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Technology

How is DivX Doing 82

Posted by CmdrTaco from the silly-technologies-losing-cash dept.
Breadf-n wrote in to send usa link to an interesting techweb snippit where you can read how DivX and Circuit City are doing. The interesting thing to me was the number of DVD players sold. I wonder how long before it becomes the standard. I'd really love to obsolete analog movies ASAP.
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How is DivX Doing More

How is DivX Doing

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  • The DVD media will not go through the same abuse as game console CDs, for the obvious reason that most DVD media will not be regularly handled by 8-year-olds.
  • I can't get through -- jesus, maybe the pentagon ought to classify /. (or the Slashdot Effect) as a munition...

    ----

  • Dear God,


    I know that you and I aren't on the best of terms

    and all, what with me agreeing with Jody Foster's

    character in that one movie and all, but I have a

    prayer to offer up if you're listening:


    Please, kill DIVX.


    Maybe slaying the first-born of every Circuit City

    ad exec would do it. Maybe raining brimstone

    inside each Circuit City would do it (assuming the

    sale isn't that great -- I bet people would deal

    with the brimstone for a $80 scanner).


    I know you're trying to help, but just giving the

    salespeople facial blemishes doesn't seem to be

    helping.


    Amen.

    ----

  • > now, what do you thinks gonna happen when
    > several hundred million people start speaking to
    >each other on the internet?
    >im just waiting for the next "Shakespeare"

    My guess is that you won't be writing it :-)
  • The people who buy Divx are going to be in a world of hurt if the format dies (which I hope it does soon). When nobody is selling additional viewings anymore, they'll be stuck with a whole stack of disc's they can't watch anymore! Yuck.
  • Posted by Charles Bronson:

    I have an extensive video collection of movies that won't be on DVD for a long, long time. Most companies arn't in a big hurry to put cult classics on DVD. The price is forbidding, so the only companies putting out DVD movies are the ones who pay $200,000,000 to make a movie. Maybe when I can get Ed Wood movies on DVD, it might be worthwhile.

    Besides, so many of the movies I love are just crap I taped off of HBO.. stuff that you could never find it stores. Eliminating the recordable aspect of video is sort of silly. That's why people love their VCRs.
  • Posted by HarryZ:

    Those of you whining on about grainy VHS quality, due yourselves a favor and pick up a S-VHS system, and stop whining. You can get those for the same price, or better than DVD systems - and they record.

    Claiming that DVD is the only option to VHS, and thus it's okay to take artifacts and all the other DVD crap into account just shows how little you even bother looking at the options in the market.

    DVD Sucks for several reasons:

    * Digital artifacts/pixelation. The most obvious one, and while dual-layer DVDs provide better quality, obvious MPEG problems, like flashing still backgrounds at keyframes locations are still annoying. Try rapid pans, and you get the same problems. I viewed a DVD of 'Devil's Advicate' on my friend's high-end DVD player, and I ended up picking it up on Laserdisc instead - much better quality.

    * Regional encoding - the discs are digital media, thus, theoretically any disc should be playable on any machine in the world, the local machine taking care of the local TV conversion, right? Not so - thanks to the $$$ industry's clueless greed, we now have regional encodings which make sure that you can NOT buy discs from one country to play in another country. Supposedly to stem piracy of discs - funny that all pirated discs are encoded without regional coding, thus they are playable everywhere, so that really didn't do anything for that problem, except annoy consumers. Sure, I could pay more to get a DVD player that has no regional coding, but why should I pay more to fix a problem that shouldn't be there to start with.

    * DVD sounds is inferior to LaserDisc digital tracks. This is true as the DVD's PCM tracks have less dynamic range and quality than LaserDisc's digital tracks. You *can* hear it if you have them side-by-side.

    In summary, IMO, DVD is not worth it unless these items are fixed (albeit the sound is the least of them). Otherwise, it is just a medium that allows the movie companies to profit from the apathetic consumers.

    DiVX? Not even worth mentioning - it was dead before it wa even conceived.

    HarryZ
  • Posted by jonrx:

    Are you complaning about encoding artifacts! Where have you been!? I guess you have been living in some remote cabin up in the mountains for the last 20 years. You know, there is this thing called VHS, and it does not suffer for "encoding artifacts", however, I get muffled sound, "snow", out-of-sync colors, "skew" (now that's scary, it's so common, that players actually are coming with "anti-skew" button on them!) I take DVD over hyped, sucky, bulky VHS anyday! JVC HQ should be burnt to the ground for the years of suffering!
    -jon
  • Posted by Sam Robertson:

    If you've ever owned a DSS, you'll absolutely hate Digital Cable. I had Digital Cable for two months, and called the cable company and told them to shove it. It's crap, and considering what's already out there on Satellite, it's absurd that they think they are competition to DSS. The truth is, they think they can keep people ignorant of the benefits of small dish technologies by touting it's price, but the reality is that it pays for itself within a year as compared to Cable!

  • Amen! (Score:1)

    by Shanoyu ( 975 )
    And so it is written upon the book of the Disc 6:66 that Upon the 99th year of the 20th century that a great plague will be upon us. And so a great hero named DaViD will come and save us from our blight; and so the evil demon known to us as DivX will be engaged in a battle of the Titans With DaViD, and He shall taketh his Quake CD, and his SlackWare CD, and his Debian CD, and his Quake 2 CD, and he shall use the Disk Launcher fromth the game Tribes, and he shalt use it upon the evil Demon, and it shall be destroyed, it is so written in the Man pages of god.



  • I've heard this argument before, but isn't Blockbuster "Big Brother" too? Big rental chains already know what movies you're watching, so why is DIVX any different>
  • Cassette tapes are still widespread for one simple reason:



    They can record and re-record, easily.



    Even CDRs have not replaced the cassette for this because (1) The recording process is still too complex for Consumer Joe Schmuck to execute and (2) CDRW's don't work in most CD players and (3) The usual CDRW packetized re-recording format isn't understood by any audio CD decks and (4) The tech is still bulky (compare to microcassette recorders for lectures) and (5) the recording process is power hungry (no CDR portable recorders).



    Considering that CDs came out almost 20 years ago. I don't see VHS going away for at least another 20 years as well.



    When I see handheld DVD camcorders for $500, I'll believe that VHS will die.

  • Analogue (Score:1)

    by slim ( 1652 )
    What about 35mm film? Wanna make that obsolete too?

    Don't forget that part of Pi's unique look is down to its use of an unusual development process, using the "obsolete" analogue techniques of "subjecting a load of chemicals to light"...
  • I've never seen any form of digital TV (be it DVD, digital cable TV, whatever) that was free of VERY obvious artifacts. They are a pain! Yes, I know, digital TV is inherently limited, but the quality at the moment seems more limited by the imagination of the people pushing these cruddy formats than by digital technology itself.
  • Here's the thing. Divx sucks. It's inferior technology with a higher price tag, cleverly disguised so that it looks cheaper in the beginning. Everyone on Slashdot knows that. Most others don't. A few unfortunates will have to learn it the hard way.

    Once they do, however, the word will spread, and Divx will die the quick, nasty death it deserves. It doesn't need our help.
  • After reading all these posts I have a question. Several of the posts refer to the fact/idea that there is a definite visual improvement with more expensive DVD players. So if I buy a 300.00 set I'm going to have a worse experience than my nice VHS machine? I don't want to have to buy a 1000.00 machine. I'll just wait.

    Any advice or a good URL link would be wonderful. Thanks for you help.

    Ron
  • If you properly calibrate your TV, the artifacting effects to which you refer will be much less noticeable. Also, many people don't realize you need to turn the "sharpness" or "picture" control to it's lowest setting on most TV sets. A high sharpness or picture setting exagerates the artifacting effects by introducing more noise to the picture. Also, an S-video or component video connection is a must.

    I suggest getting the DVD "Video Essentials" to help calibrate a nice home theater setup.
  • I have a midrange DVD player (Sony S500D) and a small but growing collection of DVDs (14). My television is a decidedly low-end 25" GE model (I'm not getting a new one until I can get a 16x9 flatscreen model).

    Maybe I'm just not 3l337 enough, but I have noticed exactly one instance of MPEG artifacts in all those hours of viewing, and that instance lasted about 1/2 of a second.

    DVDs kick ass. They're cheaper than VHS (I got all of Bubblegum Crisis on 3 DVDs for $50 as opposed to $160 on 8 VHS tapes), they include cool stuff (making of, production stills, cast interviews). Most importantly, VHS looks like total shit once you've watched a DVD. It's so *blurry*!

    I can live with a half-second of artifacts per 30 hours of video in exchange for crystal clear images and wonderfully clear, obnoxiously loud and noise free sound.

    Everybody: go buy a DVD player right now. DIVX must die.

    --
  • Actually they do use encryption better than that and that's exactly why they don't export to other countries. Also, it's one of their reasons they dont have multiple languages selection.

    Slider
  • I've had digital cable for almost six months now, and all things considered, I like it. Every now and then, if you look really, really hard, you can see a compression artifact or two. I'll learn to live with that considering I wouldn't even have those stations on the old analog system (yes, the channels I had with the old system are still analog). As far as the delay when changing channels, no big deal. The on-screen program guide is a much better way to see what's on, so the only time I change channels is when I already know what I'm going to watch. Never was much of a channel-surfer anyway.

    The thing to remember about technology and the "digital revolution" (hate that phrase) is that it's full of trade-offs. All things considered, I think digital cable is still a much better service than the old analog cable, flaws and all.
  • Actually, they're only charged 20 years from now IF the DIVX system is still available to authorize the viewing.... it's a bizarre little system, and it's all useless if they don't get it to catch on.

    Even if you purchase the full release (for ~$20 extra?) for unlimited views, I believe it still has to authenticate off it's central server.

  • >>"Obsolete" is an adjective, not a verb.

    >Any noun can be verbed.

    "Verbing weirds language." (Where's that from?)

  • Divx (Score:1)

    by Dogun ( 7502 )
    Divx is evil... the scourge of all good.
  • I hate to tell you, but all of the cable feeds come down off of the satellite in a digital format these days (Digicypher II). So, if you're watching HBO, or whatever, it's from a digital source.

    You get artifacting with digital video when people try to cut corners on the bits-per-second in order to cram more onto a single disc. But in a professional environment, it can be done right so that you wouldn't notice it. You crank up the bitrate until the artifacting goes away.

    Jon
  • I really like DVD. It is a nice medium, that takes the convienience of CD and brings it to video. Unlike some peoples complaints about pixilization here, they are unfounded. Yes there are issues on high grade video, but that is not what you get from the video store. DVD fails as a media for profesional mixing but pixlated high resolution is better than grainy low resolution. The sound is nice as well.

    While I am a firm LP for quality sound man. VHS has multiple failings. One VCRs use variable gain so dynamic range of sound and sound quality is not preserved. Could Analog tape be a better media? Yes. When I rent "Apocalypse Now" and view it at home will it look and sound better on DVD or VHS? Definitly DVD. Not to mention how grainy and worn out video places let their video's get.

    Though I have to admit I have already rented a scratched up DVD from blockbuster.

    DIVIX is a dumb idea. I think it is a niche market to make some money for a little while, then toss. (and leave the DIVIX purchasers with an overpriced piece of crap that can't get new DIVIX titles.)

    People still go to the close place ot rent videos. DIVIX makes people go to circuit city and pay more to "rent" a video. And if I want to buy, I can still purchase from Blockbuster, Amazon.COM, Fry's, Best Buy.....

    The common fool will eventually succumb to his pocket book.

  • I have been hesitant to buy DVD because of the different codings for all the continents. I do understand that the movie companies wants to do something about pirated films from Asia, but this is such a hassle. Just when I had gotten NTSC capable TV and VCR. When we are on the subject of incompatibility, especially annoying is the "staggered release" that we have to live with in Europe and the rest of the world. Only when the film has earned enough money in the US to make a release to the rest of the world a safe bet do we get to see the latest and greatest - after six months or so. :-(

    As someone else mentioned, quality movies might not be converted to DVD, and the risk could be even greater for those with non-US encoding -unless I only want to watch French movies. And I don't. Delikatessen and others are great, but I would like to see independent movies from all over the world. These things make me wonder if there is any idea to buy DVD here.


    However, someone said to me that "all DVD players sold in Sweden these days are with zero encoding so you can see any films". Is this true? Are there any legal DVD players with that ability?

    If this is the case, DVD - here I come!
  • I concur.
    Obsolete may be used as a transitive verb meaning "to make obsolete." In fact, my websters indicates that the word "obsolete" is derived from the past participle of the latin verb obsolescere.
    Mmm. I miss latin class...
  • so basically someone needs to find out a way to grab the keys once and then replay them. I hope divx doesn't get to the point where someone has to bother, but if it does become successful, it'll probably happen.
  • I am desking?
    You are roading?
    He/she/it is treeing?

    Sure, I talk like this all the time.
  • It seems to me that anyone can make changes to English. If the change is understood and accepted it may become "standard protocol" and soon may become part of the commonly accepted language.

    Question: Does the dictionary TELL us how to speak properly? Or does it merely DESCRIBE and CATALOG how we speak? Ie, which came first, the words or the dictionary? It seems that the dictionary definations are a reflection of how we use words, FOLLOWING language usage-- not an authority on how we SHOULD talk.

    Language wants to be free.
    (unless you're trademarking "you've got mail" of course)
    W

  • Are these free forever or did they just waive the charge for the purchase price (about $5 if memory serves)? If they're not free forever, the poor sap who falls for the DiVX scam ends up paying the per view charge 48 hours after the first viewing. What a deal, eh?


  • That still doesn't make any sense.

  • Granted language does evolve, but that does not mean we should abandon the confines of proper english. For example, look at the inner cities. You have 'ebonix', this 'language' has become utterly unintelligible. The fact is, even the people who speak it hardly understand each other. Imagine trying to read a programming book, or an API filled with such nonsense. The problem is, if it evolves too rapidly it tends to splinter in a sense. There must be a certain common thread, a backbone if you will, which everyone can learn from and use to communicate without problems. This simply can't be done, if it becomes standard practice for anyone to mangle it at will. This is kind of like MS altering some well defined APIs, but atleast they've got the clout to make the rest of the world adapt to them.
  • When I read a DivX press release, Circuit City was really the only viable vendor listed for movies The rest looked like a bunch of shops that had about five stores. Blockbuster and mom-n-pop video stores aren't going to sabotage their own rental sales, and without support from Best Buy or other major electronics stores, there is no way that the movies or the players will sell for much longer.

    If movie studios REALLY wanted a piece of the rental market, the format would be simple. Screw the whole phone-line/silver disc crap, I think that is too Big Brother for most consumers. I don't want my rental habits charted by anyone. Lower the price to $2 and reduce the packaging to nothing, and let me watch the movie for 48 hours.

    I don't know how this would be enforced (this movie will self-destruct in 5 mins?), but I'm sure someone could come up with something. An added bonus would be if you could bring a rental in for $1 off of the regular movie.
  • What's so bad about DIVX. Once someone figures out how to hack it, DIVX will just be a cheap way for people to add to their DVD collections.

    Shouldn't we all be hoping that DIVX takes off like wildfire, and that every film is released in that format, so that we can all benefit from the upcoming hack?

    Or is someone actually going to use the work 'unhackable'?
  • IIRC laser discs have analog sound tracks, and dvds allow either dolby digital, or uncompressed PCM, or mpeg-2 audio.
  • Hey guys, what is DIVX? I assume it is some US only thing, as we haven't heard of it in Asia. DVD, meantime, is big time in Asia - limited only by our economic woes.

    There don't appear to be any pirate DVDs at present. The pirate production business haven't taken off so far as DVDs are so damned hard to produce.

    Probably the first pirate DVDs will be from Sony or Pioneer. Don't laugh. Their contract pressing divisions are the main source of pirate LDs. Their confidentiality practices don't allow them to check what they press. I guess in another year or so the villages in GuangDong will be buying DVD making machines, and the piracy business will take off.

    The authorities in China are making some real efforts to reduce piracy, but its tough. A pirate CD plant can be a village's main money earner. Try to shut it down and the villagers get violent. They have to sent armed soldiers to shut these plants down, and people have been killed.
  • There have been a lot of comments about DVD artefacts here, but consider:

    1. VCD gives poor video and sound. However, its video is about the same as VHS. VHS looks like an impressionist painting. While I love the French impressionists, I don't want to see the world like that 100% of the time. With the latest encoders the VCD's MPEG1 artefacts aren't too nasty, and even subtitles can be kept clean. The sound is pretty awful, though (MP3 essentially, at a fairly low bit rate). The PCM sound on VHS is certainly better.

    2. DVD is way ahead of VHS and VCD in picture quality. Sure, you can get some amazingly nasty artefacts. With the right material it goes completely crazy. However, most of the time it looks about the same as LD. Subtitles are about as clear as a conventional TV can resolve. The sound is still a bit iffy, though (MP3, but I don't know the bit rate).

    3. LD quality has always been limited by the quality of the source material, and not the medium itself. That is true for DVD too. You don't need something better than DVD until the production people produce cleaner results.

    4. MPEG2 broadcast quality is a totally variable thing. They can give you high or low quality, depending on how they program the bit rate. It can be excellent. It can be awful. Don't judge the technology by a few samples you may have seen. This is especially true in the US, where price wins over quality every time. Demand quality, and be prepared to pay extra for it.

    5. None of the new media - DVD, MP3, etc. - offer Hi-Fi sound. As in the phone market, there seems to be a drift away from sound quality to reducing costs with excessively low bit rates. The DVD audio disks offer wonderful sound - far better than CD, especially in the quieter passages of a classical piece - but so far I have only seen demo disks. It is unclear whether there will be any production releases (though I may be wrong). Until the production costs of DVDs come down I don't expect to see any mass market audio disks.

    6. There is no good reason why an inexpensive DVD machine should give poor pictures. Those high end machines are a con. There is a good reason why the sound quality may vary, especially if they really market the DVD Hi-Fi audio disks.

    7. Rental DVDs suffer scratch problems, just like game CDs. Soemone made a reasonable comment about them not being used by 8 year olds. If you have rented LDs, though, you will know they get badly scratched. DVD will be worse - its compact format encourages mis-handling.

    8. Compared to a fractal coded solution, MPEG-2 quality stinks at equivalent same bit rates. Fractal coding is very asymmetric, though - it requires enormous resources to code, but quite limited resources to decode. MPEG-2 was designed for things like mini-DV, as well as replay only systems like DVD. I guess DCT based solutions were the only choice to suit all needs.

  • 'Nuff said.


    Force Recon Half-Life TC: Check it out [cass.net]
  • I am worried that a lot of movies will get 'lost' in the conversion process. This is the first time we have really changed 'home' standards for movie viewing. I know mots movies will make the transition but will that old out of distribution B grade sci fi flick be ported? How about that independant film by a small distributor who went out of business 10 years ago and whose library was never picked up?

    Working in a boutique video store ( not this BlockBuster crud ) long ago has really given me an appreciation for just how gigantic the videography really is and hard it will possibly be to port all of this old videoware over.

    Sure, the huge movies, classics, not so huge and even small films will get ported, but finding certain old films by 3rd party distributors, indies etc will probably be impossible and its saddening. DVD is the format of the future but I think it will forget much of its past far to quickly. This could possibly be a major loss to our film heritage and really a blow to our culutral memory, sad as it is, movies and TV are our cultural scat for which we will be collectively remembered...

  • Hmmm. Maybe this would be a good application for a beowolf cluster? I think that would be great fun.

    //geach
    //An once of plutonium makes a bigger bang than a ton of TNT
  • There's nothing finer than screwing Circuit City
  • Looking at the technical issues involved, you can't take your Divx disk to a friend's house and play it on their machine. In addition, what if Divx goes out of business? You are then left with a worthless disk that you cannot watch any more.

    Open DVD is the only way to go. That's why there are so few titles available on Divx...movie studios aren't willing to support such a worthless standard.

    High end audio/video manufacturers aren't making Divx players. We're talking Meridian, Runco, Theta, Pioneer Elite. Buying Divx is like throwing your money down the toilet.
  • to follow up the previous poster, i got kurosawa's
    "Ran" a little while ago. i don't know why it wasn't broken down into chapters, but otherwise it's a very nice disc
  • I think from the rest of this thread just about everyone knows what DIVX is. However, IMHO, don't get DIVX. Let me give you some stats.


    Circuit City sunk a shitload of money into the DIVX project. This was enough to hurt their quarterly earnings the quarter they did that. When that happened, their stock dropped a nice share, representing the support of the investor into CC's venture.

    When you are buying a player, DIVX players are only sold at a couple places, and is more or less more expensive than a comperable DVD.

    If you go to Best Buy, before the end of last year, their deal was five free DVD moves and 13 free DVD rentals from Hollywood video. Circuit City has something like 10 free DIVX. Please.


    DIVX, just because of the lack of popular support, expecially from movie studios shall be the downfall of it.
  • I have not experienced the interlacing on TND. However, I did have some trouble with a copy of Ninja Scroll. The audio track gradually wandered out of sync with the video, and *lots* of pixelization was present in various scenes.

    I contacted Manga, the publisher, and they sent me a new copy, along with a t-shirt. The new copy is absolutely flawless.

    It appears that some discs have buggy encoding, which causes problems on some players. I believe that this is simply a learning stage associated with the *relatively* new technology. When problems do occur, the companies involved seem to be very anxious to correct the problems and to make the consumer happy.

    I for one am very happy with DVD, and continue to be impressed by the new releases.
  • DVD is great. You can't argue that. I have a player on my computer to go along with my tv/tuner card. I don't have to buy a TV now. I got my cable and movies when I want them. I don't think hooking up a VCR to my computer would be logical. DVD has saved my a lot.

    And Divx. A great idea. I'm not to blast on it. If you want one, buy one. I don't want one. But I got a great thought coming from the hacking point of view. What if there was a mod chip? Just like the playstation. A chip that would let you play the divx movies without paying. Once that happens I'll buy a divx player, but until then, I'm sticking with the DVD-ROM in my Dell
  • It would be really bad if DIVX would take hold.

    Just to prevent that, I bought a DVD machine and some movies:-) My vore is on DVD. DIVX will never take hold, especially outside of the USA.

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