Video quality has nothing to do with MKV, power users have nothing to do with MKV. It's just a media container just like OGM or AVI, it's just more flexible.

Now, one issue I see here, you automatically think that the audio is mp3 and video is xvid. I've run into quite a few MKV that have real media, mpeg, and divx video and ogg, mp3, and other audio. The problem is, if you're having issues with MKV, you don't have the proper drivers installed.

Google k-lite mega codec pack:
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_Lite_Mega_Codec_Pack.htm

This will get you EVERYTHING you need to watch MKVs with little to no fuss. Real Media and Quicktime without installing the proprietary players, and other things.

MKV actually has lower overhead than AVI and OGM and to top it off, it's very flexible.

Don't get me wrong, I'll go for Hardsubbed stuff, I just prefer MKV because of how flexible it is. It also runs rather well on my wife's 500mhz machine, our 1ghz p3 machine, my celeron laptop, and my main box without problems. All I did was install the K-Lite pack and that was it.

Explorer constantly crashes with OGM so as soon as I run into that crap, I mux it to MKV ;) heh

I'm looking forward to this series and I certainly hope you guys sub it!