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DivX CEO on Hackers, YouTube, Technology
Cintia Barreto writes to mention a Red Herring interview with Jordan Greenhall The CEO of DivX talks about the company's roots, a little bit about YouTube, and how entertainment technology grew out of the file-sharing days of the late 90s. From the article: "We sat down and said what you just created will do these things, people will adopt it, they will use it to transmit high-quality video, probably movies, probably television shows, probably porn--on the Internet--and in this domain and in this particular way. In some timeframe, they will want to be able transmit that from the PC into the living room. It will be the kind of content that wants to live in the living room--just like what happened with MP3. You had music files sitting in your PC and you wanted to take them portable. Somebody had to invent the portable MP3 player. In fact, I was at MP3.com at the time, I got to physically touch the first MP3 player ever made. It was made by these guys from Korea--it was literally duct tape."
True story. Early mp3-capable DAPs were made completely from duct-tape-based transistors. A single roll of duct tape can be used to make hundreds of thousands of mp3 players. Literally.
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In Korea, only old people make MP3 players out of duct tape...
Am I the only one that automatically thinks of DIVX whenever I read about DivX the codec? I'm so glad that the open source one is Xvid. That helps me keep it straight. I guess Circuit City scarred me for life with their draconian format.
--why?
"And it's made of a bunch of different tools."
"When you've invented an algorithm that does compare this frame to this frame and see if there's any difference between them, it's done."
Re Apple and "Random"
Why not tell us more about battery life, cpu usage, file size, quality, encoder software, costs and your DivX certified?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
That's a funny way of saying "So he took MS's MPEG4v3 and disabled the check that prevented it from working inside AVI files".
And BTW it was not the "first" DivX either...
In fact, I was at MP3.com at the time, I got to physically touch the first MP3 player ever made.
MP3 started as a software codec on computers. It's pretty much impossible to define what is the first MP3 player, except maybe the desktop of the person who wrote the codec. Even though it mentions portable, laptops of the time could run the Codec too. The statement is just meaningless.
I always had this vague feeling that whoever ran DivX was an asshole, and now I feel vindicated. I spent too many years just wanting the codec, and only being allowed to download it with a bunch of crappy software.
The "MP3 player made from duct tape" was presumably an early version of the Eiger MPMan. I own a Compaq/Hango PJB-100 (first hard disk based MP3 player, i.e. the ur-iPod) which still works fine (now playing Prokofiev's second piano concerto). Ironically, it actually is held together with duct tape now.
And yeah I already know about using mplayer.
The first MP3 player ever made was probbably made using Soundedit 16 and Director Shockwave as .SWA files were MP3 with extra header information.
The first licensee of MP3 from Fraunhofer was Macromedia and they called it SWA. This was around mid 1995 IIRC.
I'm sure Buzz Kettles from Macromedia and Murat Konar were the first people to create MP3 playback and they did it through Shockwave.
The first multi song MP3 player was written in Director 5 in late 1995 and it allowed the user to select any song from a certain CD, The Chemical Brothers' Exit Planet Dust. It was demoed by Phil Shiller who at that time worked on the Director time at Macromedia. Back then, it was compressed at a bit rate of 96 kbps so that it would fit on a 100 MB drive which at time cost around 200 dollars.
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Then there were portable MP3 players and DV recorders and cell phone videos followed by easy to use distribution services for people to share them through, and so it was.
My prediction? This stuff was just giving us a glimpse of what is to eventually come. There is a technology that is completely linked up with these others through the distribution channel it will inevitably find itself on. Desktop fabrication. I'm talking 3D printers with downloadable blueprints that people share through P2P networks. You think the RIAA and MPAA are bad? Just wait till car manufacturers and insurance comopanies figure out that there are people driving "pirated" custom printed AMG55's that aren't made by Mercedes. I realize there's already a pirated car market in the East, but it is NOTHING like what we will eventually have. We're going to seriously reconsider how we view products, raw materials, IP, liability, etc. This is only the beginning.
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Divx 3.11 Alpha: Used for a long time, just a hacked version of MSMPEG4 codec.
;)
Divx 4: Opendivx, a new Simple Profile mpeg 4 encoder
Divx 5: Closed Source, ASP codec, the closing of the source led to the XviD project
Divx 6: Some improvements to Divx 5, and a new container format (like AVI or MKV).
There have been rumors about Divx making an AVC (h264) codec.
However, currently, Divx is FAR surpassed in encoding quality and speed by XviD. Also, XviD streams are COMPLETELY compatable with DivX players/streams, as they are both simply mpeg-4 ASP.
However, the x264 encoder blows them both out of the water, but it is slow as hell
The first portable MP3 player was actually built at AT&T in 1995. AT&T Labs spent several years after that trying to convince some of the big 5 record companies to set up an on-line music distribution service. But the record companies were scared of piracy and killed the idea. The AT&T player supported MP3, PAC (perceptual audio coder) and an early form of AAC.
I saw a demo of that player in 1995.
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These executives just can't seem to engage their brain without sitting down first. I'm sure the title "Chairman" is no coincidence. (Unless you're Steve Ballmer.)
Don't mod me down for being an anon coward on this one...
.iso has taken over that (higher quality). Remember that for "future proofing" open standards are needed. And Divx is nothing but a fashion accessory like the iPod, one of those crummy codecs supported on chip. The true and the real support open formats which if I am guessing correctly Divx is closed.
That guy is far behind the times, sure the Divx bug bit me about 2 years ago and then Ogg Theora from Xiph took my attention away. Theora is by far the method for doing things like this. Remember mp3? FLAC has taken over that (higher quality), remember DVD? Well unencrypted
That Divx isn't crescent fresh!
Funny how Porn makes or breaks much new video technology. IIRC(can't verify...), a major reason VHS won over Betamax was because of pornography and its embrace. Interesting that he is acknowledging it as a major driving factor in video technology. Especially because of its stigmatization.
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I seem to remember something about DivX networks originally running an open-source project to collect people's ideas, then closing it down and going closed-source. Were any Slashdotters involved in the open-source project and the subsequent dispute?
H.264 works great and its a standard. Makes DivX look so 1990.
Your logic fails in one key area. Creating real physical things costs a lot of money and you have to use a lot of raw materials and energy. No machine will ever exist which lets an individual make something on his desk like a cell phone. Even on a bigger scale, say 100s of units from a small undeground company is near impossible. The market competition is far too fierce to allow them viable profits.