However many hardware players do not play MKV directly - for that MKV files need to be transcoded into format that particular hardware player understands. Playing MKV files on a computer is not an issue - there are many players and codec packs that enable MKV playback on any platform, be it Windows, Mac or Linux. While MKV is a good storage format not always it can be played directly. For exactly the same content MKV files are about 10% smaller than DVD files and roughly 40% smaller than Blu-ray files. Want to remove unneeded audio track from the file? Thought about converting MPEG-2 video into H264 to make the file 5 times smaller? All of it can be easily done with free software. You have control over the content you've paid for.

There are no restrictions where to play the file.

And fast forward button always works, too.

If you don't want to watch dozen trailers before the movie, you don't have to. You can copy them to your laptop and watch anytime, even if your laptop lacks DVD or Blu-ray drive, or any drive whatsoever.No need for HDCP-certified video card or any 'trusted' environment. You can play them on any capable hardware.MKV files do not have evil features attached.The best software players out there ( VLC, MPlayer ) have full MKV support and are absolutely free. As a result nearly every software player and many hardware devices support it.

No one holds patents or licenses and anyone can implement it freely. Matroska file format (and Matroska video in particular) has a number of advantages.

More information can be found at Wikipedia article. Being open and patent-free Matroska gained broad support recently and quickly becomes de-facto standard for storing movies. Practically this means that it is possible to put entire movie with multiple sound and subtitle tracks, chapters information and movie thumbnail into single file. Matroska is a container file format, capable of holding unlimited number of video, audio and subtitile tracks, along with any metadata.

Makemkv how to tell what is the movie