The embodiment of the invention relates to the technical field of communication and discloses a video playing method and video playing equipment. The method comprises the following steps: when a video playing request transmitted by a terminal is received, a server plays the name of the video included in the request and video processing capacity of the terminal according to the video, searches the video matching the video name from a database, and judges whether the searched video matching the video name includes a first video, wherein the video encoding format of the first video must accord with the video decoding format of the terminal, the audio encoding format of the first video accords with the audio decoding format of the terminal, if the first video is present, the URL of the first video is transmitted to the terminal by the server so that the first video can be played by the terminal according to the URL of the first video. Through the embodiment, the video required for broadcasting can be normally decoded by the terminal, and the success rate of playing the video by the terminal is increased.