Windows 7: DVD Player

Is there such a thing as a stand-alone DVD player that will play DVD recorded with nothing more than .mp4, .mkv, or .flv, not in .vob format?

I've seen DivX DVD players that can handle MP4, but Matroska doesn't appear to be supported at all yet. I wouldn't bet on .flv support at all...that's too low-resolution to be useful on a big TV screen.

There's always the possibility of transcoding video files into a format supported by the DVD player (not necessarily into the native MPEG-2 format, but either MP4 or DivX).

The last time I checked out divx.com everything was going .mkv format.

I have Philips 5990 upconverting but it won't play anything larger than PAL standard res. 720x576.

This search engine can list the players for the formats you check:
DVD Player and Blu-ray Player Compatibility List - VideoHelp.com

I think the most versatile these days is a set top box. I have WD 1st gen. player. It's not the Live with networking. Just plays off USB 2.0 port. But it can handle a lot of formats. It upconverts SD res. stuff and can play HD stuff in .wmv .mp4 .m4v .avi .divx .ts and .m2ts. It can play DVD .iso but it doesn't give menus. Ok for playing "main movie" dvds but not episodic. But you can rip the DVD to mkv titles pretty quickly with MakeMKV.

1st gen has no DTS support but the newer units are supposed to have automatic DTS down sampling to stereo. It has its quirks but at least the one I have gives very good picture quality on my set. I have HD CRT type.. old Sony Wega. The screen is only 27" but the picture quality is outstanding.

I've never owned BluRay disc player so I'm not sure what they handle. I refer you to the search engine in the link.

Corazon,

Thanks, that info may help when I get ready to buy a new DVD player, but the reason for my question is that I was thinking about burning some videos to DVDs for the purpose of giving them to other tenants in my complex, but even though some may have computers, I doubt that any of them have a special player like you described. I know that I could convert them to a more compatible format, but I'm not really interested enough to do so...especially not to .vob. While I have quite a mix of formats, I would say that the majority of them are .flv. They may not play well on big screens, but they do quite well on my little 23" WS, and I doubt that anyone else here has anything much bigger.

I'm not familiar with .flv. The most portable for a player other than standard dvd is likely to be xvid/divx. There are many free converters that can input most anything and output .avi.

This is not a player but could you use something like this to convert the files to play? http://beginwithsoftware.com/videoguides/dvd-flick-guide.html
Fabe

Convert to DVD is fast since you are using more bits. But it takes up more room. xvid you can just copy the .avi files onto the DVD as a Data DVD. There should be a choice of tools on videohelp.com that can produce good xvid output in one pass. What may limit the selection is .flv input. Tools that can input via DirectShowSource should be able to handle it.