bert41 said:
This may be a noob question, but which format has better quality MKV or AVCHD? My gut says MKV but I don't know anything about these formats really and all the research I did only told me how to convert these two into each other. So which is the higher quality?
Jonno said:
Generally speaking, though, AVCHD format is limited to 720p video and ~DVD video bitrates (because it's designed to play from DVD media), whereas the MKV container can accommodate pretty much anything you like in terms of video and audio streams.
I'd like to make a few corrections here: First of all, both the term MKV and AVCHD don't really say anything about the quality of a video file. MKV isn't a video format per se, in that it's only a so called container format, which can contain a video track in pretty much every conceivable video codec.
AVCHD on the other hand is a disc format, which in most parts is the same as a Blu-ray disc. Contrary to what Jonno wrote, AVCHD discs are not limited to 720p video or a DVD bitrate (I've created AVCHD discs on DVD-DL discs that were both in 1080p and at Blu-ray bitrates), it's just that they are designed to fit a movie inside the capacity of a dual-layer DVD (8.5 GB), so the bitrates are usually lower than those of a Blu-ray.
So the general question whether MKV or AVCHD has better quality can't really be answered, as both of them can contain video at the exact same quality... even using the exact same video track.
In the case of Harmy's TESB release things get even more complicate, as he's intending to release a smaller MKV alongside the "big" MKV, which in turn will have lower image quality than even the AVCHD.