does AVI=DivX?

[captainjp]

If I find a movie to download and it is a .AVI instead of .MPG does that mean that it is a DivX movie and so won't play on my stand alone DVD player?

[hakko504]

Well there is .AVI's that are not DivX but there are NO .AVI's that are playable on a standalone!

[captainjp]

Yet there are standalones that do play DVD and DivX?

[hakko504]

There is something called Divx, with a lower case x. This was a special code on the DVD that allowed you to play a DVD only once every time you paid for it. This is now abandoned.
However there are some new hardware that can decode MPEG-4 compliant streams such as DivX5.0x. However there is yet no standard for putting these streams on a CD so a standalone could recognize them. The new XCD format might remedy that. Take a look in the New A/V formats (http://forum.doom9.org/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=54) forum.

[captainjp]

Thanks for your help. last question....some of the movies I have been downloading are MPG and some are AVI. But after their down loaded I'm not sure which are which and I can't seem to get the computer to tell me more than the title and that it's an "ATI file player". How do I get the comp to show the .mpg or .avi so I know which I can bun and which I have to convert since standalones won't play AVIs.

[jggimi]

The place where you turn off "Hide file extensions for known file types" is in the Windows Explorer. Your release of Windows may vary the following instructions, slightly, but now you know where to look...

From the desktop: [list=1] Double-click on My Computer
Double-click on a disk drive
Click on Tools ... then Folder Options
Click on View
Find "Hide file extensions...." and clear the check mark
Click on OK
[/list=1]