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DivX Making Hollywood Inroads

Posted by michael on from the whose-cuisine-will-reign-supreme dept.

worm eater writes "CNet news reports that DivX is doing its best to become a digital video compression standard, and has been very successful in courting DVD manufacturers to adopt the DivX format. But will that be enough to beat out competing compression methods as a new Hollywood standard? It faces tough competition, such as MPEG-4, RealVideo and Windows Media. Who will win the standards race and what will that mean for the companies that push the various compression methods?"

8 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. easy answer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    whoever has the most cripling DRM built in.

    1. Re:easy answer by d3faultus3r · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually that very much depends on how consumers react to it. If the technology forces people to sign away their firstborn child and sacrifice a chicken before they can watch the movie then no one will buy stuff made with it and it will fail. It will most likely be the company that figures out how to disguise the DRM to the user but still keep enough for the MPAA to be happy that wins the standards war. I'm betting that mpeg 4 will win, due to it's support by companies that actually know how to make unintrusive DRM(Apple itunes) and the fact that it isn't nearly as bad as .wma or divx are or used to be.

      --
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  2. I'm guessing their real advantage... by bc90021 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...is going to be in their abillity to abuse their monopoly to force out the other codecs.

    I don't foresee technical merit being a factor, unfortunately. :(

    --
    libertarianswag.com
  3. Re:For a healthy dose of naivete... by happyfrogcow · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm more just curious why DivX has come closest to "hitting the big time."

    porn industry.

  4. Theora by sik0fewl · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How about Theora? . . . I know.. but maybe someday.

    --
    I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
  5. Bet I'm not the first to say: OGG by Atario · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Better yet, how about upgradable players? Add whatever codecs you like/get invented?

    --
    "A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
  6. Video and Audio Codecs by SnowWolf2003 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There seem to be 3 factors that will eventually determine who wins out:

    1. Quality - If it is compressed it still needs to be good quality
    2. Widespread adoption - If you can't encode and decode it wherever you want to use it, then it won't work for you.
    3. Portability/Restrictions - Finding the right balance between copy protections wanted by the MPAA/RIAA and the portability wanted by the consumers.

  7. Xvid is the best. by incom · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It performs well on low end hardware, and has excellent video quality(best I've seen in compressed video). Divx is significantly slower at high quality settings, and with slightly more artifacts. I believe xvid is LGPL too! Too bad without some lobbying money it doesn't stand a chance for Hollywood.

    --
    True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.