codec the file still won’t play.

Anyway, the app has been updated for all supported platforms – 32-bit and 64-bit computers (Windows 8.1) plus ARM-based devices (Windows RT).

Windows 10 is also supposed to bring native FLAC support (an open-source lossless audio codec), but there’s nothing about Windows 8 support yet.

Source | Via

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