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DivX;), The MPAA, The Future And The Past
Stibanater writes: "The second part of a 2-parter on Salon about DivX seems to hint at MPAA tolerance of DivX as a good distribution format. Granted, this comes from the mouth of a DivX Network's exec, so salt to taste. Still, the tasty part is the insinuation that the MPAA has learned from Napster, and will move to quickly embrace online distribution instead of 'suing it out of existence.' The first part is an explanation of DivX for the layman and a little bit about the DeCSS case." On a related note, Dan Marlin writes: "Looks like the "Internet Archive" http://www.archive.org has decided to add the DivX MPEG-4 format to it's entire movie collection. This is huge in the way of mass acceptance for the DivX ;-).
It looks like they are still in the encoding process as most of movies are still only available in MPEG-2. But after scanning the collection the past few days, it looks like they are adding more daily."
best CPU for MPEG-4 and check this out too MPEG-4 DVD to CD-ROM The masses won't be using this anytime soon. Just to decode the thing it takes 80% of your CPU with a Pentium 450Mhz. To Encode it it'll take 36 hours. Although they said an Athlon 1.1GHz can do it in like 6 to 10 hours.
So in a year or two years when my grandma has a P500 or above..only then will I convert all my mini-DV homevideo tapes to Divx and pass them around like candy. Bottomline though..is it's coming..just a matter of time..Right now it's just for new unreleased movies not out on DVD yet.
I'm sorry to say that I know of no open standard video compression formats out there. We need to back something like ogg vorbis for video, which doesn't exist yet. Someone needs to get the ball rolling on this. Start something up under the BSD or LGPL license and put it up on sourceforge and go.
You are an absolute moron. That is what OpenDivX, the whole point of projectmayo, is! Open Source.
Who modded this up?
-Davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
Unless you simply can't buy the studio version (because you are in a country that the DVD cartels won't release DVDs, or only release them after sitting on them for 2 or 3 years.)
;-) is a great boon to Fansub efforts all over the world, as it gave people a way to distribute their works all over the world without the massive headache involved in copying and mailing tapes, not to mention the generational loss issues that invariably creep into your work over time. If only they used a wrapper format that was better at keeping the audio and video in sync...
DivX
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
Posted by rakerman:
Can someone explain the differences between the competing codecs - original DivX, "open" DivX, DivX Deux, OpenCodex.com, 3ivx... Are any of them any better/faster, more cross-platform etc.? The Archive.org files that have been converted so far are in original DivX.
I guess not everyone has the equipment yet, but there are lots of ways to turn (legal) MPEG-2 and DivX from Archive.org into video in another format: video card with composite video out to VCR, convert to DV stream and record over FireWire to DV camcorder, make into a VideoCD using e.g. Nero, or make into a DVD (using Apple's iDVD).
Posted by kjeldsen:
Why would anyone use a hacked MS Codec for this? ISeeLawSuits
Posted by Lee Thompson:
DivX;-) is just some hacked codec to begin with so I, for one, will never support it. If the "makers" of DivX (which is technically Microsoft so I should say the "hackers that distribute DivX") really want to do something clever; they should write their own code. (Don't get me wrong; I think a cross platform MPEG-4 codec is a wonderful thing but let's make one without just hacking someone else's -- and yes; I know there are a couple in development.) As for the MPAA, I seriously doubt the MPAA is going to embrace a hacked codec in which illegal screener copies of currently running films are distributed over the internet.
Rest assured that computer -> svideo (or better) of decent quality will become a popular item
Decent wireless transmitters would also be a possibility. But really, if there's a stock format, a reasonably low-cost player will soon follow. If I can cut a CD-R on my PC and then play it on the standalone player, I'm happy.
Also, Pioneer's DVD-writer is ~$1000 today. I remember working with an $8,000 CD writer back in 1995, that wasn't as good as today's $150 machines. You should be able to get a DVD writer for $200 by, say, January 2003.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Yes, DivX is a good distribution format, just like mp3 is a good distribution format.
The technology is here, the tools are here, the performance gains are substantial, people like it, and people are using it...
the only thing that hasn't caught up yet are the legal implications of using this technology, because of the restrictions that companies and our legal system place on it. Just like mp3.
Therefore, I predict much controversy, and widespread use, and no one getting killed.
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None of the MPEG-4 decoders work on Itanium or Alpha.
We have 3ivx running in the lab on Alphas.
:)
:)
We have 3ivx running on Solaris (well sunos should work too)
We have 3ivx running on BeOS
We have 3ivx running on MacOS
We have 3ivx running on Windows, in Windows Media Player & QuickTime
We have 3ivx running on Linux x86 and LinuxPPC
We have 3ivx running in XAnim
We have 3ivx running in Quicktime4Linux
We even have 3ivx running on Amigas! 68k and PPC!!!
We are working on more
Including V4L2, and PS2
Just so you know
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Don't know if you are aware or not... But DivX has now been open sourced which makes this point of yours totally irrelevant.
I'm aware of a bunch of projects which have promised to release an open source DivX codec Real Soon Now, but don't currently have line 1 of code in public CVS. I'm aware of things like avifile which make DivX usable in Linux through an open source wrapper... but an open source DivX implementation? Where?
It's vitally important that someone gets a good, vendor-neutral video format established. We need the video equivalent of .MP3, and soon. If not, ASF (Windows Media Player) will become the de-facto standard in a few years, effectively locking Linux out of the desktop market because it "can't play video."
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...who was ever "prevented" from copying analog content, either?
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Agreed. I have the sinking feeling the MPAA considers lower quality a good thing, a la "we gave consumers high-quality anamorphic DVDs and got piracy in return. we'll show them!".
Seems to me that we should be helping Project Mayo get its codec solid and stable and using that, instead of the DivX ;) hack.
I'd hate to be the admin on a mail server with users passing around 700mb files via email. Most of the trading is done on IRC, usenet, and P2P applications...
Some of us have larger monitors than TV sets.
I fully expect the quality problem to be fixed but distribution won't be fixed. Who wants to download 700mb to find that the movie freezes, the voices are not synced properly, etc. I for one would gladly pay $5 for a decent release from a studio that was in a better format than DivX ;).
The studios probably don't think it is too soon to avoid an mp3 like onslaught of their market. Obviously the number of users would be low compared to theatre/tape rentals but that is perfect - a tech savvy market to start the project with... I'd be happy to buy downloadable releases that were compressed to the size of an 80m CD with quality that is almost, if not as good, as DVD. And I would want to pay about the cost of going to the movies - the cost saving should be passed on to the consumer... With DVD and CD the end user never saw the cost savings of the new medium. Maybe the threat of piracy will make the cost of downloadable movies reasonable!
That going in to the fight with a "fuck you" attitude might not be the best approach? I don't think they had many other options but the outcome was obvious to all the bystanders.
I make no assumptions on /. :).
a) have the fridge next to the computer
b) use bad printouts as toilet paper
c) have wireless keyboards nor mice
d) fall asleep at the computer
Television is basically full of crap unless you subscribe to cable and then you get even more crap with at least some decent content. My TV is 13", my monitor 19".
It sounds like your friend had a shitty TV-out device... You can have you movies accessabled over the lan (what? you don't have a linux-based samba server?).
Going to the movies here is about $8-$10 bucks (Chicago).
Don't know if you are aware or not... But DivX has now been open sourced which makes this point of yours totally irrelevant. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it has the potential of becoming better
.AVI file format? Does it still have piss-poor dark-value encoding? Has the data-rate tracking improved?
How does that make it irrelevenat? Even if DivX is still open source it still sucks as a format.
I wasn't able to get a clear-cut answer, but is the Project Mayo OpenDivx codec backwards compatable with DivX? Or is it a whole new codec. I then get back to my orginal questions. Does it us the crappy
Perhaps it's time for me to do my own research.
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That's not what I meant.
DivX is not a good format. It encodes dark values all wrong (hint: they eye does not detect values linearly). The data rate tracking is terrible. It relies on the .avi file architecture (better the .asf but still a dog in the industry). DivX IS NOT MPEG4!!! It is simply MicroSoft's copy of an old MPEG4 spec.
.GIF. Closed, unexpandable and bad. At least it's not patented (but it's hardly even legal!)
So what do we need? We need a video file format with BETTER compression. We need to move away from Microsoft file formats and support open standards (for example, MPEG4). And that brings us to the last point, wait for MPEG4 compliant codecs. MPEG4 gives you many advantages over DivX. Look them up for yourself if you want to find them. Better file format, better scalability, even some better compression.
I understand that DivX was simply at the right place at the right time. But here's to hoping that the format does not become another
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That's not what I meant.
I in a way am not surprised that the MPAA has not tried to squash the MPEG-4 format.
The reason is simple: with the addition of some form of digital rights management, MPEG-4 will allow the movie companies to distribute movies extremely cheaply. It may not have all the fancy menus and extra features of DVD, but an MPEG-4 formatted movie disc does not require the far more expensive mastering equipment used on mastering DVD's--it can be mastered using current audio CD mastering equipment. This could allow for very cheap duplication of movies, since packaging costs for a CD nowadays is likely going to be less than that of a VHS tape, and with proper handling they'll last a long time, too.
Essentially we'll end up with DVD's for the high-end market and MPEG-4 encoded discs for the low cost market. We'll have a case where DVD's sell for around US$25-$30 and MPEG-4 encoded discs go for US$10-$15.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
The most expensive part about producing a stand-alone player that can decode an MPEG-4 encoded disc is the decoding circuitry itself.
However, given the dirt-cheap costs of creating quite complex ASIC custom chips nowadays, once production starts a single chip that can decode MPEG-4 in real time should be pretty reasonable to start with. And because MPEG-4 discs doesn't require the tolerances of DVD drives (it can use standard CD-ROM drives), the total cost of a player could be way, way below that of a DVD console player.
Indeed, I can foresee players for these new MPEG-4 encoded discs going for as little as US$80 because you can use current CD transports.
One thing though, I think the MPAA may ask that the resolution of these discs be limited to around 330 lines of resolution, unlike the 500+ lines of resolution of DVD discs. However, given the limits of most TV monitors nowadays, that still will be far superior to standard VHS tapes.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
I'll ask you this: how much does it cost to master a DVD video disc? It's still pretty expensive, especially for those who have to add in all the extra features out the wazoo.
Because MPEG-4 discs are going to be like regular VHS tapes, they will lack the extra features of DVD discs, which means mastering costs are going to be way lower. That means the studio can sell it at US$10-$15 per disc and still make a very tidy profit from it.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Decoding it is one thing, but encoding MPEG-4 files is quite something else. You probably not only need a really fast CPU, but also a dedicated encoder video board to pull it off.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Ther is specualtion that the MPAA never even intended for CSS to be "copy protecton" in the first place. Only a means to region lock dvd's to a specific region. It make s since when you think about it. The industry big wigs must have known that cracking theyr coveted "copy protection" scheme would be the crown jewel of the pirates on the net....it was bound to happen....so why bother...or for that matter why use a weak encryption scheme? Its not about stamping out "copying"...its about fixing prices.
I forgot the smilie after my statement. At first, I assumed that the insanity of passing around 40MB+ files via email would be obvious, but then, after hitting submit, I thought that a smilie was in order. Eh. Live 'n learn.
That said, this is still news for nerds & stuff that matters. :)
It sounds too farfetched.
A major cabal of multi-million dollar corporations doing something that just plain makes sense?
I'll believe it when I see it.
You say you want a revolution....
Most video cards have a TV out these days, not so hard to run a cable from the PC to the TV if you want to watch a movie.
Or you could just have them there on your hard drive to queue up in half screen or 1/4th screen mode when you're doing something else...
The possibilities are endless...
You know, back when I had a 386 with a 150 meg hard drive and a 2400 baud modem, I would have thought that mp3 was pretty useless, since it would take hours to download one song, and then you'd have to decompress it ahead of time, and really, who'd want to store all that data for casual use?
Remember, it is not about what is, it's about what will be.
Rest assured that computer -> svideo (or better) of decent quality will become a popular item, and there will be much more selection as this grows in popularity, just as there are a zillion mp3 devices you can get nowadays.
I know people that have high-quality tv-out boards that only cost them a few hundred bucks (no different than, say, a good 3d card for gaming)
While I do agre that most people do not have the setup for watching DivX ;-) Movies. I disagree that themovies are only playable from the Moitor. I have a TV out card, and When I watch the DivX movies I have, I've ofund that using the TVout, and watching the movies on my TV is very nice, with the exception of the lack of a remote control (most likely going to be fixed when I get a wireless keyboard). Otherwise, things are pretty much the same as far as seating goes (the couch in my dorm room), and with compression. I've gotten several Long movies compressed to sizes that give better than VHS quality video and sound, and also fit onto CD-R's. This brings me to my next point. They do have CD-Players that Play MP3s now. What about the concept of a Set-top DivX box? in theory, this could work, and it might work very nicely, if done properly.
-Willki
http://www.xiph.org/ogg/index.html
Here's a link to a page with some info (not much) on the Ogg Tarking video codec. You can view the mailing list archives. From the looks of it, they are going to be using a codec based on wavelets. Support this, not DivX. DivX is good for now, but in the long run we need something free and open, and I don't think DivX qualifies.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
Also, as DVD-RAM becomes available to the general public, you'll probably see people converting movies back to a DVD-player accessible format (like the mp3->CD conversion)
Look, Divx isn't that great. I've used it-mpeg2 is far superior. Why is this? Because the size of files isn't important any more. People have 30 gig hard drives, and broadband connections. Who cares if the file size is bigger? Mpeg-2 will play on machines all the way down to my parents' Pentium 120. But for Divx, you need a good computer to play the movies. I can't play them very well on my K6-2 300. It's all well and good that some people's computers are fast enough for Divx, but mpeg-2 is and should be the standard. So stop saying how great Divx is-it's not that great.
Colin Winters
The "open source" licence is not GPL - it requires you to do stuff like adding some kind of "made with divxnetwork" header to your movies.
So its like the old BSD license that required your program to mention the source when the program starts up? Not a major issue, if thats the only one.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Otherwise, you are what we call in the trade a SKOF (Special Kind Of Fuckwit).
Incidentaly I don't think that the GPL vs other open models is a big issue. Richard Stallman put a lot of his personal politics into the GPL, it is not possible to use GPL code in a commercial project. Apache and Linux are far more 'open' in my view, they are certainly less restrictive.
Ummm ... lemme see here ... errr ... Linux - the unix-like kernel released by Linus Torvalds and released under ... the GPL !!
Huh? Think for a second before you post!
Can you watch Sorenson Video 3 encoded movies on Linux? -- No
Would you be able to watch Sorenson MPEG-4 encoded movies on Linux? -- Yes
Why? -- Because MPEG-4 is an open standard.
Get it???????
Kind of a later reply here, but...
I don't see the OpenDivX effort as really being good for open source causes, since it's not GPL'd.. you couldn't legally take their enhancements and incorporate them into a GPL'd project (of course it'll happen anyway, but...).
Second, as a Linux user all I want is to be able to play whatever digital media is available, and to be able to compress to those common standards also. Even if there's a great open source alternative to MPEG-4, I still want to be able to play MPEG-4 if (as it seems) it's going to be widely adopted. Given the MPEG-1/2 situation, I don't see any reason to believe that MPEG-4 licencing fees will be pursued from end users, and if I ever got to the point of wanting to commercially author MPEG-4 movies I wouldn't begrudge them the licence fees.
I don't know. I assume they're trying to build on the DivX "brand name" and usurp adoption of standard MPEG-4... As you say, with people like Phillips and Sorenson already technically way ahead, and OpenDivX incompatible with DivX anyway, it seems a long shot!
OK, but I'm lazy, so no HTML links!
t ml
;-) CODEC, that is just a binary hack of Microsoft's (almost) MPEG-4 CODEC to allow it to be used with AVIs. This is the CODEC that practically all the DivX's on the net are compressed with.
;-), despite the "OpenDivX" name.
/. rejected was centered around the stunning (to me, at least! ;-) press release from Sorenson at MacWorld about a month ago that they now have a VERY impressive MPEG-4 CODEC (incl. 2-pass VBR)...I'm amazed and happy that Sorenson would so aggressively push an open standard when their cash cow is a proprietary competitor.
/. thought their lame story quoting the divxnetworks.com weasels was better than this stuff! ;-)
http://www.divx-digest.com/software/divxcodec.h
One source for the original "3.11 alpha" DivX
http://www.projectmayo.com/index.php
Home of OpenDivX and run by divxnetworks.com. OpenDivX is based on the MoMuSys MPEG-4 source code, and unlike DivX claims to be MPEG-4 compliant, albeit using AVI rather than MPEG-4 file format. This encoder is S-L-O-W and also incompatible with DivX
You can play, and encode(!) OpenDivX movies with the awesome mplayer media player for linux:
http://thot.banki.hu/esp-team/MPlayer.html
http://www.3ivx.com/
A commercial company producing a free MPEG-4 decoder, and about to announce an encoder at CeBIT. Quality and decoder speed are good. An xanim plug in is available, as is Windows etc support. Uses Quicktime as a file format
http://rachmaninoff.ti.uni-mannheim.de/sampeg/
A work-in-progress GPL'd MPEG-4 encoder from Dirk Farin, the guy who wrote the impressive SAMPEG-2 MPEG-2 encoder. Actually uses MPEG-4 file format. Sounds very promising.
http://sparky.sourceforge.net/
Not quite MPEG-4, but GPL'd and competetive in terms of compression. From the guy who wrote the avifile win32 CODECs on Linux library. Currently slow, but an impressice start for a real open source CODEC.
http://www.opencodex.com/news.html
The guys who ran the original $50K DivX for Quicktime port competition. Web site keeps claiming good things, but nothing is getting released... It turns out the CODEC is H.263 based abyway, not true MPEG-4 (although MPEG-4 and H.263 are quite closely related - they use the same quantizer).
The story that
It sucks that
divxnetworks.com is the company behind "Project Mayo" and "OpenDivX".
/. article rejected today where I explained all this plus gave links to all the free MPEG-4 implementations and the Sorenson MPEG-4 press release.
Check out the flames forum at:
Project Mayo (aka divxnetworks.com).
OpenDivX is [u]incompatible[/u] with DivX.
DivX is the hacked Microsoft CODEC.
OpenDivX is based on the MoMuSys source, claims to be MPEG-4 compliant (aside from using an AVI vs MPEG-4 transport), and is incompatible with DivX.
I just got a
*sigh*
ProjectMayo is a scam. It's not a real open source project, but rather an open source freeloader poroject run by the commercial enterprise divxnetworks.com, with $100M of backing.
http://www.divxnetworks.com/aboutus.html
The "open source" licence is not GPL - it requires you to do stuff like adding some kind of "made with divxnetwork" header to your movies.
While DivX is based off of MS Mpeg4 codec, that doesn't mean it's the same thing. I think it's pretty obvious just how different they are when you compare quality.
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"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."
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A mind is a terrible thing to taste.
"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."
What is there to learn from the Napster case? Napster lost.
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Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
BTW, did you see the 60 Minutes piece on Tivo last night? Nothing new for us, but a good explanation of the technology and some of the legal issues for the layman.
Best Slashdot Co
I'm not saying if its technically possible, I'm saying that its more of a physical limitation.
People have their computers set up so only one person can use it, at a small distance. Not the optimal way to watch a motion picture.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
1. How did an AC get automaticly modded to -1?
2. VCD are MPEG format. So its not DivX;) anymore.
3. There are disavantages to hooking up a computer to a TV. The main on is that its too hard for the average person.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Thats a good nick. Caught me there
DivX can be changed to Mpeg but with loss of video and sound quality and a huge increase of size. I think you would need 2 CDs for one movie.
Its enough to make a person say "VHS/DVD is easier"
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Thats nice but right now and in the near future I can't see people having the inclination nor the ability to watch movies either on their computer screen or have the computer hooked up to their lower resolution screen.
Even if they did either one of these things, buying or renting a DVD would be preferable, if only for the bonuses.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I only raised the point of VCDs because the Anomymous Coward (heh) did so.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I really like how they intend to distribute movies on line. But how much good will this do?
The movie will be 2 hours long and only playable on your computer monitor. The average person doesn't have a good enough setup (monitor size, seating) for it to compete with you tv in front of the couch.
MP3/music is different. Its short ( 5minutes for a song) and you can burn a CD and them play it anywhere you would a normal CD.
Not so with full length movies.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I think you've got it backwards.
1) The "hacker-kiddies" ain't gonna sue for trademark infringement, and more importantly:
2) Without the name-recognition of the geek set, where are you gonna generate the "buzz" required for a successful financing?
Pretty cool, if it didn't play like crap (2fps) on a Mac. You can export to .mov file, but it's sloooow and extremely buggy. Unstable player, too.
yes, its to differenciate from the Divx standard that Circuit City tried to push on everybody
11 was a racehorse
12 was 12
1111 Race
12112
I personally don't think that DivX should be considered a standard as yet. I like the codec as it produces excellent quality, in small files. The thing I don't like are the two halves of the codec (fast motion / low motion). The high motion codec looks great in car chases, but is really bad when people are sitting around chatting. The opposite goes for the low motion version.
A lot of movies have more low motion scenes than high action ones. This even goes for action movies. Why couldn't some smart cookie add some code to detect the difference between scenes and seamlessly switch between the two styles of compression?
There's probably some good explanation for all this, but I haven't seen it yet.
DivX ;) is a hacked version of microsoft's mpeg 4 codec. Divx was a pay-per-play DVD type medium for movies.
They are completely different and are not related.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
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Artix
Your Linux, your init.
I'll just hang out for a while and see what the Ogg Vorbis people come up with...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Consider how the current movie distribution is so much more expensive than for music. Anyone can sell CDs but it takes a mega-thousand dollar investment to build a theater that people will actually go to.
Plus, as the popularity of the rental and pay-per-view markets have shown, people don't NEED a fancy theater and many would rather watch on their home theater and then not have to pay $40 for snacks too.
Plus, the current distibution network is already non-secure...anyone can smuggle in a camera and again as the sales of bootlegs have shown, people don't always care about quality.
Plus, the movie industry is a lot more records driven than the music industry. You have another multi-platinum album and people yawn. You have a movie that did X dollars on opening night and its a record people remember. Imagine if they could spin add downloads to those box office statistics.
Plus, right now there is no real name brand for movie sharing (unless you count IRC).
The studios were forced to divest themselves of their theater holding because the governement thought it would be a bad idea for them to control both content and distributions. Using the Internet the movie studios have a chance to regain that control again.
If they price it in the range of home pay-per-view but offer first-run movies hotels pay-per-view, I think it would be something I'd buy.
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
In theory, once there is a true MPEG4 standard, hardware decoders should not be far behind.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
I got involved with DivX ;) when it was still "underground". It's amazing how far they've come. I can remember the first few trailers over at http://divx.ctw.cc/ that blew my mind (sure beat the crap out of vivo's that everyone was using). I think it is SO important to support this format and keep it going because it is a real life example of the "little guys" making it. They've had to fight against microsoft, realplayer, and the government. A lot of "purists" are still whining about the loss in quality... give me a break. These things are excellent. Most people don't have 10mb lines to leech 2 gig avi's anyway.
So do what you can to support them and we'll be one step closer to an internet that truly is multimedia compatible.
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The reason the RIAA freaked out about Napster, and the MPAA will be uncomfortable with this stuff, is the college market. After internal MP3 sharing (pre-Napster getting big, but people would run each other's MP3s over the network) was bringing my college fraternity (at MIT, so YMMV) old 10baseT network to a crawl. We couldn't rewire (the old buildings are a mess), so we brought switches to a at least have 100Megabit backbone and 10Megabit down.
Good thing two, because the following year (about 1.5 years ago), a freshman with a hobby for trading movies showed up. He managed to gather dozens of movies over our school provided T1, and he would share them across the house.
Forget that he would get them, it isn't worth it for most people to get them. But if one person acquires the movies (and keeps the archive on CDs to loan out) and makes them available to 40 friends... well...
Now make these 40 people all college kids with disposable income, and you've hit the target market. That's why they hate this. College kids are a big part of their market. High school kids are as well, and they are the most likely to get a DSL connection at home AND have lots of spare time.
Alex
Not really. The number of people who have a good movie in them isn't that large. Look at film school demo reels, or underground video showings, or public access TV, and you'll see what I mean. Access to the technology is not the problem.
San Francisco has several organizations devoted to getting technology into the hands of wannabe filmmakers, but what comes out mostly sucks.
I don't know what compression techniques they will be using, but they don't have any incorporated right now, and when they do, I think it will make a big difference in size.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
I guess it is kind of unfair to compare the two because vorbis isnt' really out of beta yet, but I hope there is this kind of dynamic conversion associated with Vorbis. I know I am going to rip CD's to no end once vorbis support compression of the redundancy between audio channels, just so I can distribute it out to get a little more ogg action out there.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
I just realized that the best way to play Divix based burned CD movies is probably the x-box or playstation 2. Why not the gamecube? The x-box and the playstation 2 will both have hardware for mpeg 2 decoding alla dvd playing. mpeg 2 acceleration can be put towards mpeg 4 acceleration because the algorithms have some simililarities (decreet cosine transform or something like, someone help me out here). I know that playing .asf's and Divix movies on my computer is much much faster than it used to be before I got dvd hardware decoding. I guess my point is that the dreamcast is definitly not powerful enough to support it, but if someone made a program that would take a movie and burn a cd with that and the neccesary startup and program files on it, you'd be in buisness.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
So if I download a Divx:-0 movie and burn it to a CD, it'll play on my DIVX player
Completely separate technology. Circuit City DIVX uses MPEG2 compression (as does DVD), whereas DivX ;-) uses something more akin to MPEG4. MPEG2 players can't interpret MPEG4 usefully.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
What about the concept of a Set-top DivX box? in theory, this could work, and it might work very nicely, if done properly.
In practice, you better change the name. The name "DivX ;-)" is too close to "DIVX", a word associated in consumer minds with "hassle."
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I know I am going to rip CD's to no end once vorbis support compression of the redundancy between audio channels
Are you thinking "mid-side stereo" like FM and MP3 use? The mid-side equation (a + b) + (a - b) = 2a is patented when used in digital audio coding.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The most expensive part about producing a stand-alone player that can decode an MPEG-4 encoded disc is the decoding circuitry itself.
Unless the decoding circuitry is just a CPU (such as Emotion Engine, TI DSP, AMD Duron, or Crusoe) customized for DSP. It would just read encoded data, decode it, and blast it to the framebuffer.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
For $15 you can get the barebones edition with stereo audio and no special features (plus a load of pre-movie advertising like on VHS). Then for $30 you get
Even more pre-movie advertising that you can't even skip. DVD has a "legal notice" function (designed for displaying FBI Warnings) that disables fast-forward while it is set. Some DVDs start with ten minutes of commercials and mark them as "legal notices" so you have to either watch them, turn off the TV, leave the room, or use some DeCSS-type software.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
They won't understand conceptually what it is
What part of "It's an add-on to Windows Media Player that allows it to play full-length motion pictures" wouldn't Joe Sixpack understand?
They have to go and find it and download it.
Same thing for Winamp, to play MP3 audio.
There's no paper manual
File | Print... (The only paper manuals you need are those for your computer and printer.)
and no tech suport number to call.
Ever try calling Microsoft tech support?
And when they install it, no "DiVX" icon appears on their desktop leading to a screen with a colourful and intuitive user interface.
So have the codec's installer make a shortcut to WiMP and label it DivX. WiMP 7 is colorful enough (but I wouldn't say all that intuitive). Who'll know the difference?
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Asciimation, it's a better distribution medium since it consumes far less bandwith.
--
Je t'aime Stéphanie
http://www.digital-digest.com/nickyguides/makefilm .htm
Or am I confused with 3vix?
Speaking of DivXNetworks, what kind of business plan do they think is going to work? MPEG-4 codecs are a commodity and their competition (like PacketVideo, Philips, Sorenson and probably every other codec company out there) has a huge head start.
Here's another project:
http://mpeg4ip.sourceforge.net/
Instead of a codec, they're doing the other necessary stuff like a player and streaming server.
(/. rejected a story about this, too.)
As near as I can tell, the format of a movie is ultimately going to make no difference as to whether or not it is pirated. Ultimately, if nothing else, people can just get a video camera and copy it that way. Rest assured, someone will. There are always people who will do that, if for no other reason than to spite the corporations. I think the MPAA needs to consider the fact that most people still prefer to watch a movie on a TV screen, not seated at a computer. I know I would't want to watch a movie at my computer. Stop worrying about the geeks - there's always a few. Just make sure that it is always worth people's while to get off the computer for a few hours (gasp) and watch the movie on hardware designed for that purpose. My computer has enough trouble with a desktop, never mind movies, and I know I'm not the only one.
I sort of suspect that the real reason there is so much noise about this is for the same reason napster got hit so hard - to prevent the establishment of a system through which independant artists can reach a large market. Control is everything. The MPAA probably is not keen on the idea of a worldwide team forming to do a movie across the internet, or any other challenge to their rule. Formats are merely a minor part of this fight, and to my mind not a terribly important one. Copy protection can't come from formats as long as they are eventually displayed in a form the human eye can observe. So develop new business models or remember that computers weren't designed for movie watching. These guys aren't stupid - I'm sure they've already spent far more protecting their copyrights online than they could have hoped to have gained from forcing a few geeks to pay for their movies. They're after something else. That's what worries me.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
>even installing the codec can be too technical for most people
;-)
If these people can buy and install a software package from their local computer store, DivX is EASY!
DivX [original] now comes in a simple setup file. Just click and unwrap, so to speak. It is easier than installing WinAmp, if you ask me (less questions)
>With DiVX, you play the movie and all things are on hold while you're watching it.
You haven't timeshifted music videos with it yet... Trust me, MP3s are going to be old stuff once this becomes hot! But otherwise you are right.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
I see your point. I suppose as long as it doesn't come as an addon to a CD (like AOL comes with almost every program you buy nowadays) it probably won't be a hit with the average consumer.
Oh well, maybe it is for the best. The smart people can get the infrastructre and quality content going before Joe Sixpack ruins it.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
You are thinking of Circuit City's DIVX no-return CD "rental" system that died a quick death.
The current DiVX was named such as a sarcastic nod to CC-DIVX (or rather the death thereof).
Beware of Sleestak
In general, VHS Movie Prices have been more fair than music prices. One can buy several year old movies new for under $10 at WallyworldMart and like stores, or purchase Previewed videos for a similar price. Try and find music (original albums) that is only a few years old (nevermind the '70s or '80s) for under $10 retail.
I'm not saying the the MPAA is less evil than the RIAA (just look at the DeCSS mess), just that perhaps they are a little more consumer friendly. The RIAA has their head so far up their ass that they can look out their mouth -- perhaps the MPAA will learn a lesson from the RIAA's actions.
Beware of Sleestak
Two totally different things. Divx is a recording format, Napster is a distribution system. Divx is to VHS as Napster is to catalog sales. VHS already won it's day in court (the movie/tv companies tried to shut it down when it first appeared).
Firethorn
I don't read AC A human right
hrmm...I've followed your argument about putting mp3s onto cd. Then you go and say: "VCD are MPEG format." You should think before you post. When you burn mp3s to a cd, they aren't mp3s anymore either, unless you have one of those mp3 cd players, but you weren't referring to those in your argument. Additionally, hooking up a computer to a tv is not that difficult. I am average and I am capable of that. Getting laid, on the other hand, is a lot more difficult and the majority of the world can do it.
Give me a break. The only people who care about violating patents are big companies who want to distribute video who will be encrypting it anyway.
There is no way around it, we'll have to voilate SOMETHING whether it's a patent or CSS.
It's all BS.
---
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
Physical limitations can be overcome;
Imagine midair projection. Laser beams exciting the gases in the very air itself to create an illuminated image viewable at all angles; just shy of being holographic
Imagine the analogy to a good set of headphones; a pair of display glasses.
It isn't the wrong point at all, the technology and the innovation will grow to accomodate our increasingly 'leisure' oriented society.
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
Hmm, apologies for the fact that the following message is a little 'inflamatory'. I get carried away.
To name some 'facts'
Look it up if you want confirmation.
MPEG4 != DivX
The original DivX hacked a Microsoft implementation of the MPEG4 *draft* and created their own format.
So don't support the Microsoft version, and don't support the DivX version!
What's the alternative? MPEG4! OpenDivX is supposedly MPEG4 compliant, but it does not support the MPEG4 file format (go figure); Windows, hopefully, will support the real thing, and not just ASF/WMA implementations, as should Quicktime 5. Don't settle for DivX; it would be like settling for RealAudio when mp3 is just around the corner...
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
It is kind of annoying me that sites like Slashdot are continually equating DivX (open source project) as MPEG4. I must reiterate that the Open Source DIVX/Project Mayo stuff is nothing more than an implementation of MPEG-4, the DivX people didn't invent it..their code was even based on an existing project.
Now, don't get me wrong, the actual coding work the DivX people are overseeing is great for open source causes, but they are using some subversive self-promotion as of late to make it seem like they invented all of this stuff, and pushing the 'Divx' brand-name (which is actually quite a stupid name since it causes much confusion with the failed Circuit City format), as the be-all end-all of MPEG-4, which is just not true.
Also, supporting DIVX/MPEG4 because there is a good open source implementation is short sighted. Please do some research into MPEG4 and realize what a patent nightmare it is. Just because the source is open doesn't mean you can use it without violating patents
Haven't seen a lot of 'medical' workstations, have you? Hint: They're not that different than any other workstation.
"Watch these suckers jump when I get Administrator."
In a minute or two, Agent Micheal and Agent Taco will burst in on the trolls, guns a blazing, and capture OSM (Open Source Morpheus).
You are thinking of the moronic Circuit City divx, where you had to hook your DVD player up to a phone line to play a divx movie.
The article is talking about divx:) or some other punctionated abomination, a movie format that fit's TV quality movies onto a single CD, still not DVD quality though.
I tried to find one a few weeks ago, but got lost in pop-ups, vote for me's and porn banners.
And then I tried to explain the porn banners to my wife, ouch!
Good thing we didn't have two blizzards this year, now I can use the leftover Halite for stories like this!
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
I'm not a big fan of them either, but from the studio's standpoint it helps subsidize the cost of the movie. Lots of people (at least those outside of the DVD collecting community) would be happy to pay $5 less for a movie and watch some commercials. Lots of older DVD players could skip the "legal notices" though, which is quite nice. Quite frankly, the FBI warning isn't even required by law and I'd be happy to see that gone on the "collector editions" that are released. Why not just open right to the menu? Hell, since the content is "scrambled" they don't even need a copyright notice since it's illegal to descramble the stuff regardless.
Not necessarily.
Regular software is easy for people to understand. For example the user thinks: "Hmm, I need to manage my finances. Therefore I should go and buy an accounting package." They phyiscally pick up a box of the shelf and pay for it and get a CD to install. That makes sense to people. They insert the CD, it installs, a pretty icon appears on their desktop and they click it. They look in the manual or call tech support if they need help.
But try explaining what exactly a codec is to a non technical person. They won't understand conceptually what it is. They have to go and find it and download it. There's no paper manual and no tech suport number to call. And when they install it, no "DiVX" icon appears on their desktop leading to a screen with a colourful and intuitive user interface." And what if it conflicts with their video drivers or just won't install? They're stuck.
You see, installing DiVX is still a significant leap for the run-of-the mill user. And eliminating that leap is required for making it popular and easy to use.
O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law:
For for DiVX, even installing the codec can be too technical for most people, let alone encoding the movies. Not everyone has a DVD drive or the hard disk space, patience, and knowhow to do it. Therefore, unlike mp3 which was accessible and relatively easy to use, DiVX still languishes in relative obscurity. Therefore the MPAA doesn't see it as an enormous threat.
In additon, movies and audio are fundamantally different. With mp3, you just play the song and do whatever you're doing while listening to it. With DiVX, you play the movie and all things are on hold while you're watching it. I'm listening to mp3 right now, but I couldn't be typing this post if I was watching DiVX.
Listening and watching are two fundamentally different activities. And it would be another revolution completely different to mp3 if DiVX became mainstream. And the MPAA would fight tooth and nail keep it from happening.
O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law:
Seriously, is ;-) part of the name? What's that all about?
I think that thinking about distributing movies online is very premature at this point. Considering that most of the world has no Internet connectivity whatsoever, and most of those that do are still connecting over analog modems, movies distrubution online won't be widespread for a long time. Heck, most of us with analog connections still think that 1/2 hour to download a single 3 1/2 minute MP3 is a long damn time. I can't imagine how long a movie would take. Personally, I expect to be buying DVDs for a long time to come. Besides, I don't think that paying $15 for a digital quality movie is too much to ask. I wouldn't bother downloading movies even if I had the massive bandwidth and storage necessary to do it.
There is NO SUCH THING!
MPAA, RIAA... Release your DENIAL!
The absolute BEST you can hope for is "Copy Encumbrance" or "Copy Inconvenience" or "Copy Reduction". But NEVER will your digital content be "Protected".
Digitize it, and they will crack.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
I don't get it. I thought DivX was dead-in-the-water (reworded from the subject line so as not to offend anyone). Wasn't the standard already not accepted by the public? Or was it just the implementation, pay-per-play?
Developers: We can use your help.
I've downloaded a few DIVX videos, the quality is not bad but its not great either. I still want to be able to purchase DVD's of movies I'd like to own. (No, decss will not make me boycott DVD any more than sweat shop labour will stop most people from buying clothes)
If the MPAA is smart they'll jump on the bandwagon soon. In my opinion the infrastructure isn't really there yet. Most people don't have broadband, and the broadband we do have isn't broad enough. Even given that its still important to be there first and get people used to the technology (and kill off the "if I had some legal way of getting movies online I would" argument)
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
I do hope that the divX;) team realizes that they will head down the same path to oblivion that home grade Beta followed unless they allow porn on their disks.
Now, don't get me wrong, the actual coding work the DivX people are overseeing is great for open source causes, but they are using some subversive self-promotion as of late to make it seem like they invented all of this stuff, and pushing the 'Divx' brand-name (which is actually quite a stupid name since it causes much confusion with the failed Circuit City format), as the be-all end-all of MPEG-4, which is just not true.
Also, supporting DIVX/MPEG4 because there is a good open source implementation is short sighted. Please do some research into MPEG4 and realize what a patent nightmare it is. Just because the source is open doesn't mean you can use it without violating patents.
1: Is it patent encumbered.
MPEG4 like GIF is patent encumbered up the wazoo. Forget GPL on the code, if the patent holders won't give a free public license the spec can never be open.
[Incidentally MP3 has this problem, the Fraunhoffer Institute owns the patent and charges royalties on it. The GIF UNISYS patent was pretty despicable, the patent was only published after Compuserve had adopted the algorithm thinking it was an open algorithm.
2 Is the code open?
This is not the biggest issue for me, if the spec is interesting and useful an open code verison is likely to follow. Point (1) is much bigger
Incidentaly I don't think that the GPL vs other open models is a big issue. Richard Stallman put a lot of his personal politics into the GPL, it is not possible to use GPL code in a commercial project. Apache and Linux are far more 'open' in my view, they are certainly less restrictive.
3. Is there actual code
No code, no use. Starting an open source project is fine but until you have a release it does not do anyone much good.
So far DVIX/Project Mayo loose on 1 and probably on 2 but win big on 3. Lots of folk win on 1 and 2 but loose on 3.
The real problem is that nobody can ever know if they are safe on 1 in the US. Submarine patents can be filled and kept in progress for decades.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Because the GameCube uses a specialized 1.5 gb "GCN-ROM" disc that are basically unreadable in any other type of drive. :)
Specs on the GameCube are available here.
Do you like German cars?
I submitted an article about archive.org. They have been adding films like crazy. Goto archive.org/movies and check it out.
:-(
Here are a few films, if you are not sure what to look for.
Duck and Cover - Very far fetched nuclear bomb warning, that tells you all will be fine by simply covering your face with your arms. Then everything will be swell. The same one from Atomic Cafe.
A Case of Spring Fever - For you MST3K fans, this was one of the funniest shorts they did(attached to squirm). An irrating spring does a christmas carol/its a wonderful life style presentation of the world without springs.
Supervising women workers - A very sexist movie about how you have to explain every little thing to women, because they just don't understand mechanical things like us guys do. Great to show feminists.
I am working on getting a list of movies on here that were done by MST3K.
--Joey
BTW does anyone know where to get the MST3K shorts online? I have been looking for them on Gnutella with no luck
>> I just got a /. article rejected today where I
;)
>> explained all this plus gave links to all the
>> free MPEG-4 implementations and the Sorenson >> MPEG-4 press release.
Er, any chance you could put those links up anyway?
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
- Nietzsche
How is this a good thing? Someone hacked binaries of a Microsoft MPEG4 Codec and called it "Div-x" after the failed Circuit City format. It didn't become popular because it was a groovy Open Source project, or a new Codec never seen before, etc. It became popular because The Matrix looked real cool, and fit on a CD. If you stop and think about it, Div-X is owned by Microsoft, and named after something that started a Holy War not too long ago. The idea of putting a movie on a CD is good (and done before: VCDs), but Div-X is not the format to use. If MP3s are still lawsuit bait, I'd hate to see what Div-X does to the Internet media scene.
From the article: "People are trading pirated movies because they're not encrypted," says Valenti. "Once we get encryption, DivX becomes a wonderful ally." What a moron ? Will you ever learn, we don't like encryption... remember DVD CSS !?!? How can this stupid guy be in charge of anything... Oh! Wait.. I got it! ... this time we won't be able to break it, right? You're pathetic man... in fact you're probably one of the most hated son of a bitch out there... congrats !
Sure, the MPAA is going to look at using DIVX, but if a person looks, there's already places on the net to download great DIVX rips of all sorts of movies (and this can include movies on theatre release). Anyone with a half-decent TV-out video card and some time can get a new theatre release on video in under a week. If the MPAA is serious about releasing movies for sale, they're going to have to do something soon, because it's probably not that long before people start finding all these videos and it's Napster all over again. I can only see that hurting the whole internet movie situation.
- Relativistic? That's barely Newtonian!