Cheap DivX Solution For Your Entertainment Center

joemite writes "I-O DATA recently announced the release of their LinkPlayer, which can decode DivX files from DVDs, CDs, USB thumb drives, and network file shares. At $249 suggested retail, I know what I'm wishing for this Christmas!" For simpler (no network shares, no thumb drives) and even cheaper set-ups, a few standalone DVD players -- the Philips DVP642 is one -- will play DivX files from recordable CDs andd DVDs.

Comments

Cheaper Divx

[Buster Chan]

For cheapter DIVX, you can buy a Sega Dreamcast, then download the DIVX playing boot-disc from http://www.dcemulation.com

Re:Cheaper Divx

[Joe Tie.]

As much as I love the dreamcast (and still write for it), I don't think it'll meet most peoples needs for movie playback. It's worked well for me simply because I do my own captures and so encoding to a size and bitrate which would go along well with the player. But the size and bitrate limitations come down pretty hard on a lot of what's out there right now, without re-encoding, if it's used with the DC player.

Re:Cheaper Divx

[AnyoneEB]

VCDs are compressed with MPEG1 at a resolution about a quarter of regular TV. More info on the VCD format. In my experience, VCDs look pretty bad no matter what device you're playing them on.

Re:Cheaper Divx

[ImaLamer]

In my experience, VCDs look pretty bad no matter what device you're playing them on.

Well, you've not had the right VCD's! I've encoded some beauties. Plus you need a good decoder, because as I mentioned some don't fully decode the entire stream (they do their best giving you artifacts).

The issue about resolution is *almost* pointless when you realize your TV (if not HD) isn't that great to begin with and it scales very well.

But then again it all goes back to good encoding.

Not that great of a value....

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not buy an Xbox($149 new), mod it ($50 shipped) and use XBMC? It does all of that plus music and weather.....and you get a kick ass console.

You save $50 and you have a lot more functionality.

Re:Not that great of a value....

[Stevyn]

And you can play xbox games by just ripping them to the hard drive (which you can upgrade to hold a LOT of games. You can also play any NES, N64, Sega Genesis, and I'm sure several other console games. Few people know how amazing a modded xbox is. The only downside is you're taking revenue away from Microsoft.

Did I say downside?

Re:Not that great of a value....

[Tyrdium]

You mean copying games he already owns? I do the same thing on my computer, with Daemon Tools; it saves me the hassle of swapping disks.

Re:Not that great of a value....

[cdrudge]

Turn your mod chip off and yes. Keep it on and be banned.

Re:Not that great of a value....

[lakeland]

That the sale of an xbox costs MSFT money is a popular myth among people who don't understand economics. Let me try and explain it simply:

Microsoft spent a lot of money developing the xbox. Microsoft also spent a lot on infrastructure, advertising, and other such 'fixed' costs. When you calculate the cost to MS of every xbox they sell, you amortise these fixed costs over all xboxes sold, along with the variable cost (the cost per unit). A naive conclusion from this is that when you buy an xbox, Microsoft loses money. If you instead compute the raw cost of producing an xbox to MS (i.e. just the variable cost), then you find it costs them less than you paid for it. Conclusion: Every time you buy an xbox, MSFT's coffers are increased.

How do you reconcile those two things? Pretty easily. MS makes money off the sale of their xbox hardware, but not enough to justify them developing the xbox. Some people buy xbox games, and these people make MSFT a lot of profit. Is this profit enough to justify the money they've blown bringing a product to market? Perhaps, or perhaps not, we'll see. But every time you buy an xbox, you know you're helping make Bill just that tiny bit richer.

In case you haven't got it yet, let me give you an analogy. Say you've got a business idea, your company: "Winc" is going to start selling bottled water for $50/bottle. You plan to spend $50M on advertising to convince people that they really want to buy your water - it is much more cool than the water evian sells, for instance. Now, anybody could tell you this is a stupid business plan, and it is going to lose money because hardly anybody will buy the water. But an accountant would describe it in terms of the profit (loss) per bottle sold. In this case, you might be loosing $10,000 for every bottle you sell. But if I walk into a shop and buy a bottle, you make almost $50 profit. Do you follow?

Re:Not that great of a value....

[KronicD]

The latest version of the Xenium OS for the xenium modchip supports USB Devices, as do many of the media players for the Xbox.

Of course an adapter is needed to connect a USB device to one of the controller ports, but these are widely and cheaply available, microsoft will even supply these! (offically to be used with PSO for keyboards, PSO is an MMORPG)

It is worth noting that the controllers include a "usb hub" of sorts, with the two memory slots in the top of each controller, as an unmodded xbox seems unable to tell the difference between an official memory card and a usb thumbdrive pluged into a controller port.

This support of USB devices is currently being widely used for TSOP softmod exploits.

The xbox is an excellent media center and has served me well, altho xbox modchips are currently legal where I am (Australia), altho that is set to change in early 2005 when the free trade agreement (and dmca like provisions) come into effect.

If its still legal where you are, I reccomend getting a modded xbox, its a great console, great media player and a great general purpose machine :)

Something lesser known is that the memory and CPU in the xbox can actually be upgraded (soldering required), or you can buy a pre-upgraded xbox from here.

Re:Not that great of a value....

[afidel]

Well I'm not sure about today, but when the XBox first came out the variable cost of the XBox was in fact greater than the MSRP. I will quote a Cnet article from 2001:
And production costs are expected to be an unusually high $375 per machine because of the console's advanced features, Blodget said in the report. Blodget estimates Microsoft will "lose $125 on every Xbox console--and that's before taking into account" sales, marketing and other administrative costs.
linky

I don't doubt that the cost of parts have come down enough that today MS is in fact no longer losing much if any money on the XBox, but they most certainly aren't making a whole lot of money on them either. The console industry is all about licensing costs from content creators. Why else do you think three titles cost as much as the console?

Re:Not that great of a value....

[hohead]

Why does everyone think you *NEED* to buy a modchip for the Xbox?
Using the proven "UDE softmod" method, all you need is a rented game, a homemade USB2Xbox adapter and a USB thumbdrive to mod your Xbox.
Total cost: $5-10

And yes, this will 100% unlock your Xbox just the same as a $50 modchip would.

For more info, check out: http://how2xbox.com/ and/or http://www.xbox-scene.com/

Re:Not that great of a value....

[moonbender]

Keeping in with your bottle analogy: After an initial investment of $50M, you sell your bottled water at $50 per bottle. However, since your making bottles of solid crystal, each costs you $60 to manufacture. You're actually losing money on each, and not recouping investment costs. You're hoping will come back with the bottle for water refills you sell over price, though.

Your point is well taken, and the popular belief that Microsoft loses money on the consoles might well be wrong. But you didn't really give me a reason to think so - people don't think MS loses money on each box due to their initial investments, but simply because the hardware in that box - ie. not a "fixed cost" - comes in fairly expensive.

Re:Not that great of a value....

[XMage]

Although you have a grasp of micro economics, you need also to take a closer look at the underlying business strategy before you can understand the bigger picture. Microeconomics alone does not cut it. As all the other child posts point out, your thinking is flawed in certain respects.

So you say that it is a "popular myth" that MS does not profit from the sale of individual XBoxes?

I understand your economic reasoning. In substance you are saying that although the initial, fixed, sunk costs in the XBox project is large, the variable cost of producing an XBox is materially lower than the selling price. By your own admission, what you have is a gross profit, and a net loss after taking into account the fixed costs.

Taking your bottling analogy and simplifying:

Sale of one Bottle US$50.
Cost of bottle US$0.
Gross profit US$50.

Other costs US$50,000,000
Net loss US$49,999,950

No matter how you slice it, despite making a gross profit, you've made a loss selling bottles. You need to hit the "sweet spot" and sell AT LEAST 1 million bottles before you break even and start to make money. This is a little simplistic.

So no matter how you slice fixed costs & variable costs, this does not detract from the fact that the XBox division is not a profit generating business unit.

Also, you need to have a closer look at one of your biggest assumptions: that the marginal cost of producing the XBox is very small. It's not, because the last time I checked MSc ontracted out the production of the XBox to a 3rd party contractor. And MS does not control all the technology in the XBox: Intel and NVidia do. Contrast this to Sony, who operates at all levels in the manufacture of the PS2, and after 3-4 years can simplify the silicon andm anufacturing processes to produce a "slimmer" version. You only have to see the PSOne (The PS2 has a PS-on-a-chip, and the PSOne used this technology) and the upcoming PS2.

The marginal cost of producing an XBox to Microsoft is not very small.

Although I understand economics, rephrasing the question in terms of fixed & variable costs does not assist in our understanding of the underlying business. Let me try and explain it simply: You are either profitable or you're not. And if you're not profitable, then there should be a damn good reason for spending cash and losing money.

At the end of the day, the bottom line is the net loss of US$50m. And if I've contributed to
increasing MS's bottom line losses, then I would say that by buying an XBox I've "cost" Microsoft money.

So why should Microsoft go into a loss making business?

The way I see it, the XBox is a part of a wider MS strategy to break into the home entertainment market. Maybe MS saw that the Sony PS2 holds up Sony's profits worldwide and that they want to get into that game too.

You ever read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash? The way I see it, MS want to have a hand in designing the infrastructure for the Metaverse. Do you see all those fixed costs in developing the XBox and the XBox Live service? One of the big selling features of the XBox was it's network connectivity built into the machine.

Sony and the PS3 will have a lot to catch up on to match Microsoft's investment in XBox Live (the network infrastructure and software code) and to deliver an experience that is as compelling. To be honest, I suspect that Sony will miss the boat entirely and XBox 2 will stomp all over the PS3's online capability.

One day we may all get to experience something like the Metaverse. I won't be surprised if it's delivered via technology & infrastructure that was developed for the XBox.

Re:But does it support Xvid?

[lakin]

From the iodata product page:
Supported Video MPEG-1/MPEG-2/DivX® VIDEO/XviD/WMV9

Re:Sounds a bit pricey

[NETHED]

Walmart has a great DIVX player for REALLY Cheap. Here's a Link

I bought one a few weeks back and it plays pretty well.

Philips DVP642 player mentioned

[nyquil]

i have 2 of these, theyre really great. amazon has them usually for around $67, they work flawlessly, and will play almost everything you could put in there. i guess theres a couple divx encoders that it cant handle (yet), and i have come across a file or 2 that it wouldnt play, but if you're ripping your own stuff it should be fine. firmware upgradeable as well, just burn new firmware to cdr and follow the instructions. it will play divx/xvid/mpeg4 off cdr, cdrw, dvd+r/rw and dvd-r/rw, as well as being region free and progressive scan. best $67 i've ever spent.

Re:Philips DVP642 player mentioned

[Anonymous Coward]

More precisely, most standalone DivX/XviD players have problems decoding XviD-files that were encoded with QPEL, GMC or BVOP turned on. If you rip yourself this is not a problem, but most downloadable xvid movies use BVOP and a smaller portion of them use QPEL and/or GMC. I'd guess that about 50% of the movies that I download would work in a standalone player like the dvp642 without any reencoding.

philips dvp642

[tie_guy_matt]

I love my philips dvd/divx player. It is a pretty good stand alone dvd player but it plays a million other formats too. The only problem is that mine has trouble playing divx4 movies. In mencoder instead of using vcodec=mpeg4 I have to use vcodec=msmpeg4 (divx 3.) Divx3 is nice (alot better than mpeg2) but when I play with divx 4 I see that it has higher quality at lower bitrates. If anyone has gotten their philips player to play divx4 movies I would be interested to know.

Re:But does it support Xvid?

[Cocodude]

Most DVD players that support DivX support MPEG-4 based codecs, of which XviD is one. My DK Digital DVD player supports DivX, but in reality plays most of my XviDs and no doubt other MPEG-4 codecs.

Divx player prices:

[ImaLamer]

From Divx.com, "official" players.

DVD Player Compatibility List at VideoHelp.com

Goodmans DivX Decoder

[amembleton]

Goddmans make a DivX Player model: DVD161DIVX 5.1 DVD Player.

If you are in the UK you can pick one up for £60 from Argos. I have one, and find that it works very well whilst also looking good. All my videos play fine except for Real Player ones.

Re:DVP642 is really nice

[Anonymous Coward]

No problems playing PAL files (of PAL DVDS for the matter) on an NTSC set. I would check the integrity of the file you are trying to play, because I have had nothing but success with my machine. I highly recommend the DVP642.

Re:MythTV

[homer_ca]

Now can you build an HTPC that's quiet, not 3 times the size and weight, and doesn't use 4 times the electricity of a DVP642? I have one now, and I'm retiring the HTPC. But to be fair, I never got it working as well as I wanted, and I could have spent more time on tweaking it.

ATI Video Cards with TV Out

[frank249]

I had been looking for a way to play Divx files on my TV for awhile. I had considered a Divx capable DVD player but you cannot just go to Best Buy or Future Shop to get one. I thought about a wireless solution but they are still very pricy. I found the easiest and cheapest solution was to buy an ATI video card with TV out.
The 9200SE supports the latest games and dual monitors with DIV and has TV out/s video all for about $80cdn Yes my computer has to be close to the TV but I also have it conected to my stereo for home theatre and mp3s. Playing movies from the hard drive also saves having to burn DVDs/CDs. For me, it was the cheapest way to have my home multimedia centre.

Re:ATI Video Cards with TV Out

[Keebler71]

You didn't look very hard. I bought this one at target today for $69. Early verdict... neat but I can hear the disc spinning which is annoying... stay tuned.

Re:Quality

[tomstdenis]

flamebait...

You know you can

1. Do two pass encoding
2. Use a ***HIGHER BITRATE***

Those rips off kazaa you got 2 years ago were probably one-pass 384kbps files or something...

Two-pass 2Mbps should look perfect even at 720x480. If you're not so anal you can get by with as little as 800Kbps.

Tom

Re:But does it support Xvid?

[Naffer]

Does it do Xvid with Global Motion Compensation? Last I'd heard there weren't any Xvid standalone players that could handle it.

Liteon DVD players

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an LVD-2001, but the LVD-2010 is it's replacement model. There was some bitching and moaning about end-user formats and stuff, so the 2010 doesn't do as much as my 2001. But it plays Xvid absolutely perfect, and there's really no reason to ever use MPEG2 for it. Divx plays ok, as long as you keep to the "standards" for it's encoding.

I also have a LVW-5001.
It's wonderful, too, even though it doesn't play mpeg4. I swapped out the original Liteon 401M optical drive, for a newer 812S drive. I also added some vent holes; it had none from the factory, since the 401M is a class-1 laser device, and put a heatsink on the main encoding/decoding chip. I also managed to get some metal shavings somewhere in the 401M, which is why I had to swap it out for a 812S. It's encoder probably isn't the best in the world, but the 1 and 2 hour formats are absolutely wonderful.

Liteon makes absolutely wonderful Xvid/Divx solutions. They aren't made for playing mp3's (they can, thought the play options are limited).

Why is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this news? There have been similar players out for nearly a year. e.g.:

Pinnacle Showscenter
Actiontec MediaPlayer
D-Link DSM-320
Neuston

Open Show Center (OSC on Sourceforge) is an open source software for running them too.

I personally have 1.2 TB of movies ripped to Xvid on an old pentium running Apache that feeds my Actiontec MP.

Standalone players

[Phatmanotoo]

a few standalone DVD players -- the Philips DVP642 is one -- will play DivX files from recordable CDs andd DVDs.

Well at least here in Europe we've been having cheap (under $100) DivX-capable players since the beginning of the year. Last time I went to our local supermarket I could spot FIVE different ones, all under $100 except for the Philips one. And guess what, the cheap ones tend to accept a much wider range of disks and formats.

I've got an "El-cheapo" one, based on a MEDIATEK 1389-DE chip, and it plays *all* DivX and Xvid files I have tried so far. Only $60, bought it two months ago.

DIVX + Ethernet Compatibility List

[meehawl]

Cool. According to the DVD Player Compatibility List, there are just 5 players currently available with DIVX and ethernet. There are now, however, about 223 standalone DIVX players, around 13% of the total, which is much more than this time last year. Even the most modern ones, however, still sometimes have trouble with advanced or unsupported DIVX/XVid profiles.

Re:What's wrong with laptops?

[Anonymous Coward]

My laptop has an ir sensor for remote control.

My solution- playing DVD's & DivX from the net

[Beatlebum]

I have hundreds of DVD discs lying around. For a while I've been pondering what it would take to build a
networked video server, recently I finally got it working. The objective
was to be able to play DVD's seamlessly from a server share, by seamlessly I
mean complete with menus, extras etc., with high quality video and digital
sound. In theory a 100Mbit LAN should have enough bandwidth since DVD's
video stream is at most 9Mbit, the most difficult part was putting together
a quiet client machine capable of generating a good quality analog video
signal. I ended up buying a cheap ($400) Dell Poweredge machine on ebay,
it's practically silent, this is important since it sits beside the TV. For
DVD decoding I'm using something called the XCard
(http://www.sigmadesigns.com/products/xcard .htm), it decodes video and
outputs digital audio. On the software side I am using TVedia
(http://www.8dim.com/default.asp?linkid=vc dhelp), it generates menus on the
TV to access media on the LAN. It also works quite well with the XCard,
which comes with a serial port IR remote sensor. To make a DVD playable from
the network I use DVDDecrypter to create an iso image and daemon tools to
mount the image on a virtual drive, TVedia can then play the "disc" as if it
was in the local machine's drive. The system is pretty neat if I do say so
myself. I picked up a couple of Maxtor 250G drives from Frys, that's about
50-100 DVDs online. In theory I could stick another cheap PC in the bedroom
and have access to the movie collection there also.

Cheapo DVD players rock my world.....

[Morden]

I bought a Digitrex off Ebay for about AU$160.

Plays DivX, MOV, etc. Pretty much anything you can throw at it, except WMV and Real (but who cares about them anyway...).

About the only thing I'd want it to do that it doesn't currently would be handle multisession data disks so I can add files to compilations as new ... er ... "episodes" become "available".

It's also got a monitor output, so if my housemate's using the TV I can plug it into my computer's monitor and deprive /. of posts like this one :)

Oh, and it even plays DVDs...

Have had this for a few months now

[Koutarou]

In Japan this model has been out for about 6 months. Played 99.9% of all video files I threw at it, DivX and Xvid of just about every origin.

IO-DATA also sells a nice embedded linux NAS (120, 160, 250, 300gb versions available plus you can add 2 external usb2 drives) that has the server-side support to stream video to the linkplayer so you don't have to leave a PC on.

Firmware updates are distributed directly from the net too.

I'm really happy with it - makes me glad I bothered to wire ethernet to my living room wallplate.

Re:Have had this for a few months now

[cpaluc]

Koutarou, are you able to tell us whether it will play ripped DVDs (on a hard drive) perfectly? By "perfectly", I mean with all the menus and subtitles/audio tracks etc.

The only device I've found that does is the TViX (www.tvix.co.kr). With the TViX, you simply dump a DVD onto its hard drive, and then play the video_ts.ifo file and it's indistinguishable from playing the disc on regular player (eg. you get the menus). It even has optical audio out and component video out. Unfortunately the TViX doesn't have network capability.

I know XBox media center and other 'media center'-type devices can play ripped DVDs but I'm yet to find one that does it as well as the TViX does. It seems that they generally just allow playback of the main feature from the disc. Correct me if I'm wrong, but MythTV, XBMC and Freevo use Mplayer as the default video playback software. Mplayer doesn't support menus.

Re:What's wrong with laptops?

[Johnny Doughnuts]

If the resolution on the video is greater than 480p, you lose quality on the s-vid. Your only other options are to get a tv with dvi or vga inputs, or use the ati -> component video (Y Gr Br, i believe). Mind you, it requries an ati card.

Re:I have the Philips DVP-642

[bloo9298]

Hold down the STOP button on the remote for a few seconds to eject the disk.

No MPEG-4 Global Motion Compensation

[linuxguy]

Sigma 8620L that is used in this player does not support GMC.