AfterDawn: News

JVC's XV-PB1 Blu-ray player supports MKV?

According to the manual for JVC's first Blu-ray player to hit the United States, the XV-PB1 supports the Matroska (MKV) multimedia container. It's manual states it supports MPEG-4/AVC content up to 1080p (from file on USB, or streamed), making the MKV container support even better. MKV is a very flexible multimedia container format that is used widely for High-definition content.


This might push the player slightly up the list of Blu-ray players currently available, even though it has been largely ignored since its unveiling at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) earlier this year. It supports BD-Live and network streaming from PCs, and reportedly has a very fast booting time.

The player is priced at $299.

Written by: James Delahunty @ 28 Apr 2009 21:03

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• 5 comments

• xnonsuchx

  More support for MKV is a mixed bag...more format support on devices makes them more useful, but it also gives validation to MKV snobs who keep using the usually unnecessary format because it makes them geekily cool or something.
  
  Yes, I'm a geek and I know the arguments for using it...I just still can't help but despise it.

  29.4.2009 00:48 #1

• veyron

  This is pretty cool. Maybe .mkv files will be embraced by the masses soon(as far as stand alone players go).
  
  I love my $30 divx dvd player and would happily plunk down some cash for a budget priced mkv compatible model!

  29.4.2009 00:53 #2

• ZippyDSM

  Dumb qustion how hard would it be to make a upgradeable frimware thats easy for people who can build codecs for it?
  
  It should not be TOO hard....

  29.4.2009 11:08 #3

• hermes_vb

  I do think MKV is better. The only reason I don't use it is because I can only play it on my PC not my DVD player or Blu-Ray player.

  30.4.2009 13:47 #4

• pmshah

  Out of curiosity I did some experimentation. Essentially the container format hardly makes much of a difference so far as the final size is concerned. Using Avidemux 2.4 I converted a number of mkv files without changing the underlying video or audio codec, in other words selected the copy option for both. In original 4-8 gb mkv files it increased the size by a few mb (<150).
  
  The plus side of it was it made it more compatible with wider range of player. It however did not make any difference to the cpu power reqired to play on the pc.

  30.4.2009 23:05 #5