Marcel
5th May 2004, 22:48
Today, I bought the german magazine "Audio Video Foto Bild" (concerning the topics at very low level, but, hey, 3.30 EUR, and it came with complete Donnie Brasco on DVD (4:3 letterboxed, german audio only, no specials)).
It contained a "Report" about DivX:
In 1999, the french Jérôme Rota just wanted to lower the size of an advertisement clip his agency shot, so he could burn it on a CD.
But the software player - Windows Media Player - didn't work.The then-25-year-old developed an own compression standard called it DivX and offered it free in the Internet. During one year, it was installed on millions of computers in the whole world. The reason was: DivX reduced the amount of data of a movie DVD a lot, so it could be played from the internet in a relatively short time. DivX became for movies what MP3 has been for music. With help of this method, Hollywood hits were placed in file sharing systems.
But watching them needed a computer. Now, more and more DVD players are capable of playing self burnt CDs and DVDs with DivX video clips on them. A new kind of devices, "Media Receiver", are connected to PCs via a network to display DivX movies on a TV.
Besides DivX, there are other systems that are also based upon the MPEG4 standard, like Xvid, Real Magic, and 3ivx. They allow high compression rates.
Microsofts Windows Media Video is also based on it, but in a more enhanced way, resulting in the need of special players. The producers can take advantage of the same origin: The chips for decoding the standards can be used easily for most of the compression algorithms.
But everytime algorithm used is a special point of interest. even DivX on its own has got a lot of flavors, beginning with "3.11", which it started with and which is still very popular on the internet. The versions starting with "4." and "5." are flavors that are officially developed by Rotas DivX Neteworks. Besides, DivX exists in a "Handhelds" version, used by mobile phones and organizers.
To stop confusion, DivX Networks started a certification program. If a device got the logo of the company, the playback should be possible without any problems. But only with the exact labelling. For example, if the claim for support of 3.11 is missing, movies gotten from internet file sharing systems won't work with this device in most cases.
I hope my translation is not too bad. Those parts that weren't carefully worded I tried to keep as diffuse as they were in german.
As I said, low level.
It contained a "Report" about DivX:
In 1999, the french Jérôme Rota just wanted to lower the size of an advertisement clip his agency shot, so he could burn it on a CD.
But the software player - Windows Media Player - didn't work.The then-25-year-old developed an own compression standard called it DivX and offered it free in the Internet. During one year, it was installed on millions of computers in the whole world. The reason was: DivX reduced the amount of data of a movie DVD a lot, so it could be played from the internet in a relatively short time. DivX became for movies what MP3 has been for music. With help of this method, Hollywood hits were placed in file sharing systems.
But watching them needed a computer. Now, more and more DVD players are capable of playing self burnt CDs and DVDs with DivX video clips on them. A new kind of devices, "Media Receiver", are connected to PCs via a network to display DivX movies on a TV.
Besides DivX, there are other systems that are also based upon the MPEG4 standard, like Xvid, Real Magic, and 3ivx. They allow high compression rates.
Microsofts Windows Media Video is also based on it, but in a more enhanced way, resulting in the need of special players. The producers can take advantage of the same origin: The chips for decoding the standards can be used easily for most of the compression algorithms.
But everytime algorithm used is a special point of interest. even DivX on its own has got a lot of flavors, beginning with "3.11", which it started with and which is still very popular on the internet. The versions starting with "4." and "5." are flavors that are officially developed by Rotas DivX Neteworks. Besides, DivX exists in a "Handhelds" version, used by mobile phones and organizers.
To stop confusion, DivX Networks started a certification program. If a device got the logo of the company, the playback should be possible without any problems. But only with the exact labelling. For example, if the claim for support of 3.11 is missing, movies gotten from internet file sharing systems won't work with this device in most cases.
I hope my translation is not too bad. Those parts that weren't carefully worded I tried to keep as diffuse as they were in german.
As I said, low level.