I see DivX is DivX after all

[VideoJockey2002]

Many of us in the United States remember Circuit City electronics stores selling what they called "DivX players." This was many years ago. You buy a movie. Your DivX player is connected by phone line. You insert the disc and the player phones home to enable your movie. You can only watch it for a few days then the disc dies forever.

Now, I buy my first "DivX Certified" player. It tells me to look at https://vod.divx.com. There I can register and download a firmware enabler for my DivX player so I can do basically the same thing. Download a movie, play it for 10 days, then it dies.

The DivX people have said they are not in any way connected with the "old" DivX idea. Now, it appears there's quite a similarity.

I'm so grateful there's XviD.

[Cornucopia]

Did you notice the footnote:

*Note: If you already own DivX files that are not VOD, you can play them on your device without entering an activation code. This process is only necessary for users who wish to purchase or rent videos from any of our VOD partners.

Standard DVDs, and standard DivX files (and Xvid probably) will still be fine.

Not quite the same. This is really just an additional VOD feature, and I expect there to be similar caveats/requirements/setups with any other type of VOD device or service, Cable/sat included.

Scott

[ROF]

most of my dvd devices are Divx players. they'll play just about any divx encoded video without the need to re-encode to some other format.

[VideoJockey2002]

Intel has quietly slipped Digital Rights Management (DRM) into their latest processors.

DivX has been winking since day one. Now DivX is slipping DRM into its devices.

I think I can see the day coming when computers and other devices will refuse to play anything that doesn't incorporate DRM of some sort.

Hell, to edit your own home videos you'll probably have to purchase consumer-level DRM certificates to apply to them so the CPU and graphics engine will render them.

[Cornucopia]

If that scary scenario comes true VideoJockey2002, then a (consumer?) revolt is surely at hand.

Scott