Why -so- many different formats? (Semi-Rhetorical Question)

[Batchman]

I'm just wondering why people seem to need -so- many different video formats?

I mean, I understand trying new things, and attempting improvements, and all the rest of that, but trying to keep all these things straight can drive you mad.

There are the two biggest basics, VCD and SVCD. Then there are XVCDs and XSVCDs (yes, it IS getting a little XS! ) and even more to hurt your noggin.

Then there are DivX formats (which I love, except that there seem to be too many of them, which are driving me nuts!), which -seem- to include your basic DivX, another form of DivX that, without the right codec, plays the sound at half the speed of the video, and perhaps connected, something along the lines of MPG3v4 (which I'll admit I havedn't heard anything about in almost a year) and XviD.

Are all these actually of real benefit? Or do they just split standards further and further, and make it more and more difficult for the average person to get to watch everything they are finding?

And what IS XviD and that 4v3 thing about, anyway?

Not trying to start a fight ... maybe I'll learn these are all very important ... but I just needed to get that off my chest!

[vitualis]

Variety is the spice of life... ;-)

For stand-alone video playback discs, there are only three real formats that count: VCD, SVCD and DVD (and CVD sort of).

X- varieties are simply non-standard/compliant versions of the above. They are not real "formats" as such, but people like to experiment beyond the established standards.

DivX and its siblings are primarily for video playback on the PC. There are so many codecs because many people have tried to do the same thing (high quality video, with limited bitrate).

DivX is based around MPEG-4. The original DivX ;-) was a hack/pirated version of a Microsoft MPEG-4 codec.

The newer one started out as an open source project (to remove the pirate code) but to do essentially the same thing. DivX has since gone commercial.

XviD is an open source MPEG-4 codec. Does similar things to DivX.

Regards.