Top MKV players

T

Turbosound

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 10, 2011
Messages
178
Well after months of researching and posting some threads I have finally decided to go with makeMKV for backing up my Blu Ray collection. What are the top players that support .mkv natively?
 
You mean software players? I think any player worth a crap supports mkv now.
 
When I say natively I mean without having to install additional suppot. Yes, I am talking about software players, can iTunes play .mkv files?
 
MPC-HC for a basic player. VLC has comprehensive format support, but lacks other features that have become pretty important, like hardware h.264 decoding. MPC-HC handles this out of the box now. Avoid iTunes if you're using any open formats (mkv, flac, ogg, etc)
 
Just looking for a player that is simple and made for video playback only, without any unessecary features. That means WMP and WMC is out. I downloaded the trial for PowerDVD 11 and totaly hate it, because of the music and photo sections. I'll give VLC and MPC a shot.
 
anthrex said:
Nope. I prefer MPC-HC for video playback
Click to expand...
+1 on MPC-HC. I have used both MPC-HC and WMC7 without issue. All you need in most cases to make .mkv work in WMC7 is a splitter. I am currently using LAV splitter right now and it works great.
 
I currently have TMT5 launching for MKV files out of Media Browser. I was having some odd issues with MKV's in MB that I couldn't figure out. Haven't had a problem with TMT5, and for some reason, the quality seems to be just a tad better anyway. Don't lose control with the remote this way either.

EDIT: MPC-HC gets my vote if you're just looking for a simple player. I've come to like it more than VLC.
 
Well I tried MPC-HC and didn't like it because there is no way to make it stay in full screen all the time. (launching the program, before playback) VLC is alright but wish I could change or expand the control bar when a movie is playing. VLC also has some problems, like when I make a comand it does nothing. Anyway is there anymore video players out there even if I would need to install .mkv support? I not interested in all in one media players that feature music, pictures, ect sections as well. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think WMC, WMP PowerDVD, and TMT are all that way. I would rather have one player dedicated for music and one player dedicated for video, and just look at my pictures in windows picture viewer, but thats just me.
 
Yeah thats going to be hard to find, but just because an application does all these other things doesn't mean you cant just use it for your intended purpose, and these days 1 purpose is a quicker way to death.
 
You might want to give Zoomplayer a try. I still use it on my bedroom HTPC and it does as good a job as any other video player. My favorite feature is that I can open a folder and it will automatically play every file in the folder in order. It also has pretty good out of the box support for most Windows based remote controls. I use WMC7 + MB for my main HTPC mainly for the metadata support, but as a video only player Zoomplayer is as good as anything else out there.

http://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_download.shtml
 
Last edited:
Well I ended up going with VLC. There are some things that I really don't like about it, but seems to be the best player only mentioned here. Thanks.
 
Turbosound said:
Well I tried MPC-HC and didn't like it because there is no way to make it stay in full screen all the time.
Click to expand...

There is a flag you can set in MPC-HC that will cause it to launch in full screen. Once you launch a file, it plays in FS all the way through. MPC-HC is much better than VLC, IMO.
 
AQ_OC said:
There is a flag you can set in MPC-HC that will cause it to launch in full screen. Once you launch a file, it plays in FS all the way through. MPC-HC is much better than VLC, IMO.
Click to expand...

I agree. MPC-HC is tops. I have tried a great many players and these are the ones I use most, in order of usage:

1) MPC-HC. Most versatile. I love zoom capability to crop black bars a bit on playback.
Though occasionally I would see some micro-stutter. I have made this my default player in XBMC. 90% usage.

2) Win7 WMP (not Media Center) is a very good player. I have never seen micro-stutter on WMP. This has the smoothest playback I have seen. You only need add a media splitter to play MKVs, no codecs necessary, and I would not replace any codecs, because included ones are the best I have seen. But controls are very weak on this one. I only use this to play movies, where I won't do anything but pause. 9% usage.

3) VLC: Very occasionally I hit something that chokes up other players and this is the play everything machine. But this happens so seldom I stick with the above. 1% usage.
 
I use "KMPlayer" with "CCCP". Trouble now I updated KMP to the latest version and screwed up some settings, now the video is blocky.
 
AQ_OC said:
There is a flag you can set in MPC-HC that will cause it to launch in full screen. Once you launch a file, it plays in FS all the way through. MPC-HC is much better than VLC, IMO.
Click to expand...

I did like MPC-HC better than VLC as well, but I tried everything to launch it in full screen and couldn't. Are you sure this can be done without any window bars or anything, just a black screen? If so I will give it another shot.

The two things I don't like about VLC is the off black bars on top and bottom when watching 1:2.40 movies, you end up with light black bars and the the solid black border. The other thing is not being able to expand the control bar to the width of the screen in full screen mode. If there is a way to change these please let me know.
 
Turbosound said:
I did like MPC-HC better than VLC as well, but I tried everything to launch it in full screen and couldn't. Are you sure this can be done without any window bars or anything, just a black screen? If so I will give it another shot.
Click to expand...

If you never want to see a hint of the player just use these options:

Under
View->options->Playback->Fullscreen

Check "Launch files in full screen"
Uncheck "Exit fullscreen at end of playback"

Player will always launch fullscreen, and when movie finishes it will stay full screen on last frame (or you can set the player to exit when done).

Now if you want to just launch an empty player to a blank full screen. That is just pointless and obsessive.
 
Turbosound said:
I did like MPC-HC better than VLC as well, but I tried everything to launch it in full screen and couldn't. Are you sure this can be done without any window bars or anything, just a black screen? If so I will give it another shot.

The two things I don't like about VLC is the off black bars on top and bottom when watching 1:2.40 movies, you end up with light black bars and the the solid black border. The other thing is not being able to expand the control bar to the width of the screen in full screen mode. If there is a way to change these please let me know.
Click to expand...

Either you have an old version or something or you didn't try everything. It seems to do exactly what you want. It didn't take me but a hot second to configure it for full screen mode. It works well.
 
I just tried MPC-HC again and still can't get the program or the MKV to launch in full screen. I have to right click, go to view and select full screen after I launch the mkv. Every time I go to play a mkv it says my DirectX end-user runtime is outdated and tells me to download the June 2010 version or newer for MPC-HC to work properly. When I say launch in full screen I mean when I launch the program or hit the play button is becomes full screen.
 
So fix your DX runtime. Sounds like that is interrupting the jump to full screen.
 
Dude, you lead us to believe you thought the program would not let you full in FS screen as default...but all the time you're getting an error message. No wonder it doesn't work. You can afford to give better info in the future.
 
Downloaded direct x update, don't have error message anymore, still doesn't launch the files in fullscreen. I really didn't think the direct x download would do anything because everything worked fine before. Are you sure you can launch the files in full screen without having the windows taskbar?
 
Yes I am absolutely certain. I use this for HTPC. It launches full screen. No menu bars, no windows task bar, just full screen video.

Did you set the options I indicated previously?
View->options->Playback->Fullscreen
Check "Launch files in full screen"

If you did that, I really can't see how you are failing to get full screen video as soon as you click a video.
 
PotPplayer (successor to KMP) is the best. Combine with MadVR + LAV for awesome quality.
 
I checked the box to lauch the files in fullscreen. I don't know why its not working, that sucks.
 
MPC-HC... For some reason I can never get acceptable results with VLC. Always something with frame drops and/or poor deinterlacing.

MPC-HC handles MKV just fine for me. That + ffdshow is where it's at for DVD scaling.

Also, if you are have problems with crushed blacks, this program is essential.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1187234
It's made by the same Gent that made DScaler. I can never get proper levels until I run it. Have to do it with every driver change.
 
BallerX said:
MPC-HC... For some reason I can never get acceptable results with VLC. Always something with frame drops and/or poor deinterlacing.
Click to expand...

VLC hiccups on AC3 sound for me sometimes. I mainly keep it around for obscure stuff, but this is almost never mainline TV/Video, but just real oddball stuff that is strangely encoded.

MPC-HC is tops in everything. I haven't seen micro-stutter anymore since the last version I downloaded. So my current use is ~99% MPC-HC now.

BTW, Most sites have old versions, get latest here:
http://www.xvidvideo.ru/media-player-classic-home-cinema-x86-x64/
I am on 1.5.3.3755.

While you can use ffdshow,MadVR, LAV, etc... with MPC-HC.

Absolutely none of that is necessary. Scaling is a trivial factor operation and DVDs look fine with just standard scaling. So called scaling programs are mainly about adding Edge Enhancement which is unnecessary IMO. DVDs won't look like Blu Ray, but adding EE to them won't make them look like Blu Ray either, they look like DVD with EE.
 
It's really too bad the OP can't get MPC-HC to work on this system. It really is a nicely done program.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top