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Good News On Two Open-Codec Fronts

Posted by timothy on from the well-whaddya-know dept.

davidu writes: "The Fraunhofer Institute in Germany (makers of the mp3 codec) licensed the divx ;-) video codec for future use. This is good for users because the codec is open source and is now on its way to becoming a standard. For those who don't know, this is unrelated to the failed Circuit City program, hence the smiley. ;-)" On the audio side of things, Mike Hicks writes: "Saw this on LWN's Daily Updates. Kenwood has come up with a car audio playing system that understands the Ogg Vorbis compression format, the Music Keg. Me want.. Time to start digging for spare change in the couch ..." Update: 02/05 03:24 GMT by T : Two clarifications below put a slight damper on each of these, though the overall news is still good.

Vince Busam from Phatnoise writes: "The author of the mp3newswire article goofed big time! Nowhere does it state that the Keg plays Ogg files, only the desktop software. Ogg will be supported when free ARM libraries are available. The author is further incorrect when he mentions the Kenwood X959 plays MPEG video files on the tiny OLE display. I have no idea where he got that idea." And reader Guspaz points out: "OpenDivX is indeed opensourced, but it is not the same as DivX 4, which was what was liscenced (And is what people download to use)."

8 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. DivX Open Source? by calle42 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I guess this is as good a time as ever to ask: What was that screw-up concerning the openness of DivX4? All I seem to know at the moment is that they apparently were open at the beginning and then closed their stuff, basically screwing over all the contributors up to that point. Can anybody shine some light on this and tell whether that really happened?

    1. Re:DivX Open Source? by CheezyD · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I don't know about Divx, but a few years back Frauhoffer released the specs to the mp3 codec, then when it became popular they start saying everyone that uses it (including all the freeware and GPL encoders) has to pay them royalties. I wouldn't trust them as far as I can throw a '74 Buick.

  2. Pros/Cons by ZaBu911 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    DivX ;)
    -------
    Pros:
    - open source
    - videos can compress (send video footage to relatives over email, read the napsterization of TV post comments to see what I mean)

    Cons:
    - piracy of movies over net is encouraged, etc.
    - being licensed by a big corporation might lead them to become anal on us.. ie, charging fees?

    Ogg Vorbis

    Pros: Good quality/compression
    Cons: Not a standard

    just IMHO, and ramblins.

    --
    PayPal $$ if you sign up for free offers (eBay, cred cards, e
  3. Divx ;-) by ColaMan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why did they have to screw a reasonably decent codec by calling it "divx ;-)"?

    I can see the proposals now ...

    Engineer's email : "Well, we could use intel's I.263 codec or we could go with Divx ;-)"

    PHB Thought Process: "Divx-wink? That must be some sort of in-joke... hmmm , better go for I.263..... that sounds technical."

    And Divx ;-) loses again.

    Why? WHY?

    --

    You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
    There is a lot of hype here.
  4. Why MP3 is superior to Ogg Vorbis by a3d0a3m · · Score: 1, Insightful

    This is a main hurdle towards widespread use of Ogg Vorbis, support on a wide variety of non-computer platforms. There are CD-MP3 players made by most all manufacturers [read: DVD players that also play MP3 CDs] and portable CD-MP3/Nomad players also don't support Ogg. When it is supported by major manufacturers on hardware devices, Ogg will have a much more legitimate stand in the future of music.

    That, and when major MP3 releasing groups [pirate groups] start offering their rips in Ogg format, the kids will begin using it and demanding it in their portable players.

    --adam

    I metamod as I see fit!

  5. Thank you by hendridm · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I was hoping someone someone would point this out. I'm sick of people outing the DivX codec because they think it is a hack of a legitimate one. The DivX 4 one isn't, and it's superior to the hacked one in countless ways.

    >it is completely different, it is incompatible,

    Well, sort of. If you install the DivX 4 codec, you can *play* DivX 3.x media.

  6. Re:Can we PLEASE put this one to rest? by wunderhorn1 · · Score: 1, Insightful
    The hacked Divx version you're talking about has nothing to do with this article. It is a completely different animal released a while back by a different group. It ain't open source because it's owned by Microsoft. And if the current Divx project took their name from a bunch of hackers I couldn't care less.

    Anyway, now that we're talking about the same codec (the legit one that was written from scratch), the FAQ says what's OSS and what's not. Also do a little bit of research on the difference between Open Source and Free Software.

    --
    Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
  7. DivX 4 is NOT open source! by FooBarWidget · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Sight, when will we learn?
    OpenDivX is open source (though strictly speaking, even OpenDivX isn't open source, because of the OpenDivX license which isn't approved by the OSI).
    However, DivX 4 is NOT OpenDivX!

    Project Mayo started the OpenDivX project.
    But when it progressed nicely and produced nice video quality, they killed the project and used that code to create DivX 4 (they claim that DivX 4 is a rewrite, but that's false).
    They just deceived all those developers yet nobody seem to care.

    Please, somebody, tell timothy and the Slashdot community about this, because I'm just a little voice in hundreds of comments.