How to get WMC to play MKV files

26 March, 2010 at 3:48 pm by · Filed under Miscellaneous

How to get Windows Media Center to play MKV files on Windows 7

So I just bought an Acer Revo 3610 so that we can watch MKV files without converting them to MP4 and putting them on the Xbox/faffing around with 4GB file limits etc. The Revo is a brilliant box: cheap, tiny, near-silent and plays 1080p video with no dropped frames. I got mine from Amazon, if you’re curious. They had the best price at the time :)

Anyway, back to Windows Media Center. Out of the box, WMC doesn’t recognise MKV files. To get this to work:

1. Download and install Divx 7.
You only need the Codec bits, not the player/converter. This will setup MKV integration into WMC.

2. Download and install AC3 Filter
This will process AC3 audio if your MKV files has AC3 sound (a lot do, so it’s worth installing, otherwise you won’t get any sound)

3. Reboot your PC
4. Log back in, and open up WMC.
5. Ta-daa, you can now view (and hear!) MKV files :D

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3 Comments »

  1. stefoid said,

    13 April, 2010 at 5:34 am

    Hi, once you have done that, does divx and anything in a .mkv container play with hardware acceleration, or does installing DIVx7 codecs break that?

  2. Phil Wiffen said,

    13 April, 2010 at 9:13 am

    Hi stefoid. The DIVX Codec enables hardware acceleration of the mkv containers, providing you have the latest ION Graphics drivers installed: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index5.aspx?lang=en-us

  3. Robert said,

    16 August, 2010 at 3:43 pm

    Since the Acer Revo has the Nvidia ION platform (just like the Asrock 330 as I have) you’re better of installing XBMC live. It plays anything you through at it out-of-the-box.

    For more information check out http://www.xbmc.org

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