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MPG was how the world first experienced digital video. The MPEG-1 variant powered Video CDs in the early '90s; MPEG-2 went on to define DVD video and digital television. If MP4 is the smartphone, MPG is the landline — it still works, everyone recognizes it, and there's zero reason to install a new one.
You'll find MPG files in TV recording archives, old video capture cards, DVD authoring projects, and legacy media libraries. The compression is crude by modern standards — a 700 MB MPG file might compress to 150 MB as H.264 MP4 at the same visual quality. But the format is rock-solid compatible. Every media player on every platform handles it without fuss.
For anything new, use MP4. For existing MPG files, convert if you need the space savings or want a format that modern web browsers can stream. HandBrake and FFmpeg both handle MPG-to-MP4 conversion efficiently. Keep the originals if they're archival — transcoding always introduces some generation loss.