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DivX DVD Players Arrive

Posted by timothy on from the what-no-ogg dept.

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.

13 of 336 comments (clear)

  1. No thanks. by Guspaz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. divx? by carpe_noctem · · Score: 5, Funny

    I thought penny-arcade really put it best:

    http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=1999-06 -18&res=l#

    --
    "Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
  3. Firmware? by Hydro-X · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. irony... by havaloc · · Score: 5, Funny

    Finally, a DivX player that people will actually want to buy.

  5. If you have an XBox... by NetJunkie · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:If you have an XBox... by Rew190 · · Score: 5, Informative
      An even easier way to do that is to get a video card that supports tv-out. Nvidia's NView works great for me (I believe that's a pretty standard feature on the new GeForce cards), and if you have a soundcard with a digital coax out cable, you can plug that right into your receiver. I use a WinXP box for this though, so I'm not sure how driver support is on Linux.


      Stupid simple, but divx movies look great on my 27 inch TV. If your computer's near your home entertainment setup, I highly recommend looking into getting the two hooked up.

  6. Disc layout? by mobius_stripper · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Disc layout? by puppetman · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Good point.

      VSOSub is the standard for subtitles. Will it handle that? Often, the text is tied to the frame that it is supposed to appear in. The file is a .rar. Will this piece of hardware be able to handle it.

      This DivX thing is way too much of a moving target for a piece of engineered hardware to be able hit. Leave it to computers.

  7. How fast will it become obsolete? by puppetman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  8. man this is confusing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?

  9. Re:proof by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  10. Your next PC by xigxag · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  11. DivX 3.11 Support by Cyberllama · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.