Choosing A Good Video Compression Codec With Compatibility in Mind

http://accad.osu.edu/~epalmer/tutorials/codecs/codec_chart.html

MPEG-4 Part 2 (ASP) seems to be a good choice.
It can be encoded by DivX, Xvid, Quicktime, Nero, and libavcodec (FFmpeg).
It can be decoded by Quicktime, Windows Media Player 12 (Win7), Xvid and FFmpeg.

MPEG-4 Part 10 (AVC)  or H.264 required fast processor.
It can be encoded by Quicktime, Nero, and x264.
It can be decoded by Quicktime, CoreAVC and FFmpeg.

MPEG-2 and MPEG-1 does not have good compression ratio.