What's the deal with DivX?

shack

I thought this format was dead. I've been looking into an inexpensive DVD player for my mom to finally bring her into the digital age (at 75 it's about time). Many have DivX plastered all over it. I'm thinking WTF...don't tell me this POS format is back.

I found the DivX website and it's true it is back, but it's not what it used to be. I called it the "mission impossible format"...you know..."this movie will self destruct in 5 seconds, 4 seconds...". It seems now it is just a compression format. From the Website:

What is DivX®
DivX® is the brand name of the world's most popular video compression technology. At its core, DivX is a codec (short for compression/decompression) - a piece of software that compresses video from virtually any source down to a size that is transportable over the Internet without reducing the original video's visual quality.


With DivX® video technology, you can compress a DVD to a fraction of its original size. DivX video compression is so efficient you can fit the entire contents of a DVD on a regular data CD with virtually no loss in quality. Now you can take any digital video content, from home movies to your personal DVD collection1 and save it on CDs to share with friends or store it on your computer's hard drive without spending huge amounts on extra storage.
Traditionally, video on the Internet was grainy, low resolution and postage stamp-sized. Today all that is changing. Since the introduction of DivX® video technology five years ago, video content providers finally have a real solution to deliver their creations to the world without sacrificing visual quality or shelling out major cash for extra bandwidth. Millions of people worldwide are already using their standard high speed connections to download feature-length movies from the Internet in less than the time it takes to watch them.

Not only has DivX® video technology enabled the fast and secure delivery of high-quality, highly compressed digital video, it also frees digital video content from the confines of the computer monitor by allowing viewers to easily transfer it to a certified device and enjoy it right on the living room TV. With the full range of DivX® Certified devices flooding the market this year, you can now easily take that DivX movie created on your computer, pop it into your DivX Certified DVD player and enjoy it on your big screen TV. The DivX codec even lets you make movies specifically for your favorite device, be it Portable (your personal video player for when you travel), High Definition (your fancy new HDTV), Handheld (your video-capable PDA, like Compaq's PocketPC) or Home Theater (your DivX Certified DVD player).

So it is the "old" temporary video fomat or is it something new.

A little research turned up this article....

The Origins of the Original Divx
written by R. J. Dunnill on Thursday, January 17, 2002
Most people think of DivX as MPEG-4, but there was a movie rental system called Divx that failed.

Editor's note: "Divx," as mentioned in this article, is different from "DivX," the MPEG-4 compression technology. DivX is still in use and DivX players are widely available on the Internet. For more information about DivX, read this article.

Originally known as Zoom TV, Divx was a home video system originally conceived around 1994 by Los Angeles entertainment law firm Ziffren, Brittenham, Branca and Fischer. The firm teamed up with Circuit City Stores (the largest consumer electronics retailer in the US at the time) to develop the idea into a marketable product.

Divx (the name was derived from the company's name, Digital Video Express) was based on DVD-V, and used MPEG-2 digital video and Dolby Digital surround sound. Divx was a rental system that was practically video-on-demand, charged no late fees, and offered many new rental titles the same day as their VHS equivalents were released.

The national Divx rollout came just in time for the 1998 holiday season. A scant title selection, just two player models, and a limited retail distribution (many Circuit City competitors refused to carry it) hampered Divx. However, the format still managed a surprisingly strong showing during the holidays, and by June 1999, nine months after nationwide sales had commenced, Divx had 10 percent of the DVD market and a catalog of over 500 titles.

Single-source woes
Behind the scenes, Divx was struggling. There was the burden of having to single-handedly build up a brand-new home video format that many Circuit City competitors refused to carry. The costs were a drag on Circuit City stock; financial analysts urged Circuit City to drop the operation and concentrate on its core businesses.

Video rental firms opposed Divx because it threatened to disrupt a lucrative revenue stream: late fees.


The idea of a system designed for metered disc viewing enraged many film buffs and home theater hobbyists, and a virulent anti-Divx campaign erupted on the Internet. Warner Home Video, a driving force behind the sell-through-oriented DVD format, wanted to derail Divx (perhaps in part because it wanted to thwart competition for its upcoming video-on-demand system). Video rental firms opposed Divx because it threatened to disrupt a lucrative revenue stream: late fees.

Despite a commitment from Circuit City to fund Divx through another Christmas season, DVD news sites reported that Circuit City tried to sell off the Divx operation to Blockbuster in spring 1999.

Divx's Death
On June 16, 1999, Circuit City CEO Dick Sharp ordered the plug pulled on Divx development and marketing. Divx employees learned the news via a mass email.

The billing system would be phased out over a two-year period, during which existing customers could play their discs and add and subtract players from their accounts. Officially, no new customers were to be registered, although some exceptions were made, and $100 refunds were made to those who had purchased players prior to June 16, 1999. Customers who had converted discs to unlimited play (DivxSilver) were given the choice of receiving refunds or using their unlimited play discs for the remainder of the phase-out period.

Player prices were slashed to where they were substantially below their DVD-only equivalents, and disc prices dropped from $4.49 to $1.99, and then to 99 cents. Discs still unsold at Circuit City stores at the end of the summer 1999 were destroyed.

In June of 2001, two years after Divx marketing and development ceased, there was still plenty of consumer interest in Divx, but Circuit City stuck to the phase-out timetable. Six days after the official cutoff date of July 1, 2001, all Divx accounts expired, and Divx became a memory.

So DivX is alive and well and Divx is dead.

Any thoughts? It seems to me DivX is just video MP3. I personally have no use for either.

danger boy

I'm still waiting for them to bring back Betamax video tape.

as they say... everything old is NEW again.

They should have called it something else too.. Divx in any language, bites it.

shack

danger boy wrote:

They should have called it something else too.. Divx in any language, bites it.

That was what I thought. Why would they name a format after that huge failure? Does anyone want to buy a new Ford Pinto, a Yugo, a NEW coke, a beta-max or an Apple Newton? Milli-vanilli or Vanilla Ice? Just dumb IMO.

nadams

DivX has been around for quite a while. It's NOT the same as Divx.

It doesn't do anywhere near the same thing, and doesn't bite too badly. Most videos on the 'net anymore are either encoded with DivX, or XviD

danger boy

well, millions of Pintos were sold.. as were Yugo's. so not quite a failure. but i get your point. BetaMax was actually the superior format for video tape.. still in use by Broadcast stations around the world. But in the home, yes a failure.

danger boy

call it VixD or IxVD

shack

danger boy wrote:

well, millions of Pintos were sold.. as were Yugo's. so not quite a failure. but i get your point. BetaMax was actually the superior format for video tape.. still in use by Broadcast stations around the world. But in the home, yes a failure.

And NEW Coke beat Coke Classic in thousands of blind tastes tests. (What does that say about everyone that always touts "double blind testing" here on the forum?) Apple Newton was a technological breakthrough.

If you ever had one of those Pintos you would not consider them a success (especially if the gas tank blew up on you), and the Yugo had more in common with the millions of NEW Coke cans that were sold than it did with an automobile.

History (and perception) defines success and failure.

ledhed

Yea, it's just a very prevalent encoding format. you probably haven't noticed because windows media has included it for sometime.

TheReaper

shack wrote:

If you ever had one of those Pintos you would not consider them a success (especially if the gas tank blew up on you)

I had a 73 pinto. When it got recalled, I went to the dealer and bought a 78 at half price. He had a whole line of them (on the back lot) that he couldn't sell.

bobman1235

DivX is good for what it does. If you're downloading videos off the net, it's a decent compression algorithm. I often download old TV shows in DivX format if I went to get caught up on a current series that I missed. It's nice if your DVD player can play them because you can watch them on your TV rather than your PC.

Like everything else, it has its place.

John in MA

The guy who created the compression codec named it after the failed rental DVD format as a joke.