I am streaming videos in my house via Windows Media Player Streaming, which is basically DLNA. So theoretically any DLNA compliant device can pick up the stream.

However, I've quickly found that this is only one part of the solution. Over the years I've accumulated a ton of video-capable devices. While all these devices can see the Windows Media Player stream, they all speak in different codecs.

And frankly, I am confused by codecs. In the beginning, I thought that the codecs were defined by the filename extension they carried (e.g. avi, mp4, wmv, etc...), but after further research, it looks like the extensions are simply containers. Inside an .avi file could reside several different codecs.

So my question is this: is there a format/codec that plays equally well on any device.