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Media Television

DivX Making Hollywood Inroads 244

Posted by michael from the whose-cuisine-will-reign-supreme dept.
worm eater writes "CNet news reports that DivX is doing its best to become a digital video compression standard, and has been very successful in courting DVD manufacturers to adopt the DivX format. But will that be enough to beat out competing compression methods as a new Hollywood standard? It faces tough competition, such as MPEG-4, RealVideo and Windows Media. Who will win the standards race and what will that mean for the companies that push the various compression methods?"
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DivX Making Hollywood Inroads More

DivX Making Hollywood Inroads

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  • easy answer (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:33PM (#7128113)
    whoever has the most cripling DRM built in.

    • Re:easy answer (Score:3, Insightful)

      by d3faultus3r ( 668799 )
      Actually that very much depends on how consumers react to it. If the technology forces people to sign away their firstborn child and sacrifice a chicken before they can watch the movie then no one will buy stuff made with it and it will fail. It will most likely be the company that figures out how to disguise the DRM to the user but still keep enough for the MPAA to be happy that wins the standards war. I'm betting that mpeg 4 will win, due to it's support by companies that actually know how to make unintru
      • Well, my firstborn wrecked the car and the chicken is shitting all over the carpet, so I'd gladly sacrifice both of them.

        And if I get to watch a movie afterward, so much the better.

    • And Divx is already on the way (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Snaller ( 147050 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @06:23PM (#7128519) Journal
      adding a wrapper to their divx (good way to slow it down!) - read this [virtualdub.org] for an annoying story.

  • Microsoft has a real advantage here (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Has everyone seen their compressed HDTV? WOW. We may not like Microsoft, but they have a nice bit of code there.

    • I'm guessing their real advantage... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bc90021 ( 43730 ) * <`bc90021' `at' `bc90021.net'> on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:36PM (#7128148) Homepage
      ...is going to be in their abillity to abuse their monopoly to force out the other codecs.

      I don't foresee technical merit being a factor, unfortunately. :(
      • That's a pretty bogus analysis.

        WMV9 is a tremendously good codec, and beats out next generation MPEG-4 for high definition tasks.

        Head on over to dv.com and read the article I wrote in the current issue about HD delivery codecs. Microsoft is working hard to win this battle on technical merits.

        FWIW, they've also been submitting the technology to various standards boards, including SMPTE.

    • Re:Microsoft has a real advantage here (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You are seeing the benefits of encoding. They spent time and care to encode those video examples and the product appears a lot better for it. Without that extra care, you would see the performance limits of WM9, like other MP4 variations. Microsoft knows the value of a good demo. Unfortunately, the practical use of the codec in the market will look noticeably worse. You can't shove an elephant through a straw without doing some serious damage.

  • Change the name first. (Score:5, Funny)

    by JVert ( 578547 ) <corganbilly@hotmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:34PM (#7128126) Journal
    Took me a year of watching Divx movies to wipe away my association of the name from that failed rental system years ago...

  • divx? (Score:3, Informative)

    by micronix1 ( 590179 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:34PM (#7128129)
    holywood and divx in one sentence? i would think that they wouldnt link the idea of divx because it's so easily distributed and has no copy protection.

    • Re:divx? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by stonedCoder ( 650101 )
      holywood and divx in one sentence? i would think that they wouldnt link the idea of divx because it's so easily distributed and has no copy protection.

      ...currently ;)

    • Re:divx? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Bragg ( 147168 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:48PM (#7128268)
      They do currently have some kind of copy control / DRM solution for renting DivX movies over the internet, involving .tix files and the 'Playa' or whatever it is called now. Whether this system is secure or not, I don't know...

  • For a healthy dose of naivete... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chjones ( 610558 ) <[chjones] [at] [aleph0.com]> on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:37PM (#7128163) Homepage Journal
    Is it quality, marketing, or what that make DivX the perennial favorite, among Hollywood, consumers, or anyone else? Sure, I've got several movies encoded in DivX, but would prefer to have them in some format that I'm certain can have encoders and decoders that are legally copylefted. As always, don't think that I'm being overzealous---I'm more just curious why DivX has come closest to "hitting the big time."
    • I'm more just curious why DivX has come closest to "hitting the big time."

      porn industry.
    • I always thought it was popular because of its compression ratio, a whole movie on a CD... that's what did it. IMHO.

      All the other features.. no big deal really.

  • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Do we want this? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Winterblink ( 575267 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:47PM (#7128256) Homepage
      Dunno man, I have a hard time finding things to nitpick about with those Superbit releases. Movies like Panic Room, which is a very dark colored movie, show up as damn near perfect. Usually dark flicks pixelate horribly. Every Superbit flick I've got is crisp and clean no matter what kind of visuals the director's going for.

    • Re:Do we want this? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by meldroc ( 21783 ) <{moc.iirf} {ta} {cordlem}> on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:51PM (#7128297) Homepage Journal

      DVDs, DirectX and digital cable boxes all use MPEG-2 to compress the video (and yes, I've seen nasty compression artifacts in them). The real question is what tradeoff do you want to make between quality and storage/bandwidth requirements. Uncompressed video consumes obscene amounts of storage and bandwidth. MPEG-4 is better at retaining quality at a given compression rate than MPEG-2.

      The part that concerns me is that Hollywood will almost certainly insist on shoving DRM (that's Digital Restrictions Management) down our throats. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I don't like being told what I can and can't do with the equipment I own. DRM amounts to big businesses stealing the right of people to control the hardware they own.

      • The part that concerns me is that Hollywood will almost certainly insist on shoving DRM (that's Digital Restrictions Management) down our throats.

        I'm giving you a gold atr for pointing this out. Particularly with your exposing the real meaning of the acronym. We should all make a point of helping or less technical family and friends realize this; It is a restriction imposed upon us.

        Moral or Legal or what not, sanitizing it by calling it Digital Rights Management is very mis-informative, a practice used

      • I think you meant something other than DirectX. DirectShow does have third party MPEG-2 decoder filters available, but it's hardly the dominant format used with DS.

        As for DRM, the iTunes Music Store has shown that many people don't object to DRM per se, they mainly show that people reject DRM models which don't allow them to use the content in the way they want to use them.

        It's not like you hear about people boycotting Macrovision encoded DVD that often :).

  • Divx vs. MPEG-4? (Score:5, Informative)

    by FrostedWheat ( 172733 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:38PM (#7128170)
    Divx *is* MPEG-4. At least one implementation of it. As far as I'm aware, so is Windows Media's video.

    Divx isn't even that good a MPEG-4 codec. XVID is somewhat better, and it's free.
    • Heh, if there's one thing the MPAA would never consider is a free and open solution. :)

    • Re:Divx vs. MPEG-4? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by nedron ( 5294 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:46PM (#7128242) Homepage
      What? I know a lot of people claim Divx is MPEG-4, but I'm unable to play it in an IMSA-1 compliant player WITHOUT adding their proprietary compression codec. They may use an MPEG-4 style container, but they certainly don't use standard MPEG-4 compression.

      Also, Windows Media is in no way MPEG-4. In fact, Windows Media does not even (to my knowledge) play MPEG-4 video.

      -David

      • Re:Divx vs. MPEG-4? (Score:2, Informative)

        by Rufus211 ( 221883 )
        Do you fail to remember that DivX = Windows Media?? Remember back in the days of DivX 3.11a when it was just the Windows Media codec hacked to be usable in an AVI file instead of only ASFs and to give some more options. If you play an ASF using mplayer, this is the codec it uses:
        [ffdivx] vfm:ffmpeg (FFmpeg DivX ;-) (MS MPEG-4 v3))
      • WMP can play MPEG4 encoded files, if they're packaged as AVI's.

        I find it annoying that Divx keeps promoting its brand as if it were something different from MPEG4. If they're incompatible with the MPEG4 spec for some reason, then they're just broken...

      • Re:Divx vs. MPEG-4? (Score:4, Informative)

        by ahecht ( 567934 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:55PM (#7128332) Homepage
        From http://www.divx.com/about/ [divx.com]:

        So you want to know a little bit about DivX(R), huh? DivX(R) is a lot of things. First and foremost, DivX(R) is a patent-pending MPEG-4 digital video technology created by DivXNetworks, Inc. Videos encoded with DivX technology are among the highest quality digital videos available anywhere (and with a relatively small file size to boot).

        ...

        In addition, DivX is the most widely distributed MPEG-4 compatible technology available today. DivX technology is compatible with the MPEG-4 video compression standard, allowing it to compress MPEG-2 video down to about one eighth of its original size. DivX is able to create fully compliant MPEG-4 bitstreams, so if you're looking for an MPEG-4 compatible video technology, we can help. Read the DivX Licensing Overview for more information.

      • Re:Divx vs. MPEG-4? (Score:5, Informative)

        by benwaggoner ( 513209 ) <ben.waggoner@mic ... t.com minus poet> on Friday October 03, 2003 @06:03PM (#7128380) Homepage
        This all gets kind of confusing :).

        Divx 4.x and 5.x are themselves MPEG-4 Video codecs (pt. 2 video, not the new pt. 10/AVC/JVT/H.264 stuff). They aren't the best, but they're far better than the worst. The bitstream itself is compatible with ISMA compliant decoders, but...

        Divx files themselves use the AVI file format instead of the MPEG-4 file format. This is for historical reasons, and the biggest problem I personally have with Divx, since it is incompatible with stock MPEG-4 tools, but not in a way that adds any user value. This is a legacy of how Divx was originally a hack to use a proprietary Microsoft codec in AVI files.

        Divx files also use all kinds of audio codecs, which are rarely MPEG-4 compatible. AAC-LC is a great audio codec, and it's ISMA compatible.

        So, I really wish Divx would get their tools support exporting to .mp4 with aac-lc audio. They've done 98% of the hard work to interoperate well. It's just that last 2% I'm waiting for. I don't mind if they maintain legacy support, but I want support for ISO standard MPEG-4 before I'm likely to use their stuff for much in practice.

        Also, you are correct, Windows Media can't play MPEG-4 by default. There is a plugin available from Envivio for WMP that will enable this, though.
    • At least in terms of adoption for commercial products:

      1) It's not completely legal. They don't really have a liscence to use the MPEG-4 patents. That's why DivX has for pay and adware versions, to get money for the MPEG-4 costs. Well if you are making a commercial product for profit, you need to be on the level with lisscencing, or you could wind up screwed.

      2) It suffers from perpetual betaness. It's not bad, I mean it's not like it blows up all the time, but it DOES have some noticable bugs. Read the doo

      • Perpeptual beta (Score:3, Interesting)

        by poptones ( 653660 )
        If that is your guideline, ALL software is "perpeptual beta." I've been using XVID for quite a long time now, and it has consistently outperformed DIVX. I've done A/B comparisons on HD video and I've never seen DIVX do anything XVID could not. No software is perfect - ever.

        And so far as that other guy's problem with "five minutes to fade when I FFW" well, that ain't your encoder, champ. That's the playback codec combined with the keyframe rate of the original encode. Doesn't matter what was used to encode

    • Divx isn't even that good a MPEG-4 codec. XVID is somewhat better, and it's free.

      This is exactly why I'm going to buy an X-box and install the linux media player soon. Codecs change, new ones come along, some are better for diffent sources etc. Until the major manufacturers offer upgradeable codecs on their machines, I think the only way to get flexibility is to build your own.

      Don't get me wrong, I'm not against DVD or anything, I was a very, very early adopter. I'm just moving onto the next adoption no

  • What about opensource software ?

    It would be nice to have something to compete with these guys.
    • XviD [xvid.org] and Ogg Theora [theora.org] (website seems to be down) are free (AIS) video compressor/decompressors that are designed to be comparable to DivX. The still-early-experimental Ogg Tarkin is a whole different kind of bird, but with the same general aim. For lossless video compression, there's Huffyuv (do a search). All these are open source, but the last review I read still had DivX as better quality per bitrate than the others.
      • Xvid is a MPEG-4 implementation, so commercial products based on it will need to pay the MPEG-4 license fee, FWIW. It's cheap.

        Theora is free as in every kind of speech, beer, or anything else you could imagine. However, they haven't locked down their bitstream yet, so it's hard to say how good it will be as a codec.

        Huffyuv is open source, but full of x86 assembly, so it isn't usefully portable. I'd love to see an equivalent technology that'd be more portable, and LGPL so it could be used more widely.

    • Yes! (Score:5, Informative)

      by jared_hanson ( 514797 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:50PM (#7128285) Homepage Journal
      Well, first of all, DivX 4 originally had an open source code base. DivXNetworks had a 2 system thing going on, them working on their own code, and also supporting and open source version. They changed however, amid the release of DivX 5. This is why the XviD [xvid.org] group was formed. Their original code base was forked from the open source DivX 4 code base. Much of that has been rewritten by now though.

      Also, there is an Ogg progect, called Theora [theora.org], that is an open video codec. It is based off a codec called VP3 that was orignially developed by a company called On2 [on2.com] They gave the VP3 code to Xiph and continue to work on their own proprietary codecs, such as VP6.

  • Lossy compression. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by niko9 ( 315647 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:39PM (#7128178)
    Am I the only one who notices pixelation even on todays MPEG2 DVD standard?

    Kinda makes the purist pine for the days of the Lasedisc.

    • Am I the only one who notices pixelation even on todays MPEG2 DVD standard?

      Often it's down to poor encoding. A lot of the early movies have been re-released with better versions.

      Cheap players can make it worse as well. I very rarely notice pixelation on my Sony DVD player, hooked up via RGB, blah blah blah. Mind you, it's gathering dust now, two thirds of my media is now DivX ;-)

    • Re:Lossy compression. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @06:05PM (#7128403)
      Well it's gotta be lossy if you want HD video any time soon. I mean for a 1920x1080x24 movie you are talking 142MB/sec uncompressed. Now, even if you use a losless comrpession like huffyuv, you only get like 3:1 best case. For the sake of argument, we'll say you have a real bang up losless compresison that uses as of yet unkown methods to get an amazing 5:1. Ok so that's 28.4MB/sec (bytes, not bits). Well, that measn even for a short 90 minute film, you are talking about 150GB of storage, and that doesn't count audio, or any additonal features.

      Well at this point, the only format you could ship that in is harddrive, and that'll probably remain the case for some time. Way too expensive for movies, never mind if you ahve a long one or want extra features.

      So the only solution is to go lossy. Personally, I'd rather have a 1080 HD signal that uses lossy comrpession than a 720 NTSC signal that doesn't.
      • Actually, storing lossless movies might be one possible application for holographic memory (which is supposed to have a storage space of up to 400GB), and it could do it with current lossless compression technologies (the 3:1 compression you spoke of). Too bad that holographic memory seems farther and farther away from every seeing the light of day... I rarely hear about it anymore.

    • Re:Lossy compression. (Score:3, Informative)

      by taniwha ( 70410 )
      there's lots of reasons for that - often it's crappy encoding.

      However there are legacy TV reasons for this - a combination between gamma correction and the particular color space used means that there are fewer numeric codes available for encoding dark images (near the bottom tip of the YCrCb color cube - gamma pushes them more to the top) than bright ones - this can mean that scenes in dark smokey rooms (think blade runner, any sort of noir etc) tend to be more pixelated than others.

      Sadly I expect dire

    • I didn't like laserdisc. My laserdisc "wallet"-case was huge, I felt like the girl on the big comfy couch when I would open it.
    • Hehe, lossy compression indeed. You do realize that video has huge compression rates right? There is a lot of spatial redundancy (pixels close together are likely to be the same) and temporal redundancy (pixels in the same location in neighbouring frames are likely to be the same). There is also coding redundancy (how the bitstream is actually sent).
    • > Am I the only one who notices pixelation even on todays MPEG2 DVD standard?

      >Kinda makes the purist pine for the days of the Lasedisc.

      Sure, I see this all the time... but I wouldn't go back to Laserdisc.

      There are two causes for seeing this in DVD's:
      1) Lousy DVD encode work.
      Laserdisc had media *transferred* to it. They would (hopefully) clean the negatives, get everything aligned, and record to laserdisc. Everything was done at once.

      By contrast, DVD is *captured* as uncompressed video, then (perha

    • Re:Lossy compression. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 )
      it depends....

      many companies encode at low bitrates to try and fit lots of crud on one DVD.

      bitrates below 7Meg per second is low quality (for a DVD) I encode my home movies at 12.000Meg per second . (But then I shoot with a Canon XL-1 so I have an awesome video quality to start with..) and friends and relatives rave about how much clearer,crisper and better looking my DVD's look compared to commercial movies.

      It's the bitrate... I'm content with fitting only 1 hour and no added crud on one dvd.

  • Theora (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sik0fewl ( 561285 ) <xxdigitalhellxxNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:40PM (#7128187) Homepage

    How about Theora [theora.org]? . . . I know.. but maybe someday.

  • Not really DivX anymore, is it? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by foo fighter ( 151863 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:41PM (#7128197) Homepage
    DivX isn't really DivX anymore is it?

    I mean it's not the proprietary, pirated ;) video codec it started as. Now it's basically MPEG-4, versus DVD which is MPEG-2.

    This move isn't surprising to me, because I'd expect the movie industry to use the latest Standard once it became mature.

    And if they have a solution ready to go, why would they reinvent the wheel?

    I'm sure the next generations of DVD players will support DivX encoded discs, just as DVD players eventually came to support MP3, WMA, VCD, and CDR/RW.

    I might be betraying my ignorance of, and apathy towards, video. Excuse me if that's the case.

  • Bet I'm not the first to say: OGG (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Atario ( 673917 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:41PM (#7128198) Homepage
    Better yet, how about upgradable players? Add whatever codecs you like/get invented?
    • Better yet, how about upgradable players? Add whatever codecs you like/get invented?

      I think they are building the codecs into the hardware to make the players faster. While it's certainly not impossible to build hardware that can be upgraded, it poses a challenge and somewhat defeats the purpose of having an industry standard. Not to mention people wouldn't have to buy new players when the standard changes.

  • Same quality as DVD? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mblase ( 200735 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:42PM (#7128207)
    Like its rivals, DivX offers a huge improvement in compression compared with the current TV video standard, MPEG-2, which is used by most broadcasters and in most DVDs: Using DivX, a standard 4.7GB DVD can be squeezed down to about 700MB without significant loss of quality. (Microsoft and RealNetworks claim similar ratios.)

    Can anyone who uses DivX or has a DivX/DVD player hooked up to their TV attest to this?

    • Re:Same quality as DVD? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by koreth ( 409849 ) *
      Only if they have a small TV. I have yet to see a DivX movie that looks like anything but pixellated, artifact-strewn crap on my front-projection system. But I'm sure if I tried it on a 31-inch set, a lot of that would be less noticeable.

    • Re:Same quality as DVD? (Score:5, Informative)

      by delus10n0 ( 524126 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:54PM (#7128317)
      Well, the thing is, MPEG2/DVD is usually mastered professionally, taking into consideration individual scenes, and raising/lowering bitrates to compensate. A "still" shot, or just someone talking probably isn't going to need a lot of bandwidth, while a big fight scene is.

      DiVX though has been mainly used by "consumers" who don't really know/care about any of that stuff, and just want to be able to throw in a DVD and get one a DiVX. They don't sit and tweak each scene's or frame's bandwidth requirements. Only recently did DiVX release their EKG application which allows a person to modify (inbetween VBR passes) the data allocated to individual frames. If someone (ie, a professional) really knew what they were doing, then I have no doubts they could produce an almost DVD-quality film which takes up only 700megabytes. But why stop at 700 megabytes? Using DVD media, we could get 8+ gigabytes of video/audio on a single disc. That's (theorhetically) almost 8+ hours (at "film" quality) of video. Featurettes and the like could obviously be encoded in a much lower bitrate, as they are with MPEG2/DVD's now, allowing even more room on the disc.

      What we really need to be concerned with/pushing is higher resolutions. 720x480 just ain't cutting it anymore. High Def is where it's at, baby, and DiVX and Windows Media are delivering that right now. We just need a medium to transport it properly.

      • Re:Same quality as DVD? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Hatta ( 162192 )
        The great thing about 2-pass xvid is that it does all that for you. One pass to see where the motion is and estimate size, and another pass to do the real encoding.
        • DiVX can do this too (as well as n-passes,) but this is not the same as someone going through and manually tweaking bitrates/keyframes. Although multiple passes can do a pretty good job, a professional actually tweaking those results is almost always going to be better. That is what they do for production DVD's, and what would have to happen for DiVX to step up to the same quality.

          We also have to remember that going DVD->DiVX is re-encoding from one lossy format to another. If you had a perfect digital
    • 700 meg for a movie, is not a replacement for DVD?s. However two 700 megs files per movie and the quality is much better than VHS. However, you can chop off the credits and the useless intro crap and save a lot, thus increasing the quality of the picture/frame rates.

      Not to mention how many different versions and combinations of codec?s out there that is called ?DivX?. There is no such thing as being able to play them all, and play them all well. Also, there are a lot of graphical glitches you end up wit
    • Put shortly, DivX can be as good as DVD for less space... but not at 4.7GB to 700. Most 4.7GB disks are not entirely the feature. You can a short feature to look decent for 700 MB, but I'd guess only a 1:2 compression rate for something really pretty looking. Try watching an action movie that's been DivX'd... it can be painful if it's not encoded correctly.

  • Video and Audio Codecs (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SnowWolf2003 ( 692561 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:44PM (#7128229)
    There seem to be 3 factors that will eventually determine who wins out:

    1. Quality - If it is compressed it still needs to be good quality
    2. Widespread adoption - If you can't encode and decode it wherever you want to use it, then it won't work for you.
    3. Portability/Restrictions - Finding the right balance between copy protections wanted by the MPAA/RIAA and the portability wanted by the consumers.
  • There is still a considerable amount of negative brand name sentiment towards DiVX because of the whole Circuit City mess several years back. I remember lines of irate customers arguing with the clerks at the return lines and believe me, the arguments were intense and involved streams of explicatives. I will probably be moded down for saying so, but the HDTV compression and Windows Media formats are becoming very competitive with the more established standards like MPEG and Real. Microsoft claims that DRM w
  • What about Apple's new codec, Pixlet [apple.com] (scroll down about 2/3, on the right)?
    • Read the blurb about Pixlet. It is mainly intended for studio use because it preserves more quality and doesn't achieve as much compression. It's data rate is 3MB/sec. Do calulations on this. It is 180MB/minute and 10800MB/hour. Round it to 10GB/hour. DVD's today max out at around 7.2GB per disc, and can fit over 2 hours of video on them.

      So, Pixlet is ruled out of the question, because it doesn't achieve the compression required to store a movie on a single disc. Again, Pixlet is meant for studio us
  • .. afterall, they could burn fewer discs. My 7-disc DS9 set could be knocked down to 2 discs. Maybe even one. It's still worth $100, but they have a cheaper cost of goods.

  • DivX is already Old.. (Score:2, Informative)

    by piett134 ( 713199 )
    Sheesh, DivX uses way to much overhead for so little quality, check out VP6 [on2.com], if you want to see real video quality.

  • I am building my own player (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I am going to take a mini ITX case, put in an AMD 2100+ processor and board, a nice all in one video card with built in mpeg2 compression / decompression, a Super DVD drive and a 120GB hard drive, hook it to a projector, and program it to play any format and to rip anything I put into it.

    It will capture TV shows in mpeg2 format with the video capture cards built in hardware compression, then transcode them at it's leasure into MPEG4 format. Once it has about 10 hours of shows recorded and transcoded, it w

  • DivX and Xvid Player (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 03, 2003 @06:08PM (#7128418)
    I already have a stand alone DVD player that plays both DivX and XVid. The LiteOn LVD-2001. DivX performance is very good, but the Xvid seems even better. A friend loaned me a CD of a movie encoded in Xvid and it is quite impressive. I suspect more and more mainstream DVD players are going to start supporting these codecs or be left behind by those that do.

    Just my opinion...

  • Heehee (Score:5, Funny)

    by HungWeiLo ( 250320 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @06:09PM (#7128422)
    CNet news reports that DivX is doing its best to become a digital video compression standard, and has been very successful in courting DVD manufacturers to adopt the DivX format.

    The DivX formmated has successfully courted this manufacturer. (Rubs lovingly my spindle of CD-R's)


  • Man, wouldn't that make for easy to use rippers:

    cp /mnt/cdrom1/vts_01.avi /movies/matrix.avi

    2 minutes to rip vs 6 hours. Sign me up!

    -Chris

  • Xvid is the best. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by incom ( 570967 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @06:30PM (#7128573)
    It performs well on low end hardware, and has excellent video quality(best I've seen in compressed video). Divx is significantly slower at high quality settings, and with slightly more artifacts. I believe xvid is LGPL too! Too bad without some lobbying money it doesn't stand a chance for Hollywood.
  • Here is the big point, When you are working in production you want to use something the most flexible. MPEG4 and and divx are platform neutral. Leaving your production houses to use basically any tools they seem fit. As I recall several movies have already been made using quicktime for instant screen replay by the directors. I also recall it being used to film wallace and gromit animations.

    Remember DRM is intended for consumer consumption 9 regardless of how foul it tastes). I think the discussion needs to
  • Everyone's up in arms about DRM. Why? They talk about it like it's something that's going to be unhackable. Someone please show me an example of the music or movie industry producing unhackable formats of anything.

    Sorry, but as soon as they get their DRM stuff in, someone's going to hack it. End of story.

  • A 100% LOL (Score:4, Informative)

    by Metaldsa ( 162825 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @07:37PM (#7129160)
    "It faces tough competition, such as MPEG-4, RealVideo and Windows Media."

    Are you kidding me? Who in their right mind would choose RealVideo unless it was for some specific video settings. RealVideo isn't a choice, it means your screwed. When I must see a RealVideo file, well just installing the thing and letting them try to corrupt my system makes me feel dirty.

    • Re:A 100% LOL (Score:2, Informative)

      by Pestilenc ( 170006 )
      One word (ok two, but that doesn't have nearly the cliched valve): Real Alternative.

      homepage [hccnet.nl]. I think this is its homepage at least.

      V1.08 is the newest.

      While you're at it, Quicktime Alternative works great as well.

      Pest
  • I've observed fairly frequent releases of new versions of DivX 5.whatever codecs. Videos encoded with the newer versions usually don't play properly unless the codec is at a high enough version. This could cause a lot of hassles with standalone DVD players; A lot of non-tech people aren't going to like re-flashing their DVD player's firmware every month or so just so they can play the latest DVD releases, and the manufacturers will probably have a lot of headaches with units being returned for service bec

  • DivX...Xvid (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by Brat Food ( 9397 )
    Ok, while these codecs have brought the best of internet IP theft so i can watch my favorite TV shows and such, there is also one HUGE problem.. It's like no 2 files use the same mix of video+audio formats. This really sucks after you reinstall your computer and cant remember which of 100 things you need to install to get your Aqua teen hunger force video to play (if you havnt guessed, im dealing with that right now).

    Another problem for adoptation i'd assume, would be the REAL MPEG4 codec and QuickTIme.

  • Let the market decide (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rwa2 ( 4391 ) * on Friday October 03, 2003 @09:49PM (#7129853) Homepage Journal
    Do we really need "a" standard? What's wrong with the current proliferation of divx, mpeg-X, quicktime, avi codecs? People will just start using the ones that give them the quality/attributes they want, and the best performing codec will come out near the top.

    Plus, the more codecs there are, the higher the chances that MPlayer will become "the" "standard" movie playing software, since it's probably one of the few that can play almost all of them! :P
  • One really neat application for DiVX might be a fast end-run around the HD DVD standardization process. A movie studio and player manufacturers could get together and squeeze HD movies down using DiVX so that they fit on a standard DVD. Then they could legitimately sell HD DVDs either as an add-on to NTSC/PAL DVDs, or as a separate unit, without having to wait for the "real" HD DVD standard to be worked out.

    Or, cable/satellite broadcasters could use DiVX to send channels at lower bandwidths than they do cu

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