Why do most AVI's and WMV's seem to not work on the PS3?

[ctalkeb]

nordlead said:

WMV is a microsoft format and Sony probably didn't pay the licensing fee to use the format. (not a lot of companies do)

EDIT: as forevercloud stated below, you have to do the liscensing thing (lol, I've never used my PS3 for videos other than off PSN )

As for AVI, AVI is really a wrapper and it could be using one of any number of codecs available. Depending on who encoded the AVI file it may not be compatible with the PS3. On PCs it isn't an issue as you just install another codec.

PS3 is, surprisingly, compatible with WMV. I guess maybe it came with VC1 for the few blu-rays that use it?

It also covers most regular formats (including older DivX codecs that X360 no longer supports). Subtitles are the real problem, which is why anyone would be better of with a transcoding media server anyway. This one, for example:

http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/