Specifications

T
he revolutionary DivX technology first
emerged as a spoof of a failed scheme of
the same name and has slowly usurped
the
MPEG-4 initiative. For all practical
purposes, it has become
MPEG-4. DivX
can turn a 4.7
GB DVD into a 700MB disc with no
degradation in quality. The implications are huge.
The technology has been flying under the radar
for a while, but that will end in a few months, when
DivX-compatible
DVD players will flood the market.
How did all this happen so smoothly?
The DivX story began with a 1998 initiative called
Digital Video Express—Divx for short. It was invented
by Circuit City and a Los Angeles–based entertain-
ment law firm (a weird combination of partners, to
be sure). At the time, Disney, DreamWorks, Pana-
sonic, Paramount, Universal, Zenith, and a few
others agreed to back the new system. It’s too bad the
public wasn’t interested.
The idea was that you would buy a special Divx-
enabled
DVD player that connected to your phone
line. When you put in a special disposable
DVD/Divx
disc, a central database would monitor when you
played the disc. So if you paid for a one-day rental,
you’d have a limited time to watch it. After that, it
wouldn’t play. And you never had to bother return-
ing it. The idea was convoluted to say the least. I
think the landfill issues alone were enough to stop
the initiative.
The controversy over the wacky discs resulted in
the Divx name emerging years later as the moniker
for a home-brew compression technology that was
initially called DivX ;). The winking emoticon
mocked the previous product. The emoticon was
later dropped.
DivX ;) was actually derived from some Windows
Media Player code floating around in beta. Around
1999, French hacker Jerome Rota (also called Gej)
found a codec embedded in the Microsoft product
that was actually an
MPEG-4–compatible process. He
pulled it from the code, and it got passed around the
underground as DivX ;).
Gej needed something to compress files so they
could be transferred easily. Those in the under-
ground saw it as a way to trade movies—and they
did. Luckily for Hollywood, even movies compressed
to the max were still 700
MB or more.
This is where the story gets interesting. Gej even-
tually got some decent funding and formed a com-
pany called DivXNetworks. Soon after, a clean-room
version of the codec was developed, making any
commercial version of DivX not bound by the
myriad
MPEG-4 patents. In the meantime, as DivX-
Networks
CEO Jordan Greenhall told me, “All the
MPEG-4 software companies were going out of busi-
ness, and we ended up being the last man standing.”
This probably happened because Hollywood
didn’t move to
MPEG-4 from MPEG-2 and its lucra-
tive
DVD business. MPEG-4 lost momentum, while
DivX stayed lean and mean.
MPEG-4 now appears to
be relegated to encoding for disc-based camcorders.
The trick that will really give a boost to DivX is its
ability to stream DivX-encoded video at 784 Kbps,
allowing for
DVD-quality streaming. With a broad-
band connection, you can download a movie in less
than half the movie’s playing time.
In contrast to the bumblings of the Recording
Industry Association of America with the
MP3 fiasco,
the Motion Picture Association of America has been
working with—not against—the DivXNetworks folks.
How this will play out nobody knows. But Greenhall,
an
MP3.com veteran, knows the pitfalls and is going to
steer away from controversy and litigation.
With DivX beginning to appear in
DVD players
later this year, the next stage of video compression
development is already under way. DivXNetworks
is working on H.264, a standard that compresses
video by as much as 75 percent. The company
believes that using such compression, a
DVD stream
can be pushed over the Internet at a magic 384
Kbps. This also bodes well for the future of high-
definition compression and, eventually, high-
definition video streams.
In the meantime, according to the company, the
public has downloaded 100 million (yes, that’s right)
copies of various free DivX players that it offers on
its Web site at www.divx.com. The
DVD manufac-
turers are in for a surprise with the popularity of
DivX. By this time next year, DivX will be in the
public lexicon.
DivX Reloaded
MPEG-4 lost
momentum
while DivX
stayed lean
and mean.
MORE ON THE WEB: Read John C. Dvorak’s column every
Monday at www.pcmag.com/dvorak. You can reach him
directly at [e-mail].
www.pcmag.com SEPTEMBER 16, 2003 PC MAGAZINE
53
John C. Dvorak