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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[–] ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 27 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

You could always package them with everything they need to watch, like VLC (which should be able to read most formats anyway). Not clear if they are all on Windows, but perhaps you could include the portable VLC version that doesn't require an install and make an obvious-named VLC playlist file for them to open.

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Oh so you're the guy from the phishing training

[–] ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 4 points 1 week ago

Yeah, this 100% only works (but I think does work) with a reliable physical chain of trust, since we're not yet in an age where you can Mission Impossible mask social engineer trust face-to-face. Not a great plan if this isn't a USB drive handed directly to them, though.

[–] Grumpy@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 week ago

I like this idea. Stick in a portable video player in the usb too. Then you got a working combo all together.