The Matroska Media container is a very popular, open standard Multimedia container which is usually found as .MKV files. It is a very popular format in enthusiast circles and can be played directly in Windows Media Player with suitable codecs installed. We use the Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP).
We ripped our BluRay disc of AVATAR to 1080P MKV and use Windows Media Player to playback the file.
No problems handling intensive 1080p MKV files. Plenty of CPU cycles free for multitasking.