Matroska in Mediaportal

I have a laptop that acts as a MediaPortal testbed. Dangerous stuff is tested there before I install it on my HTPC. If stuff doesn't work, that's the place. I was therefore quite surprised to see playback of Matroska video files fail on my HTPC, where there was no problem on my laptop. The only difference was that my laptop was Vista based, whereas my HTPC runs XP.

I roamed the MediaPortal forums long time. Many reported the same error, but no solution. Some had success installing the DirectVobsub splitter, but that didn't do the trick. Installed PowerDVD failed also. However, yesterday, I found the solution by simply installing the Matroska splitter. Putting the .ax file in the MediaPortal directory enabled Matroska video playback.