Get Ready For Divx On Xbox 378
donnacha points to this ZDNet story which says that hackers have built a Divx player for Xbox. "As previously discussed ( Divx - The Real Xbox Killer App), the ability to play reasonably high-quality films, speedily burned onto inexpensive CDR media, is going to make (modded) Xbox ownership a far more attractive proposition. This will take Divx beyond the desktops of those with broadband connections and into the living rooms of those who don't own computers. Expect to see a resurgence of Xbox sales and much confusion in MS as to whether or not this is a good thing."
Apparently... (Score:4, Funny)
...XBox developers are going to be the first to move into Microsoft's new headquarters. [bbspot.com]
Just what every modded xbox needs: pr0n (Score:2, Funny)
Re:or you could... (Score:2, Funny)
Videos can be up to 496x496 but 320x240 or lower recommended.
320x240 or lower recommended? Ye-haw. Pardon me while I go re-rip all 120 of my 720x480 rips so that I lose 75% of the clarity, and squint the whole time instead of spending the extra $150. I know that the weeks of re-ripping will pay off, so long as I consider my time worth less than $.25 an hour.
And no, I didn't pull 75% out of my ass, either. 320x240 is 1/4th (more or less) of 720x480.
Say what? (Score:5, Funny)
You are joking, right? First, this requires a hardware mod, which Microsoft despises - hey, it's a Microsoft Xbox, packed full of juicy Microsoft intellectual property and trade secrets, right? They'll likely have mods prosecuteds as DMCA violation, because they bypasses DRM mechanisms.
But worse than that, it allows godless heathens to run FREE SOFTWARE on their hardware. Given the foaming-at-the-mouth FUD they vomit forth whenever the GPL is mentioned, expect them to suggest that Evil Pirates will run the notorious hacker OS Linux on it, allowing the viral GPL to spread throughout the whole Interweb, corrupting and assimilating all that it touches. ZDnet will faithfully reproduce pretty much any FUD they produce about this.
Further, given that PVR opponents seem to have escaped a mainstream press drubbing for describing ad-skipping as theft, expect them to assert that Xbox purchasers have an implied obligation to purchase Microsoft - and only Microsoft - games and add-ons for it, to support the subsidised initial purchase. I'll even predict the phrase, which will be spoken by a flat voiced, dead eyed corporate zombie: "Of course, the Xbox is about having fun, and we want legitimate Xbox purchasers to have fun. But they have to be responsible about it, and support legitimate software development. We think its very important that we educate legitimate Xbox gamers about this, and that we explain why hacking our Xbox and running pirate and viral GPL software kills legitimate developers. And their children, their beautiful golden haired children. Won't someone think of the legitimate software developers' golden haired children!" Er, OK, that last bit might just be implied (or feature as a ZDnet "editorial"), but you get the point. ;-)
And lastly, what do they care about DivX? They are busy touting the DRM benefits of WMF and trying to persuade hardware manufacturers to support WMF alongside MPEG2. They do not want other players in this game. Note that their apologists at ZDnet invite you to infer that DivX is only useful for piracy. Yes, I know that de facto it is heavily used for distributing unlicensed copies, but that's because it's a damn efficient codec with cross platform implementations. If unlicensed copies switch to using WMF (with the DRM turned off) to distribute, will that become a "controversial" format? I think not.
No, I don't see that Microsoft will be in confusion about how to handle this. It's their box, containing their trade secrets, and we should keep our filthy commie hacker hands off of it. The hobbyist market is simply too small to make a difference to their income: in fact, every Xbox purchased by a hacker loses them money. They won't like this. They won't like it at all.
Re:SVCD and Divx are different formats (Score:1, Funny)
People, you don't need it. This stuff is tripe. No, it's not even tripe. Tripe can be tasty, this stuff is nasty evil yuck. Ptooey. Just ignore it. Don't even download it. It's all crap. Fuck hollywood.
Now there's some oldies that are pretty good, but don't worry about supporting those guys, they're all dead or something close to it. Download those old goodies, but this new shit --fuck those idiots. They deserve abuse because that's exactly what they're serving up to the public.
Re:Dreamcast decoder.??.. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Conflicting Information... (Score:2, Funny)