system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5 differences between video file types (mp4, avi, mkv, etc)
gpt
They're basically all the same thing, just written differently.

Think of it like books (sort of) in a different language.

It's the same story about a bunny being buddies with a bear and all the crazy adventures they go on, but one version of the story is told in English, while another is told in French, and so on.

There's also a difference in the way the story is told. Some filetypes have no compression of quality, so you get a really detailed file as if Tolkein wrote the bunny and the bear, whereas some filetypes try to tell the most story in as small a filesize as possible, so Dr. Suess writes it instead.

That's why certain devices can't play certain filetypes, because they're receiving too much or too little of the wrong information in the wrong place.