Get Ready For Divx On Xbox

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."

SVCD and Divx are different formats

[ringbarer]

SVCD is essentially a DVD MPEG2 file, cut down so that it'll fit on a normal CD. You can normally fit around 45 Minutes worth of SVCD video onto a CD. Ideal for TV shows, admittedly.

Divx on the other hand has much more efficient compression, to the point of being able to fit a full movie onto a single CD.

The convenience of only having to find one file and burn the one CD is what's going to assure Divx has a future.

Re:This is why I got an X Box

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, but dreamcast can already play DivX...
and get online, and play mp3z, and play burned cds...
can't M$ do ANYTHING original?!

Have you tried watching Divx on a Dreamcast?

[ringbarer]

The files need to be resampled at a very low resolution in order for the processor to keep up. With the X Box Divx viewer, we're talking full 640x480 resolution, IIRC.

Check out www.xboxemulation.co.uk [xboxemulation.co.uk] to see how far X Box hacking has come.

or simply...

[hexdcml]

watch DIVX on LARGE TV, by plugging in a £25 A/V cable into my iBook, and playing the divx movie - which is mirrored onto the TV.

Now, I know the iBook itself is more expensive, but then again, it is a laptop, and I bought it NOT solely for games and videos. The latter are just a bonus, and for £25, it is well worth it. That said, with a PowerBook, you don't even need to purchase a properitary (s?) AV cable, just use a standard Yellow/Red/White thing :) which you can probably pick up for £5.

Anyway, going a bit off topic... i think divx on xbox is pretty kewl.. but a bit useless for me - apart from the gaming part - but the GC looks better (and smaller!!).

BTW.. does anyone know how to watch divx .mov (quictkime) on PC's.. after converting the AVI to MOV - since QT can't handle avi with mp3 audio? I'd like to watch all my movies on both mac/pc.

Re:This is why I got an X Box

[randomErr]

Dreamcast can play DIVX and standard MPEG4.

Check out PocketDIVX at Project Mayo [projectmayo.com]

hey wait a minute...

[paradesign]

i thought ZDNet was afiliated with Micro$oft. is this just another stunt to keep the Xbox in the news?

Re:This is why I got an X Box

[morgus morphus]

If you had bothered to actually read that site, then you'd know that you have to reencode the videos at lower resolution (320x240 seems to be recommended), very low bitrate (they recommend 500kbit/s) and 22KHz mono audio to ensure that the DC can decode it quickly enough.

That, to me, defeats the whole point... I'd want something where I don't have to reencode the vids and can get as close to DVD quality as possible.

The reality is that while the DC is great (and I do have one, which I bought precisely or playing around with this kind of thing), it's just a little too slow for these kind of things.

Re:Over hyped

[Wakko Warner]

Excellent distinction but, all the same, I really do think that from a price / utility / necessary skill point of view, this trend has all the elements necessary to cause a fundamental shift in content piracy, especially in the majority of the world where most people don't already own DVD players.

That's great, but you're very wrong. While there may be a huge online pirated-movie trade, there's absolutely no physical analog in the real world. I can't drive into the ghetto and pick up "Attack of the Clones" on DivX. (I can get it on VHS or, perhaps, even VCD.) I can't mail-order the latest movies, or even good old ones, on DivX (I can on DVD.)

There's no market for this. There is nobody clamoring for something to play all their DivX movies on (those people already have computers.) Nobody needs this. Therefore, this is not a big deal.

- A.P.
- A.P.