Most universal format for PC's

[skinnyneo]

Hello everyone, first post here and I was hoping to get some advice.

I am a teacher in Japan and for my students who just graduated I made a 20 minute slideshow in iPhoto to be projected during their graduation (graduation is in March here). It wasn't anything too complicated about 250 pictures with some music over it.

My other teachers are putting together these books that contain different things from the years the students where here and they want to include a CD or DVD of the slideshow that I made.

Due to some technical difficulties I wasn't able to show the slideshow directly from my MacBook pro and instead had to export the slideshow as an Mpeg 4 (m4v I think). What my question is what format should I convert this to so that for the 100 families I will make the CD or DVD for they would be able to just pop it into their computer and run the movie with no hassle?

Japan is mostly windows users, so I have tried the Mpeg 4 on a random 5 machines and it is hit and miss with some playing it no problem, and others saying it needs a codec.

[Baldrick]

mpg files with mpeg1 video would probably work on most systems without need for any codec. But it isn't that good if you want small file size and goood quality.

For windows you could use wmv and it will work on most systems. Or use MakeInstantPlayer and you will get an .exe file with a player and the video builtin.

[AlanHK]

Flash is almost ubiquitous on any PC connecting to the Internet.

[skinnyneo]

Thank you very much. I will check out Makeinstantplayer as that sounds like almost exactly what I am looking for.

I am definitely looking for quality at this point almost over size. The video is only 20 mins and I think we are leaning towards DVD (the cost saving going CD just isn't worth it) so I don't think we should have a problem. Would converting from m4v to a wmv format result in much quality loss? For Mac what is the best way to convert to a wmv format?