Best freeware for converting MTS to easily readable format?

[mccake]

I would like to be able to share with family some home videos captured on my Canon HFR200 HD camcorder. What is the best/easiest freeware for converting the MTS files from my camcorder into an easily readable format, and what would be the best format to convert to?

My family will likely be using Windows Media Player or whatever comes stock on a a Mac. So I would like to save the files in a way that my family could just open the file in their stock media player without a struggle.

Any recommendations are greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Baldrick]

You can convert to MP4(h264 video, aac audio) with handbrake, it works fine in wmp 12 under windows 7.

For older WMP it's better to use wmv, convert with freemake video converter.

I know nothing about macs built in support...I guess mp4 should work fine in latest mac osx.