For holiday gift I was thinking of making USB/microSDs full of TV/movies. The intended recipients are not tech savvy types. They would be using windows computers, normal TVs etc.
What kind of file formats/encodings would be good to package the files in? What is safe and universally usable? And which ones are to be avoided? I’d like to guarentee they’ll play without any fooling around with drivers or software.
And I want them to be as small as possible so that I can fit more stuff.
The default Windows player does not support h265 without an additional charge. Cheap devices such as my parents’ Hisense from 4 years ago also stutter badly on playback of h265, even though they aren’t high bitrate (1.5GB for 1.5hr movie, hardly a large video). These are additional barriers that can be avoided by using h264.
I don’t disagree with anything you said; but my point still stands. It’s nearly universally supported these days, even on cheap ass TVs.
For windows users I either point them to Plex so they can hop on my server, MPC-HC (from Klite codec pack), or VLC. In OPs case I’d just include VLC along with the video files.
My Plex users use a multitude of shitty TVs and old consoles, and they report no issues back to me. It’s not the same compatibility situation as it was years ago.
H265 is a common video compression codec, charging for it is a strange way to encourage users to stay within their ecosystem.
The first time I got that popup I immediately gave up using that garbage software ever again, but casual PC users don’t quite have the same self respect.