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DivX Pulls Plug on Stage6

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the your-users-are-asking-for-ways-to-pay-you dept.

Xelios writes "DivX announced today that it will be shutting down Stage6, its high-quality video sharing site. 'So why are we shutting the service down? Well, the short answer is that the continued operation of Stage6 is a very expensive enterprise that requires an enormous amount of attention and resources that we are not in a position to continue to provide. There are a lot of other details involved, but at the end of the day its really as simple as that.' The news comes after the former CEO of DivX stepped down last year to head Stage6, which was to become a separate company, and the still ongoing legal battle with UMG."

84 comments

  1. I think I speak for everyone... by pwnies · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...when I say that we'll miss you stage6. You provided us with an alternative to the much lower quality videos on youtube and many other like sites. Great job divx.

    1. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 2, Insightful

      XviD shits on DivX. Project Mayo forever.

      Scumbags.

      --
      -1 Uncomfortable Truth
    2. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by ChaosWeevil · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I rather disagree. Stage6 was indeed high quality, which was nice, but the plugin required for it was hideous. It caused my browser to crash many, many times, and half the time it didn't work, providing the message "Could not download video file." I'm a rather glad to see it go, if only because I won't have to deal the plugin anymore.

    3. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by webrunner · · Score: 1

      Is there a single other site that can compare to stage 6 in terms of quality and video length?

      --
      ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
    4. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by CSMatt · · Score: 1

      I'd say "We still have Revver," but Revver as of late has been whoring its ads, making them pop up over the video and requiring the viewer to close them. This is just an annoyance, but where I draw the line is the inappropriate 10-second video ads occasionally appearing before and after the video. I'd like to watch a clip without worrying whether the inevitable shoulder-watcher thinks I'm willingly looking at an ad for Girls Gone Wild.

    5. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by Sangui · · Score: 1

      Why are you glad?
      If you didn't like it, why were you still using it?
      Why didn't you just not use it??

    6. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by log0n · · Score: 1

      Not familiar with Stage6 or it's content.. but Vimeo? It's a better quality (and smaller) Youtube.

    7. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You could have watched the videos with any media player that plays divx files and can be embedded into a web browser. For Linux they even told us to use MPlayer.

    8. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by springbox · · Score: 4, Informative

      All you had to do was copy the URL to the .divx file from the page, download the file, change the extension to .avi and enjoy.

    9. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by masticina · · Score: 1

      It looked much better I gotta agree I mean 960x540 for in game footage at good compression but damned you required quite a pc because it required quite a bit of your processor to run. That was its downside really, the fact that the pc it runs on needs to be up to snuff else it drops frames!

      --
      Codefile Defected to another Hexadimal Range refresh your CHAOSTACK.NLM file with a new copy
    10. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by orkysoft · · Score: 2, Informative

      Huh? I never heard of the site before, but I tested it today, and the videos load just fine with mplayer-plugin, which is a rather general plugin for playing all kinds of media files. No need for specialized plugins.

      The video quality is quite nice, actually. A lot better than Youtube's.

      --

      I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
    11. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by Hatta · · Score: 1

      I think you speak for everyone who hasn't discovered bittorrent.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    12. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 1
      I think you speak for everyone who hasn't discovered bittorrent.

      Streaming is much better than bittorrent for the following reasons:

      • You don't have to wait for a seeder to appear before you can download (especially if it's a rare media file where there are usually no seeders in BT trackers)
      • Download rates are usually higher for streaming media than for bittorrent (and I'm *NOT* behind Comcast)
      • You can only wait one or two minutes before you can enjoy your show, as opposed to waiting 30-240 minutes with bittorrent
      • Some sites provide what I call a "try before you download" approach, you can fastforward and start to view from minute 08:25 if you want to, so you can see if the anime you want to view is really worth it or just sucks (i.e. boring).


      So, no, GP doesn't speak for anyone who hasn't discovered bittorrent. I think he speaks for anyone who has discovered the advantages of streaming media over BT.

      And yes, I'm aware of the current research of streaming media OVER bittorrent, but haven't found a viable implementation yet.
    13. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 1

      I think I speak for everyone, when I say just how much I'll miss this latest attempt to duplicate "America's Funniest Home Videos."

      Those white kids from Omaha, lip-syncing Fiddy-Cent. I NEEDED the higher resolution!

      --
      "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
      Never been known to fail..."
    14. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by haruchai · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually, renaming the extension wasn't necessary if you used VLC
        as your media player

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    15. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by smurfsurf · · Score: 2, Informative

      And there is a download button built-in on every page.

    16. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by Wildclaw · · Score: 1

      ou don't have to wait for a seeder to appear before you can download (especially if it's a rare media file where there are usually no seeders in BT trackers)

      Download rates are usually higher for streaming media than for bittorrent (and I'm *NOT* behind Comcast) The above statements are comparing apples and oranges

      Of course you get higher speed from a streaming site since they are spend lots and lots of cash on providing more bandwidth, which is why they usually havelow quality video. (or get shut down like Stage6). Most torrents however are files distributed by ordinary people that don't have the money to pay for that kind of resources. If you were to try streaming from such as user you would have to wait for ever and ever.

      If another company used bittorrent and spent only half that amount of cash on bandwidth, relying on users to provide the rest, the speeds would be greater.

      You can only wait one or two minutes before you can enjoy your show, as opposed to waiting 30-240 minutes with bittorrent True. There is a lack of bittorrent clients that prioritize early pieces, while fetching later pieces to use for trading.
    17. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by jmcnaught · · Score: 1

      I had always hoped that Dijjer would take off. It's peer to peer, and really easy to use (you just have to append "http://dijjer.net/get" to the beginning of any url). It also starts from the beginning of the file, so it could be used for streaming.

      Unfortunately it doesn't even seem as though the website works at all now. The front page is there, but none of the links work.

      Using something like Dijjer could dramatically reduce the costs of doing something like stage6.

    18. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by ResidntGeek · · Score: 1

      Actually, stage6 was awesome because nobody used it for that. It was all trailers, promotional videos, movies, and TV show episodes, from what I saw. With the magic of wget I got the 9th series of Top Gear from stage6 in VERY nice quality.

      --
      ResidntGeek
    19. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by WK2 · · Score: 0

      Yes, but that only downloads the divx player. If you want to download the videos, you have to jump through one hoop or another.

      A download button would have been nice. I never heard of stage6 until this article, but after I just navigated the site a bit, the lack of a simple user interface (such as a download button) is one thing that would have kept me away from it.

      --
      Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
    20. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by DerWulf · · Score: 1

      How can one possibly become so agitated over something so trivial as video codecs that are almost indistinguishable?

      --

      ___
      No power in the 'verse can stop me
    21. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by smurfsurf · · Score: 1

      Oh, maybe you have to install the plugin first, although it is not needed for the download itself.

      When I open a page with the video, I see a still image of the video and in its center big play and download buttons. Both are just plain HTML link elements (only after pressing play the still image is replaced by the player object).

    22. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by elrous0 · · Score: 1

      And the fact that you had to go to all this extra trouble just to get the damn thing to work right points to exactly why it never caught on. Youtube has shit video quality, but at least it works consistently and simply.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    23. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by zymano · · Score: 1

      www.vimeo.com ?

    24. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by WK2 · · Score: 1

      Stage6 doesn't actually require the plug-in. With a little hoop jumping (getting the link from the "embed" box, you can still download or stream the videos with something like mplayer. However, stage6 doesn't do the little things, like add an HTML download button.

      There is certainly no play and download buttons in the center of a video, at least not on my screen. It says instead, "For Linux support try mplayer". These are the little things I'm talking about. Consistency, for one. Also, not trying to control how others use the web. Maybe stage6 could have been a better alternative to youtube. They had the high quality videos going for them.

      I repeat, there is no reason that stage6 should have been designed to require a plug-in. An optional plug-in would be alright, but making the UI hard to navigate without the plug-in was a bad idea. They also should have had lower quality versions of their videos, alongside the higher quality ones. Little things like this kill a site. That's just how it is. They should have hired a professional.

      --
      Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
    25. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by darthflo · · Score: 1

      I must admit to never having really used Dijjer, but what you're describing ain't peer-to-peer. Prepending http://dijjer.net/ to any url will make your browser send an HTTP request to the server at dijjer.net (client-server, here we go) causing it to retrieve the file (by whatever means, peer-to-peer or direct download) and transmit it over to you.
      As oppossed to directly downloading, this will cause at least twice, probably more traffic. The dijjer server needs to retrieve it, file's transmitted once; you need to receive it - file's transmitted twice. Even if it's free now, it won't be when Dijjer's VC runs out. They need to monetize double the traffic by showing you double the ads the original provider would have (and still will; he'll probably be chosing his site for ad delivery, Dijjer will have to come up with a way to get you to see even more ads).
      The coral cache does something similar, but seems more like a research project (non-profit, easier to get funds, easier to get inexpensive (universities) participation and bandwidth).

    26. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by JudgeFurious · · Score: 1

      I'm not doubting you or anything but for me at least Stage6 worked like a charm. I don't think ever once had any trouble with it.

      Obviously results varied.

      --
      Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
  2. Veoh by Sangui · · Score: 1

    The loss of Stage6 saddens me. I hope Veoh gets more stuff on it.

  3. Translation: by TubeSteak · · Score: 3, Insightful

    very expensive enterprise that requires an enormous amount of attention and resources In other words...
    The bandwidth costs are killing them and they're not making enough money from their content partners & advertising.

    The real bread & butter of Divx is licensing the codec.
    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
    1. Re:Translation: by CSMatt · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Or they just couldn't compete with YouTube.

    2. Re:Translation: by pinkocommie · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Or they never even tried to compete? Most people didn't even know it existed, there was no marketing push only of late have I noticed the embed url's to link to the videos directly etc. Far more importantly though they didn't try to offset costs. I'm sure they could've come up with a P2P based variant wherein users could have active clients helping them distribute the load with them providing heavy bandwidth sources reducing their costs pretty dramatically.

    3. Re:Translation: by Captain+Splendid · · Score: 1

      Most people didn't even know it existed

      Yep, that would be me. Never heard of them before this article, and I like to think I'm still fairly hip to what happens on the 'tubes these days and...shit. Those fucking kids are on my lawn again!

      --
      Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
  4. Alternatives by Kintanon · · Score: 1

    Anyone want to throw out some good alternatives to Stage6 for higher quality stuff than you can find on YouTube? Most of the video sharing sites I've found are littered entirely with bad rips of whatever is currently in the box office. Stage6 had a much wider variety of material on it.

    --
    Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
    1. Re:Alternatives by milsoRgen · · Score: 1

      Divx/Xvid files on TPB. Where else can you get a full length feature film that fits on a CD-R with virtually no perceivable lost of quality.

      --
      I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
    2. Re:Alternatives by ruinevil · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Use a h.264 codec to encode it, like x264. It's usually a little smaller with less artifacts.

    3. Re:Alternatives by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Divx/Xvid files on TPB. Where else can you get a full length feature film that fits on a CD-R with virtually no perceivable lost of quality.

      Viturally no perceivable lost [sic] of quality? Ha! You must either be blind or have a shitty monitor to say that. While I find the quality of 1 or 2 CD rips to be acceptable, I would certainly never say that there's "virtually no perceivable loss of quality." The image is always soft and there's usually a lot of mosquito noise around edges.

    4. Re:Alternatives by ruinevil · · Score: 1

      Also, why is this listed under Your Rights Online...

    5. Re:Alternatives by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Divx/Xvid files on TPB. Where else can you get a full length feature film that fits on a CD-R with virtually no perceivable lost of quality. Get your eyes checked. Not to troll or anything, but Xvid/DivX look awful at bitrates under 2000 (~1.8 gb). If you can't see the blockiness, artifacts, color distortions, and blurriness, you need your eyes checked and/or a better monitor/tv. Even at 2000 there's still very noticeable blockiness, artifacts, color distortions, and blurriness. Also, try watching an actual dvd sometime rather than just downloads. You're eyes may be just used to the low quality, not that dvds are that high quality in the first place.

      x264/h.264 can look acceptable at 1000 (~800mb) with some color distortions but very little blockiness and it still looks somewhat sharp.
    6. Re:Alternatives by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Joost.com ?

      (although that's not user content so it's probably not what you had in mind... )

  5. What now for DivX by pembo13 · · Score: 1

    Aside from Stage6 and there very elegant player, seems to me that DivX and Xvid are equivalent. What is going to give them the edge now?

    --
    "Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
    1. Re:What now for DivX by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 4, Informative

      That's because DivX and XviD both sprang from the open source Project Mayo. They used the "assign your copyright to us when you contribute" scheme that MySQL uses. Then suddenly the project was shut down, and all the Project Mayo code suddenly became the closed source DivX project. XviD was created by the pissed off Project Mayo contributers.

      --
      -1 Uncomfortable Truth
  6. DivX lost the advantage when h264 came along by szyzyg · · Score: 3, Informative

    For a long time stage6 had better video than most other sites because they were one of the few not using flash as a video player. But now h264 video support is part of flash I see a load of sites doing high quality video that leaves stage6 looking kinda ho hum in comparison.

    1. Re:DivX lost the advantage when h264 came along by LameAssTheMity · · Score: 1

      What sites are you referring to?

    2. Re:DivX lost the advantage when h264 came along by doas777 · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I'd say they lost the advantage when they closed the source and betrayed us all, and then when XVID came along, it became pretty darn undesirable. h264 is just the next step.

    3. Re:DivX lost the advantage when h264 came along by szyzyg · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well it might be bad form to blow my own horn, but you did ask - imeem.com is doing h264 video compare the indiana jones trailer on imeem versus the same video on youtube
      (be sure to hit the full screen button for best effect, and make sure your flash player is a recent one).

      imeem is better known as a place to upload and share mp3s, but the video support is pretty good too.

    4. Re:DivX lost the advantage when h264 came along by Xelios · · Score: 1

      That's true, but could the open source community have created something like Stage6 with it? I don't agree with what they did to the DivX codec, but at least they tried to give something back too, even if it was just a market venture for them.

      I have a cracked version of the DivX encoder though, eye for an eye no?

      --
      Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
    5. Re:DivX lost the advantage when h264 came along by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have a cracked version of the DivX encoder though, eye for an eye no?

      Or you could just grab the free Dr Divx OSS package and use the encoder from that.

    6. Re:DivX lost the advantage when h264 came along by ralphthemagician · · Score: 2, Informative

      No. There aren't currently any major sites using H.264 encoded video to stream to a Flash front-end. Flash Media Server still hasn't been updated to support H.264 yet. What people forget is that there are a few codecs that Flash actually supports. YouTube uses the ancient VP3, as to many others, to avoid licensing costs since the codec is now open source. VP6 has existed for a while, and is actually a fantastic codec for the bit rates it's used at. It's nearly as good as H.264 in practice. Stage6 had better quality video than YouTube, but it did not have better quality video than what Flash was actually capable of playing. Try it yourself if you have Flash 8 or CS3. Convert a video to VP6 and you can see that it's quite impressive. At reasonable bit rates for streaming media (say 1500Kbps), it's nearly as good as H.264 at the same bitrate, only a little "softer."

      --
      -- Aaron
    7. Re:DivX lost the advantage when h264 came along by szyzyg · · Score: 2, Informative

      "No. There aren't currently any major sites using H.264 encoded video to stream to a Flash front-end."

      Sorry, completely wrong, because imeem.com has been doing this for a while now, I know because I was part of the team implementing this, feature. I pointed out the new Indiana Jones Trailer on imeem which is delivered at a resolution of 768x360 and 800kbit/sec, and when it's played full screen it looks pretty darn nice.

    8. Re:DivX lost the advantage when h264 came along by FornaxChemica · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Shouldn't possible alternatives be compared with Stage6 rather than with YouTube ? A lot of sites may have a better version of a video than YouTube, but where is the one that can match Stage6's standards ? Not only in terms of compression but also speed, accessibility, etc. Most of the other sites are just modeled after YouTube, even their video player is.

    9. Re:DivX lost the advantage when h264 came along by illaqueate · · Score: 1

      what if i want to watch it at its native resolution rather than full screen? you should add that imo, unless I'm the only one with that preference.

    10. Re:DivX lost the advantage when h264 came along by mxs · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I have heard this argument a few times in the past day.

      Can you please cite even one site that offers comparable quality and usability ? When I doubleclick the video, I want instant fullscreen with crisp video. I also want the option to download stuff for later use.
      None of the video sites come to mind.

      H.264 not a good video site makes. You need a little more than just a codec.

    11. Re:DivX lost the advantage when h264 came along by illectro · · Score: 1

      "Can you please cite even one site that offers comparable quality and usability "

      I think the 'Usability' of stage6 largely came from sites like tvlinks which indexed all the material that people wanted to see.

      So are you seriously saying that stage6 was best because a doubleclick on the video makes it full screen, whereas lesser sites like imeem/dailymotion/vimeo could only offer a little button on the video player to make the full screen player kick in?
      What kind of UI nazi are you?

      Downloads make make the site better for the users, but they reduce the potential for displaying ads and making revenue as well as increasing potential legal liability, so while the site may be better, it may not be 'successful' and I think stage6's demise only reinforces this hypothesis.

    12. Re:DivX lost the advantage when h264 came along by zymano · · Score: 1

      http://www.vimeo.com/ ????????

    13. Re:DivX lost the advantage when h264 came along by szyzyg · · Score: 1

      I'll tell the guy who wrote the player. I've no doubt that there are presentation improvements that we can make, and will make when we get time.

    14. Re:DivX lost the advantage when h264 came along by szyzyg · · Score: 1

      OK while it lasts - here's the stage6 link - in awesome 1080p -
      http://www.stage6.com/Lion-Gate/video/2217528/Indiana-Jones-4-Full-HD-Trailer
      the video quality is better than what we have at imeem, but even on my office connection it sat there buffering for several minutes, and when it did start to play it only managed about 5fps. Those still frames do look mighty fine though.

      It's all a compromise and we've tried to hit the sweet spot where people with moderately good connections (~1megabit) and computers built in the last few years will be able to instantly experience full screen video.

    15. Re:DivX lost the advantage when h264 came along by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unfortunately if recent Flash is required, that means it's not useable by Linux on PPC architecture, or by Sony PS3's cell processor.

      The Flash player on the PS3 is an old version, because Adobe has discontinued developing for PPC (of which the CELL is one variant). Even installing linux on the PS3 won't fix this.

      However, the PS3 recently liscensed and implemented divx/xvid playback.

      So stage6 would have worked on the PS3, but flash based content that requires the most up to date Flash won't work on the PS3's web browser, or linux variants installed on its Cell (PPC) processor.

    16. Re:DivX lost the advantage when h264 came along by smurfsurf · · Score: 1

      imeem does not work for me. When I hit play, firefox shows that it tries to connect to the surfing history tracking slimey bastards doubleclick for a minute and that's it. I can't go further than the spinner.

    17. Re:DivX lost the advantage when h264 came along by mxs · · Score: 1

      http://www.vimeo.com/ ???????? Really ? That many question marks ? Are you not sure ?

      Your link does not satisfy even one of the requirements. No ability to download. No doubleclick=fullscreen, and if you do go fullscreen, it is not slick and fast, but takes a second, at least the first few times.

      Usability ? Please. The navigation elements in the video are astonishingly badly placed. "Embed" and "Share" belong on the page, not in the video. Clicking anywhere in the video has absolutely no effect. Sure, nice, rounded edges ... But why, oh why is the standard video size so small still ? The site is about videos. Why not give the main attraction more screen real estate ?

      Searching and especially browsing leave lots to be desired.

      I'll give you that the quality is better than youtube. IMHO it is still not comparable to stage6, but some of the HD videos are decent.

      Phrases like "Vimeo is the best place to:" don't make me want to use it. If it's truly the best place, I will find out. You telling me that your stuff is the best does not inspire confidence.
    18. Re:DivX lost the advantage when h264 came along by mxs · · Score: 1

      So are you seriously saying that stage6 was best because a doubleclick on the video makes it full screen, whereas lesser sites like imeem/dailymotion/vimeo could only offer a little button on the video player to make the full screen player kick in?
      What kind of UI nazi are you? Thanks for invoking Godwin sir, you loose.

      It's little things like that which make the difference. If your user interface puts "cool, whizbang design" first and usability second, you automatically loose -- though if you are lucky, you'll get some stupid VC firm to buy into that whizbang look.

      Downloads make make the site better for the users, but they reduce the potential for displaying ads and making revenue as well as increasing potential legal liability, so while the site may be better, it may not be 'successful' and I think stage6's demise only reinforces this hypothesis. Legal liability ? Hogwash. That's exactly the same with both approaches.

      If you want an adfarm, build an adfarm. Caring about the user's experience is a more important part of the whole. If your users don't like your site, you will have even less exposure. Do you really think YouTube would have happened if they placed profitability first ? Do you really think they are profitable /now/ ?
    19. Re:DivX lost the advantage when h264 came along by nullchar · · Score: 1

      Agreed. Why would I watch anything on the web in full screen? I'm surfing the web to slack it and randomly click links. I'm not making popcorn and sitting patiently for long clips to buffer.

  7. Traffic by miscz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Stage6 was quite popular due to availability of many TV shows but they've started to seriously fight it 2 or 3 months ago. It was THE place to get many british sitcoms. I wonder if this has anything to do with the shutdown.

  8. A Huge Loss by sasserstyl · · Score: 1

    This came as a real shock. I haven't found a video website that offers the same video resolution and strong content.

    Can anyone point me to a replacement site?

    1. Re:A Huge Loss by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      torrentscan.com

  9. Operation Saving Stage6 ! by FornaxChemica · · Score: 2, Funny

    Maybe if everyone clicks like mad on their ads during those two days left, they'll earn millions, save the site, and everyone will live happily ever after. No ?

    1. Re:Operation Saving Stage6 ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm sorry, I'm too busy watching Filterset.G download new lists of stuff to block with adblock

  10. Bandwidth Hog by phantomcircuit · · Score: 1

    Sites that hotlink stage6.com are probably to blame here, specifically http://legalmovies.tv/

    1. Re:Bandwidth Hog by FornaxChemica · · Score: 1

      It probably isn't the problem, if it was they could have easily prevented them from hotlinking the videos. On the contrary, hotlinking probably helped Stage6 to get known. Personally that's by browsing their videos on another site that I first heard about them.

  11. nooo by sentientbrendan · · Score: 4, Informative

    stage6 was by far the best video site out there in terms of video quality and the ability to watch things full screen.

    It seems stupid to me that they couldn't make their business model work. They had excellent technology, but obviously like so many online ventures they didn't think very hard about how they were going to make money.

    It seems obvious to me that they could have gotten significant cash on advertising if they did speach to text translation on the videos and then did some context based ads on that text. However, they seemed to have almost no advertising on their site, and thus no way to recoup losses.

    Additionally, they could have tried a model that required users to subscribe to stage6 as basically an internet television service. However, they seemed like they weren't really willing to try *anything* to recoup expenses, and just killed the project by inaction.

    This worries me because the same problems basically face youtube, and similarly google has done pretty much nothing to make the site profitable since purchasing it. The only real change has been the removal of copyrighted material from the site, and that can hardly be called an improvement.

    Hopefully divx will license out the stage6 browser plugin and serving infrastructure to other companies so the technology won't die.

    1. Re:nooo by rucs_hack · · Score: 1

      It seems stupid to me that they couldn't make their business model work

      If you looked at their most contributing members, they were all uploading illegal content (as evidenced by joox.net). That's not a sustainable business model for a company that wants to be legit.

      Hopefully divx will license out the stage6 browser plugin and serving infrastructure to other companies so the technology won't die

      Why not let it die, they ripped off the open source community to get the code for it in the first place.

    2. Re:nooo by sentientbrendan · · Score: 1

      >Why not let it die, they ripped off the open source community to get the code for it in the first place.
      If you assign your copyright over to some open source group, you risk them relicensing it in a way you won't like. My understanding is that is what happened to divx.

      That's why I've always considered the FSF scheme of forcing you to give them copyright before you can commit something to say, GCC, as kind of a scam. For instance, I much prefer V2 of the GPL to V3, so if I commit anything to GCC under V2, the FSF has the right to come along and change it to V3 without my permission. Or they could come up with a new license, or they could close the source and sell it commercially like Divx did (although this is less likely, it has happened a number of times).

      The FSF is influential in the open source community, so people tend to ignore the fact that they are taking away the rights of various open source developers.

      I like the Linux model where everyone retains their rights and the license remains static. If they want to change the license, they can ask the developer's permissions.

    3. Re:nooo by Jarik_Tentsu · · Score: 1

      One of the things I loved about Stage6 was the clean, fast interface. It was intuitive, unlike many other streaming sites (YouTube, Veoh), it was simple, yet looked very nice, (once again, unlike many streaming sites) and so on.

      I bet ads would've highly detracted from this...but yeah, I'd be willing to sacrifice some of the interface if I still got my uber fast loading high quality videos.

      On a side note, what do people recommend as a good alternative to Stage6? I took one glance at Veoh (what Stage6 seems to recommend) and didn't like it.

      ~Jarik

  12. Sad day.. by EvilToiletPaper · · Score: 2, Interesting

    As a long time Anime watcher, I've tried loads of streaming media websites but nothing beats the quality of stage6. I used to watch episodes on youtube, crunchyroll etc. in the worst quality possible until a stage6 turned up in a random search.. Now i only go to another website if stage6 doesn't have what I want.
    I was very sad when they announced the site's going to die on thursday. I looked for 'make a donation' or some similar link to send them money .. Does anyone know if they are taking donations to stay alive? Heck, I wouldn't mind even if they started charging a monthly fee for viewers.

  13. Illegal Movie Hosting by Panascooter · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The decision to shut Stage6 down may have something to do with sites like quicksilverscreen.com using it to host full movies. They might not be able to fix the hole that makes such hosting possible, and they probably don't want to deal with the liability.

  14. MOD PARENT AWESOME by Captain+Splendid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    XviD shits on DivX. Project Mayo forever.

    Scumbags.

    Is everybody paying attention? That's how you troll, kids.

    --
    Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
  15. Vista hates the plugin by rucs_hack · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I don't know if anyone else found this, but when I installed the divx web player on my Vista machine, it killed Explorer, causing a constant cycle of 'explorer has stopped responding and will be restarted'.

    I ended up having to re-install, and lost lots of data because I couldn't even get it to copy things off the machine.

  16. Stage 6 Bandwidth by Nazmun · · Score: 1

    The videos on stage6 also clearly used several times more bandwidth then youtube. The latest h.264 in flash is not any worse then divx. Infact, divx has been lagging for a while now and the only reason stage6 looked so much better was because it was far more bandwidth intensive. The operating cost of stage6 is going to be much more then youtube per view.

    --
    Hmmm... Pie...
  17. Translation:Reality struck. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Or they never even tried to compete?"

    Maybe the "new and improved" business model folks should be taking notes. "Word of mouth" and "quality product" doesn't mean that people will be kicking down your door, be it Divx videos or...music.

    "Far more importantly though they didn't try to offset costs. I'm sure they could've come up with a P2P based variant wherein users could have active clients helping them distribute the load with them providing heavy bandwidth sources reducing their costs pretty dramatically."

    Bandwith is bandwith. You can play shell games with it but someone's always going to be paying for it. The issue then is it fair to all the others and even less so when you keep in mind P2P doubles the amount due to that whole "sharing"*

    *I'm assuming a fair player who's not just leeching or quiting when their downloads done.

    BTW remember Divx was also into hardware branding as well.

  18. No publicity. by argent · · Score: 1

    I don't think I ever heard of it until today.

  19. That's probably their biggest problem by argent · · Score: 1

    No referrer checking, no attempt to keep people from leeching their bandwidth, no advertising, no promotion.

    You need to sell your better mousetrap. The world won't beat a path to your door if they don't know about it, and your competitors are shifting the merchandise from your loading dock.