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.

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[–] AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

compatibility with devices. it wasn't long ago that many cheap TVs and such didn't support hevc and required h264, or work on browsers, etc.

[–] laserjet@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

so if it's better than 1 or 2 years ago, what about devices purchased 2 or 3 years ago?

[–] AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 days ago

I meant that devices purchased within the past 8 years or so have hevc decoding now. so even your grandmother who's known for holding on to old tech most likely has something that will work with it.

just in the past year or two I've found that those devices have become common enough for incompatibility to be extremely rare. and the software support is far better within that timeline too. firefox had issues with it as of a few years ago, but it's become pretty seamless on most browsers and devices.