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DivX DVD Players Arrive
division21 writes "Geeks rejoice -- DivX Enabled DVD Players finally surface! (With all the goodies: MP3, SVCD, etc.) I remember when MP3 compatability appeared back in the day -- And it looks as though DivX Compatibility could be a real possibility for the mainstream ..." And if you can live without the compression, cherrypi points out this surprisingly favorable review of perhaps the cheapest (under $200) portable DVD player with a built-in screen.
Many will also end up supporting Ogg Vorbis, since it's become a popular audio encoding format for DivX's. (Or so I hope.)
This thing costs ~600$ (CDN), and isn't even DivX certified because it doesn't play 3.xx content, which is probably more widely used than 4.xx or 5.xx. I can go to Radio Shack and buy a DVD player for 100$ (CDN), and I know for certain that an MPEG-4 decoder chip does NOT cost 500$!
When these things cost under 200$ (CDN), and are truely DivX certified, I'll buy one. Until then... I could put together a cheap PC with S-Video out for half this price.
When are we going to get some Ogg Vorbis-enabled DVD/CD Players? With Microsoft getting WMA integrated into DVD players and Xiph putting out Tremor not to mention all the MP3 integration being done, it seems these little companies like Apex would jump to add yet another feature to their players that would differentiate them in that cut-throat bargain basement market.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
Shouldn't the article point out that these DivX DVD players aren't the same as the DivX players once sold by Circuit City? Or are they?
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
I thought penny-arcade really put it best:
6 -18&res=l#
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=1999-0
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
Will the firmware be flashable to update to the latest codecs? I'm sure many have spent time wondering why their movies didn't work before learning that a new DivX codec was released and the newer videos are being encoded with it.
Finally, a DivX player that people will actually want to buy.
Yeah, these things dont even support SACDs or DVD-Audio.
Get a modchip and install the XBox Media Player. It'll stream DiVX/AVI/MPEG/SVCD/VCD from a PC (or off the internal HD) and display on your TV.
Very nice.
if somebody would come out with a player that allowed you update the playable codecs by hooking it up to your computer or inserting a preloaded pcmcia card. Open up the plugin architecture and you would probably sell one to every /.er.
Then I wouldn't have to read about all the I wan't (insert favorite codec here) on it but its not available because *they* are out to get me.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
it was originally a hack of microsoft's mpeg4... but the new versions of divx are all new (legal) code. That is most likely why the dvd players won't support old versions of divx as they were based off stolen technology.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Does anyone know what the expected disc layout is?
Does it pick up any AVI files in the root directory and play them or is there a well defined structure/index file? How are multiple languages, subtitles and menus handled? This info is necessary for standardisation on a uniform DiVX disc format.
Krishna
--- I'd love to go out with you, but I have to study for a Turing test.
We went DivX 3.11, 4.0, 5.0, and XVid, etc. This player can play DivX 4.0 and 5.0, but what about 5.03, the upcoming version? Or DivX 6? What about XVid, or old 3.11 movies you have kicking around?
But video is only a small part of the puzzle. Of the hundred or so DivX "backups" I have, only half have MP3 audio. A big chunk have ogg (and ogg is probably the most popular for new movies), and a few have AC3.
My point boils down to this: I spend alot of time watching movies encoded in DivX. I even do some encoding. With a PC that is almost infinately upgradable, with all the DivX sites out there offering support, I still have trouble playing some movies.
Some machine with hard-coded firmware is not going to make the grade.
If you want to watch DivX on your tv, then get one of these things. That's what I did - it's a stereo, DVD player, and it plays DivX in all it's formats. It sits under the TV, is plugged into the 100 megabit network, and makes life very simple. We don't even have cable any more.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I guess Valenti will be revising his anti-VCR speech from decades ago to attack this.
we've got VCD, DVD, DeCSS, MPEG4, Dvix, DVIX, DviX, DviX;-), DviX B-], DviX (_)(_)=D, god knows what else!!
I bought a DVD player the other day, it was plastered with acronyms. MP3/DVD/CD/VCD/CDR/CDRW.......
This alphabet soup is pretty damn confusing.
Look, let's cut to the chase. All I want to do is pirate DVDs and trade them with other people like I do MP3 files. Why do I have to learn all this? When will somebody give me Point&Click piracy tools, like Apple's iTunes?
That's correct -- the DivX 5.x codec was reverse engineered from the DivX 3.11 codec. But I've heard that you get better quality out of the 3.11 codec, but the content is therefore not legal.
So technically, yeah, DivXNetworks CAN be the "originators" of the supported codec (5.x) in the DVD players, but that's using Clinton-esque logic. The orginal codec was the 3.11 codec, which was a hack of the MS MPEG4 codec.
I think XviD is aiming to be a standards-compliant MPEG-4 codec...if that's the case, the info on this player says it'll play MPEG-4 as well as DivX;-), so XviD ought to work as well.
(XviD is a Good Thing, especially in light of what DivXNetworks has done to hijack development (spyware-infested codecs, etc.). I've been archiving Good Eats with XviD for a little while now...the quality is good enough for reference usage, and fitting ~4 hours of video (12 episodes) and all of the accompanying recipes (in HTML) on one CD is cool.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
DIVX SOLD OUT TO MPAA.
DRM will be embedded within DiVX. It's pointless now.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/04/224621 9&mode=nested&tid=126
and
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-875988.html
k.
--even a broken watch is correct twice a day.
What the hell are you talking about? A random sampling of NFOs on iSONews shows quite a few releases using VBR MP3 soundtracks.
Why on earth would AVIs require a CBR audio stream? Where did you get this idea? I'm really, really curious, here.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Divx3,4,5 for various reasons including lower quality and copyright issues, most serious mpeg4 encoding is migrating to xvid. Once some Ogg issues get worked out most mpeg4 encoding will be done in Ogg/Xvid. Will this player support those codecs or just be a hundred dollar piece of obsolete junk?
;)
These were my thoughts exactly. I recently switched from the hacked Microsoft (DivX 3.11) codec to XviD. I have no desire to support DivxNetworks and their closed source codec. Let's face it, the name DivX really belongs to Circuit City and the fame belongs to the original hacked Microsoft codec. DivxNetworks started out as Project Mayo but closed the source on their codec once they realized they were stealing enough of the "DivX" thunder, err, marketshare.
XviD is what DivXNetwork's codec would have been if Project Mayo continued. It is largely based on the original open source code and will continue to be improved. Last I checked, the latest version of DivxNetworks's codec includes SPYWARE.
If I download a DivX 5.x movie that XviD can't play, it gets deleted. I don't do a lot of movie downloading anyway - a lot of the movies on P2P networks are poorly encoded and take forever to download. I do however have access to a great professionally mastered library of recent and older movies for a modest per-movie fee of around $4.00. Due to the DMCA, I can't reveal this source, but I'm sure if you live in an urban or suburban area you'll have no trouble locating a similar source.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
As many people have pointed out, the codec is frequently updated. Therefore, many of the to-be-released videos will not play on DVD players that you buy today.
So why not create a new standard, analogous to the VideoCD format, that incorporates the codec algorithm into the disc headers? Thus all that we need is a universal decoder that will look for the codec in the first sectors of the disc.
+=o [b]RoboNerd[/b] o=+
-- We live in a world where lemonade is artificial and soap has real lemon.
"Rent a couple of DVDs. .
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
IT kind of depends on how it does the decoding. If it just has a general purpose CPU that is fast enough to handle all the decoing, like a Power PC 750 or something, then it is possable that this could be done since all teh decoding would be software based.
However I think it is far more likely that this device uses hardware dedicated to the sole purpose of decoing video/audio. Basically the MPEG 2/4 decoding is probably done by a DSP dedicated to that purpose. Well that means that the chip can't do anything but MPEG 2/4 decoding, and cannot be changed.
It's kinda like a 3d graphics card in your PC. Any modern 3d card is much, much, much faster than any processor you can find. The GeForce 4 can pull around 1 trillon opertaions per second when it really gets cranked up. However, it is a specific DSP, all it does it push pixels, and it can't be reprogrammed to do anything else. Your CPU, while much slower, is general purpose and can be programmed to do theoritically anything.
Now I don't know for sure what this thing uses, I was unable to access the information on their site, but I suspect it is a couple of dedicated chips to do decoding, not a CPU. In that case, it woul not be updatable. I could be wrong though, CPUs are cheap enough these days in theory they could have a moderatly powerful one (probably on the order of an 900mhz P3 or so) and then just do the decoding in software.
Go to www.doom9.org and have a look. You need the Ogg Vorbis DirectShow filters to play them and OggMUX to make them. Take DivX video in an AVI files, Vorbis audio in an OGG file and mux them together to produce an OGM container with both. You can even put subtitles in it if you want. Plays great on any Windows system with the OggDS
filters installed.
Oh, and VBR audio work just fine in it. The video is VBR, why not the audio?
Daisy Cutters... silly!
We've got TiVo type boxes with Hard Drives, and DVD type boxes with DivX...really what we need is a more generalized component-sized PC that works to augment out television viewing experience. I know it's been done before, but the public hadn't caught up with the idea of computational ubiquity. Now's the time for:
* Component-sized set top box format
* 20G HD (minimum) for recording shows and user apps
* Low heat processor (e.g. Transmeta or XScale)
* A embedded operating system of one kind or another
* CD-RW/DVD combo drive
* Video in/out, RJ-45 for connectivity
* Front port for wired/wireless keyboard/mouse/joystick
Something like this ought to be doable for less than $500. Advantage: DivX 3.11, Ogg, MAME. whatever you want would be just a download away. Of course, a hacked XBox is already pretty close to this already.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
I think it's really cool what they're doing with "set-top boxes" (is that he right term). I mean, a stereo unit that plays mp3s from a hard drive, or CD, or even from the network (I own an AudioTron). And these things are going to be REALLY cool ... but exactly who would own them? The people that have DivX files to play on them aren't going to be paying money for hardware to play them. They already have a computer that plays them, and probably an easy way of connecting it to their television set. Mp3 players for stereo units have a bigger market because there simply are more people who can use them.
In addition to that, there are so many non-standards that are changing so fast that I prefer to just build a good computer to sit in the stereo cabinate and use a wireless keyboard and mouse at the couch. With S-Video and optical audio outputs, I don't really need to worry about secondary hardware because my computer does everything I need. With a network connection to a file server, the geek world needs nothing more.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
From what little I can gather, that portable seems to be a shinco OEM. My guess is it's probably the Dvd-960 model which has been sold by RCA for around 400 dollars in the states for some time (I think it can be had for as little as 300 now though). I own one of these units and I must say it's quite impressive for the price, ESPECIALLY if you're into downloading anime (fansubbed and unlicensed of course, nothing illegal) and you'd like to watch it away from your computer. I actually bought mine JUST for vcds/svcds and consider the DVD capabillity to be a bonus. Just don't buy it for the mp3 playback, it bites (all songs start about 4-5 seconds into it, no idea why it skips first few seconds, and the on-screen display only shows 8.3 filenames).
Of course, if you design a special pared-down motherboard for it, the costs would go down further. It could be tiny, because it wouldn't have to really do much--so it could fit into a simple DVD-player-sized case. My question is: why aren't computer distributors falling over themselves to make these? A chip that can do DVD/DivX/Xvid/Ogg/APE decoding in software can be had for about $20. Special hardware decoding solutions will just seem moot at this price, given the usability limitations they impose.
I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall when divx first came out and people said there would NEVER be a commercially available stand-alone divx player becuase divx 3 was cobbled together from bits of microsoft code and thus violated their copyrights. Since then it became an open source project and has been rewritten from scracth. Hence, although versions 4 and 5 would be legal, a divx 3 decoding player would not be.
Have a look at the DSP Village over on the Texas Instruments web site. There are whole families of DSP chips that are reprogrammable and accellerate media functionality in all sorts of ways. Even your example of the GF4 - it is specialized towards 3D accelleration, it is customizable with the Cg language extensions. I won't even get into crazier ideas like shipping a FPGA and putting the algorithms on it (the general purpose CPU is probably cheaper). This is the case today, but maybe not tomorrow. This device probably does use some crummy chipset, you're right.
What people should be asking is why the hell the folks at ATI - who already make exactly what you want, by the way, with their all in wonder cards - can't get their act together and write some decent, bulletproof software for windows 2k or linux (I don't really care at this point, if it's solid software). A general purpose PC with more power than you could ever need for this is about $500 away. Just add the card (maybe with some goodies like support for HDTV) and you're off to the races. Or just get a projector.
The problem with that right now is stability. That ATI software is not very stable or good, doesn't integrate DiVX and scheduling functionality, doesn't want to work with my satellite reciever, etc. Get some good software in there and you have something.
My $0.02.
..don't panic
That device is just a DivX _player_ .
In fact, there's even no standalone DivX recorder on the market yet. Neither can you buy DivX movies on CD's anywhere.
So, a DivX player is only useful for people who have a computer, a CD burner, and a collection of movies stolen through P2P networks.
Because people bought a computer, they think that they can get everything for free. Free software is one thing, but movies are another thing. Making a movie costs a lot of money. I don't understand why just because someone wastes $500 in a computer and $30/mo in connectivity, he must be granted the right to freely copy an unlimited number of movies. He's not. The right to see movies is the same for everybody. Computer owners are not a special privileged class of people. Devices like DivX players just make people think that sharing DivX has nothing to do with piracy. That's bad.
Also [paranoid mode on] as buyers are likely to have an illegal collection of movies, if you ever buy those standalone DivX players, don't pay by check nor CC.
{{.sig}}
The Kiss DP-450 at least, is using the same chip as the Sigma plug-in card (EM 8500). It supports "Simple Profile", but only partially supports "Advanced Simple Profile" (hey, I didn't make those names). B-frames are among the supported features, QPEL and GMC (as featured in DivX 5.x) is NOT, unless they've managed to do some miracle partial software emulation. Despite their claims of full Divx4/5 support, I don't believe it till I see it, as it's either CPU or chip, not both.
Eother way, don't expect DivX3.11 to work. It's not MPEG4 compliant (neither is DivX4 I think, but so close that it's no problem supporting it). Xvid will work in its *current* state. When they add QPEL/GMC, it wlll no longer work.
The chip has *some* mpeg-4 complience. But I'll wait for a full-featured one that won't be obsolete so quickly.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
DivX on CDs is a great way to record and distribute home video. My parents want to see their grandkid. I have a camcorder. Trouble is, they live halfway around the planet. It's easy to duplicate and mail DivX video on CDs, and it would be great if my not-all-computer-savvy relatives owned DVD players that happened to play DivX.