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I'll throw in a shameless plug for DivX Stage6. It's in alpha, but you can publish DivX and XVID video files in their original quality all the way up to 1080p with 5.1 MP3 Surround. Stage6 also allows you to easily download the videos directly with no DRM (so long as the publisher permits it), and it's focused around building high-quality content communities.

A couple of example channels launched recently:
http://stage6.divx.com/BT
http://stage6.divx.com/Witness

DivX Web Player is required for in-browser playback on Windows and Mac (supporting all common browsers on each), and Linux users should be able to play most files in VLC or the like pending direct support for the platform.

Check this out: http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/?gaw-mac-ad2&gclid=CM n9xPyAjYgCFSkPQgodZg87HQ

Flash video is, perhaps, the worst use of Flash I've seen yet. It was bad when they told people "Sure! Design your whole site in Flash! Fuck anyone with less than a 3ghz quad core processor anyway, they won't pay for your product. Cheap bastards! Fuck being able to search your site for useful information. It's how it looks on a high end machine that counts! Break accessibility to your web page for linux/bsd/*nix users by using flash as your splash page with no HTML skip link. Those socialist open source users never pay for anything anyway!"

But now playing video? Try full screening it on mid range to low end hardware. It chugs. Just like any full screen flash animation does. The compression is shittastic. The really sad part is that it doesn't have to be that way. It's just that so many heavily addicted Flash designers get all uppity the moment anyone touches their golden calf that they've worked so hard to tame, so nobody looks for good alternatives.

Fuck Flash in its bandwidth wasting, CPU hogging, web breaking, lame video codec ear. SVG animation + sound should remove its market for vector animation as soon as good graphical editing tools come around, and an open source kit for Theora similar to Divx's Stage 6 could be used to kill off its market for video. Flash is a bloated hack, and it needs to be replaced by better solutions soon.

http://stage6.divx.com/members/83077/videos/100605 6

http://stage6.divx.com/members/83077/videos/100605 6

Samba includes a SMB client AND server for free; OSX (desktop edition, at least) has a bundled client, but no server.

Wrong.

Apache/php/perl/etc have been ported, but seem to run most smoothly on linux.

I don't know why you'd say that, as Apache and Perl come installed by default on OS X. (I don't know about PHP, I wouldn't use that heap of crap if you paid me.) There are nice 1-click installers for Rails too.

As far as user apps, well, the Gimp still seems to be designed for linux.

Yup. That's why I paid $30 for a copy of Photoshop Elements, which blows away The GIMP for usability and has all the functionality I need. Frankly, I wish there was something to compare with Elements on Linux. I use the GIMP, but every time I do it does something weird and inexplicable.

iMovie only lets you save to Quicktime (ugh), and Windows Movie Maker to Windows Media.

False. What you apparently missed is that when you save to QuickTime from iMovie, it's not saving to QuickTime file format—it's saving to the QuickTime multimedia subsystem. From there you can set your output format to anything you like. Hence iMovie can save to MPEG-4 with H.264, DivX, 3ivX, MPEG-1, DV files, whatever the hell you like.

I don't care if iMovie can turn junk footage into pure gold - what good is it if I can only save to a proprietary format?

QuickTime file format is the basis of the MPEG-4 file format. Maybe MPEG-4 is "proprietary", but it's the closest thing to a usable open standard that exists in the world of video. The QuickTime and MPEG-4 formats are both open documented specifications.

I can't open Quicktime movies in any of my windows software for further editing, and I can't open Windows Media in any of my OSX software for further editing.

If your Windows software is so crap that it can't open QuickTime, it presumably isn't one of the well-known movie editing packages like Adobe Premier, which is built on QuickTime for Windows. In which case, export from iMovie to whatever format your software needs. To use Windows Media on OS X, you simply need to install the Flip4Mac WMV QuickTime codec plugins, which you can download from Microsoft's web site. Then you can drag-drop your WMV video straight into iMovie.

As for apps that noone on Windows/OSX seem to use, netpbm is a good example. They are command-line utilities that let you convert image formats, rescale, rotate, crop, etc.

Nobody uses them because you can do the exact same thing with Graphic Converter, PhotoShop or QuickTime, script using AppleScript, and not have to actually write the code. But netpbm and ImageMagick are available for OS X if you'd rather do batch image processing the hard way. (I speak as someone who's done batch processing with ImageMagick and with GraphicConverter.)

I'm not sure how to track down all the dependencies on OSX, or whether Apple made any modifications before compiling.

So download the latest netpbm from DarwinPorts.

There are at least FIVE DVD players capable of playing high definition video from regular red laser DVD*Rs in MPEG-2 (including ATSC/DVB-T), DivX, WMV, and MPEG-4 (some models), in addition to standard DVDs. Street prices range from about $250 to $430:

IOData AVeL LinkPlayer2
Buffalo LinkTheater
JVC SRDVD-100U
DVICO TVIX-HD M-5000
Zensonic Z500

Most have DVI or HDMI, and all have digital audio outputs.

Most interestingly, these players all have networking included (this is why Fry's has theirs in the network section instead of the DVD section), and some include wireless. So you can play your streams directly from your PC (for example, if you have an ATSC/QAM tuner card) without burning anything!

Inexpensive players! Plentiful burners! Cheap media! Networked playback! HD!

Who needs HD-DVD or Blu-ray!?

Xesdeeni

I very much disagree that it's demonstrably "easier" to do it in windows.

Windows steps to get divx video:
1. Go to http://www.divx.com/
2. Locate the download page.
3. Download the installer
4. Run the installer program which asks questions about where to install, what to install, etc. (does the "average user" know the answers to these or do they just accept the defaults?)
5. Play video in...well, I'm not sure cause now I have 2 players, the divx player and windows media player--which one can I use (the answer is both, but it's still a challenge)

Ubuntu steps to make DivX video work:
1. Run the Synaptic package manager
2. Search for "Divx"
3. Check the boxes marked for gstreamer plugins that affect DivX.
4. Click the Apply button

And now, double clicking DivX video runs it.

Both require certain knowledge to be had (both require that you know you nee divx, the windows installer requires you know how to find their site, download, and run the .exe file. The linux path requires you know that gstreamer is what powers multimedia by default in ubuntu).

Just because users are more familiar (due to long-term exposure) with the windows scenario doesn't qualify that scenario as "easier"

In consumer electronics, there are two factors that generally direct which format becomes standard: time-to-market and licensing.

The first-to-market standards proposal has a good shot at winning, because by the time other competing proposals get to market, the first one has so much market penetration that nobody wants the second for fear of incompatibility.

Licensing models that are less restrictive and more open also tend to find favor among consumers. The less cost and hassle the consumer experiences wins product loyalty in the marketplace.

Consider a few examples:

VHS vs. Betamax: Sony was first-to-market with Betamax in 1975, followed in 1976 by JVC with the VHS format. Based on time, Betamax should have become the standard for magnetic recording of video. However, Sony made a mistake with licensing: only Sony would produce Betamax tapes and devices. JVC opened up their technology to licensed manufacturers, allowing for competition in the marketplace which drove the prices of VHS far enough below that of Betamax (and increased the features) to influence the marketplace to invest in VHS technology. Because at the time Betamax devices were still expensive, there was little market penetration for JVC to overcome. In summary, the open standard won.

DVD vs. Divx (not the codec): Does anyone remember this debate? Those who do, remember that these two competing CD-like digital video distribution technologies were in a little war for the consumer's pocketbook. Both technologies came out about the same time, so time-to-market wasn't an issue. The issue was Divx pay-per-view licensing model: instead of buying a video once and wathing it an infinite number of times (as with DVD), the consumer would buy the Divx video fairly cheaply but then pay something every time it is watched. Needless to say, this went over like a fart in church. DVD won based on its superior licensing model.

AM Stereo: I'm not up on the licensing models or time frame of the competing AM stereo technologies, but they were both late-to-market in relation to standard AM radio. There was already HUGE market penetration of standard AM broadcast equipment and receivers; few people saw benefit in replacing that equipment. Had there been just one proposal for AM Stereo, and had it been completely open, it is still doubtful it would have ever caught on.

Microsoft vs. Linux (Gates vs. Torvalds):consumer but it poses problems for developers who, for economic reasons, wish to maintain security over their intellectual property. It is for this reason that many hardware manufacturers do not support Linux: their legal departments cannot confidently say that their intellectual property will be protected if they provide Linux drivers for their products. In this regard, Microsoft's licensing model is superior to Linux's for the developer.

So in the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD debate, who will win? Which proposed standard will be first-to-market? Which will have the less-restrictive licensing model? What about the third factor, technical superiority? What about the fourth factor -- does the public even want it (think DAT or video phones)?

~Jon

You can put MPEG-2 into a transport- it's not QUITE as good as MPEG4, but it's better than MPEG-1. And better yet, MPEG4 decoders are VERY prevalent...

http://www.divx.com/
http://www.xvid.org/
http://www.3ivx.com/

Funny that, seems like we HAVE encoders/decoders out there for all the main platforms- and under almost all conditions, many of the mainline DVD players now have MPEG4 decode support (and EPIA motherboards, and...).

Oh, and about h.264...

Well, perhaps that's not prevalent yet (YET...), but there seems to be at least one FOSS implementation usable on all the main platforms:

http://developers.videolan.org/x264.html

Hm... Seems to me you missed the point that I was trying to make- there's no good reason for someone to have
pushed out a video of a Linux event's speaking session in a format that isn't fully supported on at least Liunx.
Technically, WMV isn't one of those sorts of things- MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, MPEG-4/AVC are supported in at least a AVI transport wrapper- and it's supported pretty much everywhere else to boot.

I am running a G4 mini with front row on it and if you download and install the divx and xvid codecs (simple process), you absolutely can view these formats in front row and/or quicktime. I access my collection of xvid tv shows across a wired network straight out of front row. The quality and ease of use is great. I haven't upgraded to front row with bonjour so right now I just use an alias (shortcut) to link to the movies folder on my server.

Here are the links you would need:

divx: http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/download/

xvid: http://www.xvidmovies.com/codec/

To view xvid files, you need to have both above codecs installed - not sure if this is the same on the PC.

-matt

here, you lazy fucker.

http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/playback/
http://n.ethz.ch/student/naegelic/
http://www.3ivx.com/download/index.html

all available as quicktime plugins.

Front Row plays anything Quicktime can. And there are codec plugins for Quicktime on the PowerPC side to handle pretty much everything. Below is a list of codecs I used on my PowerPC Mac Mini to play back pretty much everything I had except an occasional Real Media file. Keep in mind these have to be coded specifically for Intel to work on the new Mini properly.

Divx 6: http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/download/
XVid delegate: http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~naegelic/download/
3vix: http://www.3ivx.com/download/macos.html
AC3/A52 decoder: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group _id=83360
WMV Decoder for Quicktime: http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv.htm
Quicktime MPEG2 decoder, $20: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/mpeg2/

...is on the DivX page.
Ofcourse these are the smaller brands that at least have the courtesy to properly license something, not the "ripped in china"-stuff with the trademarked logo's overwritten with a black marker ("dolby technology licensed ? me not know").

Quicktime technically has the ability to play AVIs, but it's a useless feature because of the way that 90% of the ones you'll find online are put together (Divx video with MP3 audio).

AVI is a container. The AVI Container works fine with Quicktime. The DivX codec is not supported by Apple w/ QuickTime. If, however, you go to http://www.divx.com/ and download the Mac Codec, all works fine. This is the same procedure you have to do in Windows to get Windows Media Player to play DivX (or you can use one of many codecs that support DivX).

I've never had an issue playing any kind of avi in QuickTime on my iBook.

This is absolutely false. Grab the Mac Quicktime codec from DivX.com. It replaces Quicktime's AVI importer with its own and everything works perfectly. Add this to the fact that you'll need the DivX codec to play these things in Quicktime anyway and your argument falls to pieces. If you're using 3ivx to play DivX movies in Quicktime, you're insane. Their decoder sucks.

Demonstration available here: http://labs.divx.com/archives/000072.html

DivX has a Linux and Mac Player but it is still proprietary
DivX also has a DRM solution that is sued by the Art film online rental company Greencine

http://www.greencine.com/
http://www.divx.com/divx/linux/
http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/
http://www.divx.com/corporate/solutions/drm/index. php

DivX has a Linux and Mac Player but it is still proprietary
DivX also has a DRM solution that is sued by the Art film online rental company Greencine

http://www.greencine.com/
http://www.divx.com/divx/linux/
http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/
http://www.divx.com/corporate/solutions/drm/index. php

DivX has a Linux and Mac Player but it is still proprietary
DivX also has a DRM solution that is sued by the Art film online rental company Greencine

http://www.greencine.com/
http://www.divx.com/divx/linux/
http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/
http://www.divx.com/corporate/solutions/drm/index. php

The product will be allowed to languish for years, squeezing every last drop of usefulness out of a once mighty product, compressor(ing) a once large user base on2 other software solutions.

dang if I can figure out how to work Divx into that sentence... ;-)

Basically, DivX the codec was named to make fun of Circuit City's DIgital Video eXpress. From http://www.divx.com/support/what.php:

      When we say "DivX," we are not referring to the Digital Video Express
      (DIVX/DVE) service previously marketed by Circuit City. If you need
      information about Circuit City's DIVX, you might try the DIVX Owners'
      Association.

It was called divx (not to be confused with divx) and was marketted by circuit city.

It failed miserably for a variety of reasons. First and foremost it was more expensive than consumers were willing to pay for something they got to 'keep'. It's a mindset problem - if you rent it, it must be returned, and is probably rentable because it's too expensive to purchase. If you buy it, regardless of the cost, then it's "property". They didn't want to market it as "disposable" or "consumable" which customers understand instantly, and it wasn't a rental. So it failed.

Microsoft is trying to give the mdeia companies something they used to have, and have wanted for years: a bigger slice of the rental market. I don't think it's really going to work out, though, unless they also raise the cost of the DVDs.

But what if they stopped making DVDs for sale. Waht if they went whole-sale to HD-DVD, charged $30 per disc, and also produced a "throw away" DVD that worked in any 'old' DVD player for $3-5. Of course, the rental companies will simply offer the HD-DVDs for $3-5 rental, but those customers who want to view the DVD version will be forced to "rent" it multiple times, or upgrade their equipment and either purchase expensive movies or rent them.

It's temporary. In no case can this type of disc ever really be marketable long term, and it can only work short term under special circumstances.

Of course, if it depends on a windows OS or codec with web access (which would allow multiple plays with purchase of additional keys) then it's going to fail out the door - there's no hardware for the average consumer, and no boxed disc is going to make it in the market unless the average consumer is going to buy into it.

Lastly, it would be a boon for pirates. If it plays once in a regular DVD player, then it can be ripped once.

-Adam

DivX.com has a Video On Demand service. See https://vod.divx.com/.

DivX certified DVD players have a built-in code which you provide while downloading the movie from DivX.com. This then you burn to DVD RW, etc and play in your DVD player.

There are some restrictions on how many times you can play the content though.

HDCP Vulnerable? Since its inception, HDCP has been criticized by cryptographers and hackers who claim that the system suffers from profound vulnerabilities. While researching this story, we unearthed documents that described several types of straightforward attacks in great detail. Some claim that HDCP relies too heavily on a small array of keys that can be easily cracked through simple linear algebra, while others describe ways to capture encrypted transmissions for later decryption on a compromised display.

VOD.DIVX.COM/HOW is borked because it redirects to a bogus destination. Fortunately going straight to the SSL version https://vod.divx.com/how/ works.

Alternatively, you can go to http://vod.divx.com/ and click the How It Works button and you'll get to the right page.

I noticed this address too my my DVD player. How it's supposed to work (as far as I can tell):

You download the content on your Windows PC, then use your DivX player (which presumably has some sort of disc burning functionality) to create the disc. The DivX player authorises you and burns a personalised disc which will ONLY play on the player tied to your account (or, if you have multiple players, which ever player you select to burn it for). You can own multiple players (or buy a new one when when the old one breaks) and still watch movies you've purchased on them, but you have to burn a new disc each time you want to play it on a new system.

The obvious disadvantages are, it's a hassle to burn the CD's - and for longer movies, DVD's - and keeping track of multiple sets if you have more than one player (e.g. if as I do, you have one in the bedroom as well as one in the living room, and of course many people have them in cars these days for the kids some have multiple living rooms, etc). You also have to be careful because of differing DivX versions, some movies won't play on some players. And of course, you can't watch them at a friends house, loan the videos, or expect to sell them on once your done.

This is not helped by the very limited video selection currently available.

I would have thought it would be much easier just to download the movies and stream it to your PC with some sort of wireless streaming solution (so you skip the time consuming and costly burning process all together). I believe this sort of network enabled player (often combined with a regular DVD/VCD player) are what vendors like AOL are looking at.

I'd be willing to put up with some trade offs (compared to DVD's) stemming from a system where I could easily stream the videos from a shared network drive (especially as consumer NAS units are really starting to take off) but I can't see many people who'd be comfortable burning and ripping CD's and DVD's thinking something where you have to burn a unique disc per player as being worth the hassle.

VOD.DIVX.COM/HOW is borked because it redirects to a bogus destination. Fortunately going straight to the SSL version https://vod.divx.com/how/ works.

Alternatively, you can go to http://vod.divx.com/ and click the How It Works button and you'll get to the right page.

I noticed this address too my my DVD player. How it's supposed to work (as far as I can tell):

You download the content on your Windows PC, then use your DivX player (which presumably has some sort of disc burning functionality) to create the disc. The DivX player authorises you and burns a personalised disc which will ONLY play on the player tied to your account (or, if you have multiple players, which ever player you select to burn it for). You can own multiple players (or buy a new one when when the old one breaks) and still watch movies you've purchased on them, but you have to burn a new disc each time you want to play it on a new system.

The obvious disadvantages are, it's a hassle to burn the CD's - and for longer movies, DVD's - and keeping track of multiple sets if you have more than one player (e.g. if as I do, you have one in the bedroom as well as one in the living room, and of course many people have them in cars these days for the kids some have multiple living rooms, etc). You also have to be careful because of differing DivX versions, some movies won't play on some players. And of course, you can't watch them at a friends house, loan the videos, or expect to sell them on once your done.

This is not helped by the very limited video selection currently available.

I would have thought it would be much easier just to download the movies and stream it to your PC with some sort of wireless streaming solution (so you skip the time consuming and costly burning process all together). I believe this sort of network enabled player (often combined with a regular DVD/VCD player) are what vendors like AOL are looking at.

I'd be willing to put up with some trade offs (compared to DVD's) stemming from a system where I could easily stream the videos from a shared network drive (especially as consumer NAS units are really starting to take off) but I can't see many people who'd be comfortable burning and ripping CD's and DVD's thinking something where you have to burn a unique disc per player as being worth the hassle.

VOD.DIVX.COM/HOW is borked because it redirects to a bogus destination. Fortunately going straight to the SSL version https://vod.divx.com/how/ works.

Alternatively, you can go to http://vod.divx.com/ and click the How It Works button and you'll get to the right page.

I noticed this address too my my DVD player. How it's supposed to work (as far as I can tell):

You download the content on your Windows PC, then use your DivX player (which presumably has some sort of disc burning functionality) to create the disc. The DivX player authorises you and burns a personalised disc which will ONLY play on the player tied to your account (or, if you have multiple players, which ever player you select to burn it for). You can own multiple players (or buy a new one when when the old one breaks) and still watch movies you've purchased on them, but you have to burn a new disc each time you want to play it on a new system.

The obvious disadvantages are, it's a hassle to burn the CD's - and for longer movies, DVD's - and keeping track of multiple sets if you have more than one player (e.g. if as I do, you have one in the bedroom as well as one in the living room, and of course many people have them in cars these days for the kids some have multiple living rooms, etc). You also have to be careful because of differing DivX versions, some movies won't play on some players. And of course, you can't watch them at a friends house, loan the videos, or expect to sell them on once your done.

This is not helped by the very limited video selection currently available.

I would have thought it would be much easier just to download the movies and stream it to your PC with some sort of wireless streaming solution (so you skip the time consuming and costly burning process all together). I believe this sort of network enabled player (often combined with a regular DVD/VCD player) are what vendors like AOL are looking at.

I'd be willing to put up with some trade offs (compared to DVD's) stemming from a system where I could easily stream the videos from a shared network drive (especially as consumer NAS units are really starting to take off) but I can't see many people who'd be comfortable burning and ripping CD's and DVD's thinking something where you have to burn a unique disc per player as being worth the hassle.

Times out for me as well.
The forums howevers have a bit something about it:
http://support.divx.com/cgi-bin/divx.cfg/php/endus er/std_adp.php?p_sid=Z8lJbWzh&p_lva=&p_faqid=306&p _created=1067638468&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0P SZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9NDAmcF9wcm9kX2x2bDE9NyZwX3BhZ2U9MQ* *&p_li=

I say we boycott both HD-DVD and BlueRay and push our own:

Today's red laser DVDs with DivX (or h.264). There are already several players on the market and they have component out!

* You get HD on component!
* You use today's already inexpensive DVD technology!
* You get HD movies on a single DVD!
* With DivX's new version, you get menus, etc.

Let's send the message that we aren't going to stand for this crap!

Xesdeeni

I subscribe to Greencine, and the little tear-off flier that you remove to convert the receiving mailer into the sending mailer has a little inset image of a DVD player with a "DivX Video" logo on it with the captions:

"IF YOU OWNED A DivX® Certified DVD PLAYER, YOU COULD HAVE WATCHED THIS MOVIE YESTERDAY!

"Download, burn, and enjoy GreenCine movies in hours with DivX VOD.

"FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT VOD.DIVX.COM/HOW"

Of course, when I try to go to that URL, it times out, so who knows?

You're correct in that it's not a standard feature now. But the number of DivX certified DVD players is only growing. It'll probably be a standard feature in the next 2 years, just like mp3 and photo playback.

No, it's in there. Trust me.

See http://www.divx.com/divx/bundles_faq.php#dx-prod-g oogle-para

I already posted asking if this would break the DVP642...

Then I found this:
http://trailers.divx.com/torrents/Revelations.divx .torrent
I suggest downloading that and trying it in the DVP (I would and report if I wasn't half way out the door and copying DVD at this point.)

Everyone else is currently left out in the cold.

We're hard at work on the DivX Create Bundle for Mac and the DivX Play Bundle for Mac. Rest assured that we'll let you know the second they are ready for release. In the meantime, please continue to use DivX 5.2.1 or DivX Pro(TM) 5.2.1 for Mac OS X.

(Ref: http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/divx6.php).

No word on versions for any other platform either.

Personally, if I had my way more people would just use H.264, and then I wouldn't have to care.

Yaz.

It seems that they renamed Dr. DivX to DivX Converter. I've used Dr. DivX for a while and I liked it.

Actually Dr. DivX was a cute name, mostly because it was orginal and not cheesey... I can't wait to try this new software out.

It seems that they renamed Dr. DivX to DivX Converter. I've used Dr. DivX for a while and I liked it.

Actually Dr. DivX was a cute name, mostly because it was orginal and not cheesey... I can't wait to try this new software out.

So? That's an option for the DivX Create bundle thinger; it's not required for use. Also, it'll be pretty easy to weed those out considering they'll have a .divx extension to differentiate from the standard AVI container.

The last linux version was 5.05 http://www.divx.com/divx/linux/

http://download.divx.com/divx/DivXPlay.exe

ANyways, this has been out for not too long and it really is a great new release unlike many past versions.

Well, both HL2 and Doom 3 had renderers for old versions of DirectX. Some people even managed to run Doom 3 on Voodoo 2. Yes, any graphics card can probably handle the levels and the characters moving around. You don't need an X800 for that. But if you don't mind low-res textures, low-poly models, no bump, no shadows, no dynamic lighting, then you will be essentially playing something only slightly better than Quake 2 and Half-Life. What's the point? I probably can also watch video on a 386 (an MPEG1 in a 160x120 window), but is it the same as watching High Definition DivX?

Good videocards allow better image quality in games. If you don't need better image quality, that's fine, but most people disagree with you.

Wow... ok, there's definitely something not right there, let's see if we can fix it...

FYI: I've got a 1.42GHz Mac Mini and a 500MHz G3 iMac (the old 'gum-drop' style). Even the G3 can handle most DivX's I throw at it, and the Mini's fine even with these DivX-HD trailers... both using QuickTime for playback.

Let's look at what codec you're using. QT codecs are kept in /Library/QuickTime. Looking in mine, I see I'm using 3ivX D4 4.5.1 for OS X which you can download from here.

Bear in mind that it's not too clever to have multiple codecs installed which can handle the same formats. So move any existing DivX codecs out of the above folder. You'll have to restart QuickTime (and any QT-using apps -- hell, a log-out/back in will do it for sure) for the new codecs to be used.

Note that QuickTime sometimes chokes on the indexing in AVI files which use MP3 audio tracks. Symptoms include no or stuttering video, or perfect video but stuttering/no audio. This is purely a stream indexing problem -- there's a tool on the 3ivX download page above called DivX Doctor II which will create corrected files (and maintain PC compatibility). Note that there's no re-encoding going on, just a bit of tweaking to the indices -- takes a minute or two to fix a 2-hr long film. I've got a little Folder Action Script attached to my Movies folder which automatically runs any .avi's I copy in there through the Doctor, so the process can be made completely invisible.

Finally, if you're playing DivX's with AC3 audio, get the AC3 codec from here, and drop it in with the other QT components at /Library/QuickTime.

QuickTime Player itself has never been a performance slacker on my two Macs. Duff codecs are another story :)

Hope this helps! There's absolutely no reason at all you should be having problems with DivX files on your Mac.

Chris

Wow, stop posting on this article, it's way old! :-) There's a DivX.com forum where we hang out if you have more questions.

Sony doesn't release the datasheets for the tuner modules in the TV402U. The PAL tuner is totally different than the NTSC tuner. But we're testing the PAL tuner support right now and hope to release it early next week.

I was actually really surprised when the New York Times article about DivX enabled high definition capability wasn't slashdotten long ago when the New York Times touted a third possible competitor in the High Definition consumer electronic device market for High Definition viability. You can find the article here.

(sorry, this does require a free subscription)

IO-Data offers their DivX HD Certified AvelLinkplayer2 for around US $250.00 and is quite capable and you can get it NOW. There should be more players on the way - from my understanding, Sigma Designs EM8620L Chips are more than capable of DivX High Definition. I also believe KiSS has showed off a similar DivX High Definition Video-On-Demand player at CeBIT. (scroll down, you'll see it).

If you're running a Linux flavor, you can download the pure divx codec from Divx.com

Or just, you know, download the correct codec (divx) like they advise at the top of the page...

Try the following:

• 3ivx Codec
• DivX Codec
• Xvid Codec
• Real Export Plug-in

Enjoy!

Yaz.

Why'd they choose xvid? Maybe because MPEGs would be twice as big (or far lower picture quality).

Since apparently spending 30 seconds searching is too much to ask of you, here's how to play xvids:
On Windows: go here, download and install ffdshow. Xvid files should now play in whatever video player you use.
Alternatively, this page has a list of other Xvid binaries you can try, and I believe Divx also will read xvid files if you have it installed.
On Mac OS: download and run VLC media player

Also, you forget that "geeks" who care about DRM are the people who the less technically talented will go to for reccomendations on what consumer electronics to buy. Thus, 1 geek may influence the purchasing decisions of 5 or 10 different people considering something like Microsoft MCE; those people are Microsoft's target buyers and their choice to go with an MCE competitor like Tivo hurts MS's bottom line. When you consider that they're the ones everyone comes to for advice, geeks may have more power over purchasing habits than you thought.

WOW!

Blue's News has links for the awesome introduction cutscene (DivX from World of Warcraft game. Also, FileShack (registration required; free or subscription required) has it. It is about 46.5 MB; AVI; 2 minutes and 49 seconds long).

Apple has this introduction cutscene in QuickTime format (non-saveable) as well.

The introduction was almost like watching The Lords of the Rings movies. Amazing! I can't wait for the free open beta! :)