Just for the record: playing video on the Archos devices is not the problem - technically the "problem" is the audio codecs since AC3 which tends to be buried inside most MKV rips (HD stuff from Blu-ray/HDTV) requires a plugin from Archos that cannot be distributed with the devices directly per their licensing agreement with Dolby Labs.
Think back to when XP came out, even XP Media Center in its first showing back in 2002.
Could you play a DVD on it? Yanno, good old DVDs with MPEG2 and AC3 audio?
Nope, you couldn't.
Think of how silly that sounded back then, Windows MEDIA CENTER couldn't play a damned DVD.
Why? Because the licensing agreement with Dolby Labs didn't please Microsoft so they basically said "Fuck you, Dolby Labs" and people were required to go buy a "DVD Decoder" plugin from third party companies like Intervideo, Cyberlink, or some other company.
Hell, Microsoft still has a page with those decoders listed for sale for XP:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/downloads/windows-media-player/plug-ins
because XP can't play commercial DVD content with Windows Media Player.
So it ain't about the video with Archos devices (which technically is an audio/video file) - it's about the audio. With XP it was the video because of the MPEG2 content requiring the decoder - the AC3 came along for the ride with that one.
Of course, the same plugin for AC3 also handles MPEG2 content but not many people these days would rip a DVD (the VOB files) to such a device since that's a horrible waste of space. Instead, people encode the DVDs to single files using Xvid, Divx, etc with AAC or MP3 soundtracks and that's no issue at all because the Archos devices handle those files without issues.
It's when you toss that old craptastic MPEG2 stuff (by today's standards) and AC3 audio soundtracks into the mix that problems happen. Not a big deal, really, but... at least there's a reason behind this.
Think back to when XP came out, even XP Media Center in its first showing back in 2002.
Could you play a DVD on it? Yanno, good old DVDs with MPEG2 and AC3 audio?
Nope, you couldn't.
Think of how silly that sounded back then, Windows MEDIA CENTER couldn't play a damned DVD.
Why? Because the licensing agreement with Dolby Labs didn't please Microsoft so they basically said "Fuck you, Dolby Labs" and people were required to go buy a "DVD Decoder" plugin from third party companies like Intervideo, Cyberlink, or some other company.
Hell, Microsoft still has a page with those decoders listed for sale for XP:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/downloads/windows-media-player/plug-ins
because XP can't play commercial DVD content with Windows Media Player.
So it ain't about the video with Archos devices (which technically is an audio/video file) - it's about the audio. With XP it was the video because of the MPEG2 content requiring the decoder - the AC3 came along for the ride with that one.
Of course, the same plugin for AC3 also handles MPEG2 content but not many people these days would rip a DVD (the VOB files) to such a device since that's a horrible waste of space. Instead, people encode the DVDs to single files using Xvid, Divx, etc with AAC or MP3 soundtracks and that's no issue at all because the Archos devices handle those files without issues.
It's when you toss that old craptastic MPEG2 stuff (by today's standards) and AC3 audio soundtracks into the mix that problems happen. Not a big deal, really, but... at least there's a reason behind this.