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That's right. Now, go to the street and ask the average consumer "What is DivX?" and the majority wouldn't have a clue.Originally Posted by xed
There is no consumer drive for DivX.
Quite simple, because the cost of the additional content on that disc is outweighed by the increased consumption of the product.First, quite wrong. From Hollywood's perspective, they need to do 2 different things -- they need to sell their products on some recordable medium, and they also need to maintain or gain market share in those sales as opposed to other delivery media. Hollywood needs must do both. Else it goes out of business.
If Vitualis' claim were true, then why do we get all those releases featuring 2 DVD discs -- one containing hte movie, and another containing added content?
Now, if you can show me a model how Hollywood can increase its earnings by introducing yet another format which primarily has its roots in video pirarcy then you are most welcome.
There is an amazing lack of insight in this statement. Firstly, multi-DVD sets are still far from the norm. Most movie releases are by far still single discs. For the multi-disc set, it is usually one disc for the movie and one disc for the other material. We can seen by a "cursory inspection" that in fact, they are not going to put forward MORE and MORE material. After all, their primary product is still the FILM not all the other stuff that comes with it.This explains why DiVX is inevitable for Hollywood's future. In order to continue to sell their media content, Holywood will have to add even more and more extra mateiral above and beyond the movie. It's much chepaer for Hollywood to use DiVX to boil all that material down to a single DVD disc using DiVX than to use 4, 5 or 6 or more DVDs using MPEG-2 format.
The talk about 4,5,6 DVD sets for a FILM is patently ridiculous and the subsequent justification for DivX even more so.
Let me give you a simple example.
Have a look at the Star Trek VHS set. VHS as we all know can easily hold up to 3 hours of video. Why does each video tape only have two episodes when it can easily hold 4? Simply because they believe they believe that they can earn more money by distributing the selling content over a greater number of products.
For a DVD, the film is usually the main selling content and the added features are often no more than an enticer. For instance, would you buy the added features disc to "Moulin Rouge" if it didn't come with the movie? Of course not. There is only so much "enticing" you can do. Additional content has diminishing returns. Putting more and more with the main selling content will entice less and less consumers.
For instance, a film with 4 discs of "additional content" will NOT sell much better than a film with 1 disc (unless the additional content itself warrants the title of "selling content").
Well, this is really irrelevant isn't it?In fact, I have nothing but scorn for hte low video quality of most Hollywood DVDs -- as do many of my friends. You can see rampant pixelation, comrpessed gamma levels...in short, it looks as though a buncho fo baboons encoded all too many Hollywood DVDs. I get tons better-looking results on my lonesome, encoding TV shows using TMPGEnc.This has much more to do with the poor encoding skills / production of the DVD than of the medium and format itself. You can be rest assured that if we move to a DivX disc world, those films would look just as bad.
You've been obviously living in this community too long then. Let us compare this massive groundswell to the number of people who don't know about DivX and probably don't want to learn who own a DVD player.Let's look at the evidence -- there's a massive groundswell of DiVX encoding, as evidenced by whole subsections of bulletin boards like this one...yet at the same time...
I don't believe I actually ever advocated HDTV?? However, it is the next technological advance (whenever it comes). You really like this "massive groundswell" don't you?Does the evidence suggest that vitualis is correct, and HDTV is something the general public wants or need?
Or does the evidence suggest that I am correct, and the huge groundswell of DiVX encoding portends much wider acceptance in the future?
COMPLETE REFUSAL?? I'm sorry, but I can guarantee that the majority of DVD players out there still have macrovision well and truly left on the "ON" position.. Ridiculous.As I previously demonstrated, the consumer has already demonstated a completely refusal to accept the macrovision copy protection on DVDs -- this resulted in an explosion of DVD players which allow macrovision to be turned off.
Hollywood has been forced to accept this because it has tried to curb the fair usage rights that people the world over has come to expect. As such, there was sufficient initiative to force governments to act... in some countries only. Region encoding is still in the majority of players sold and so far, only New Zealand has make it mandatory that region coding be disabled.Hollywood does not want this. It does not like this. But Hollywood has been forced to accept these developments. Why?
Why can region coding able to be disabled? This is no more than a simple quirk that manufacturers don't make 6 separate machines for the 6 regions. Nothing more. It isn't an "added ability".
Furthermore, I can tell you right now, that the vast majority of DVD players around the world have the region encoding setting exactly as it was when it left the manufacturer's door.
As explained before. Hollywood put extra content on discs to sell more products. They don't do it for the hell of it. I believe that majority of people wouldn't give a shit of additional material on a DVD over one disc. Let us no forget, of course, the DVDs can be made doubled sided + double layered.[1] It benefits Hollywodo because instead of going to 4- and 5- and 6-DVD sets to contain all the extra bonus material they'll soon need to sell that movie on DVD, they can contain all that material on only 1 DVD.
Yes. And I believe I stated that this is the ONLY function of something like DivX. Relatively low bitrate video distribution. However, I wouldn't be surprised if Hollywood or any self-respecting company would ally themselves to a more "respectable" codec. Read BJ_M's post above.[3] DiVX benefits Hollywood because it will allow them to get more rental and sales revenues, or keep the revenues they already have, as more and more types of media delivery compete with DVD. We're already seeing TiVO and direct broadcast satellite, and the start of broadband subscription delivery. More media delivery systems will be adeed as time goes on, for technology never stand still.
Didn't you just prove my argument?Recent history assures us that Hollywood cared very much about hoem videotaping in the early 80s -- Hollywood cared so much it spent tons of bucks in court in a vain attempt to stop it. Yet according to vitualis' garbled reasoning and scarmbled logic, this could not have happened, since home videotapers weren't "involved with a business transaction" with Hollywood when they taped programs off TV.
Well, perhaps you should say that to Syquest, DataPlay and the company that made FMD and all the dot.com business start ups that have failed.Vitualis goes on to remark "You are assuming a circular argument that there would be commonly DivX capable DVD players at all. You can't make DivX discs to play on a stand-alone player if they are rare."
In fact, sir, you have just demonstrated your lack of knowledge of Ricardo's Law of Economics. As everyone but a slubberdegullion k,nows full wel, Ricardo's Law states that production creates its own demand.
Perhaps, that is WHY they failed with the false belief that "production creates its own demand" can be followed explicitly.
I've actually studies some economics. Time for you to read some basic books on economic theory perhaps?Ricardo's Law of Economics explains why economies work at all.
And yet, this is the stumbling block isn't it? It is the inital hurdle that makes all the difference. Case in point, look at DataPlay. Superb product, even generated some commercial interest with multiple partners. However, couldn't garner up that extra few million to keep it going. Business realities my friend.It hardly requires any effort (let alone intellect) to demolish these 2 remaining arguemnts by vitualis -- for the claim that MPEG-4 playback comes at a price premium is only true *today*.
The question is why someone would WANT to use it. BTW, your examples are rather telling. "'Twas so with PGP?" Mention PGP to someone on the street and they're go "eh?". Explain what it is and they'll go "cool concept". Supply it on the internet for free and warn them about the nasty governments in the world.... and what happens? The vast majority of people don't use e-mail encryption.As for the claim that "The average person on the street won't have a clue at what DivX is"that's an arguemnt so feeble it is unworthy of someone of vitualis' intelligence. The obvious answer is: so what? At first, ALL new technologies are baffling to the man on the street. But of cousre the man on the street soon learns to deal with 'em. 'Twas so with PGP, 'twas so with VHS, 'twas so with home computers, and 'twill be so with DiVX.
Obviously you don't make authored VCDs of any complexity. Modern VCD compatibility (real compatibility with all the PBC options) and similarly REAL SVCD compatibility is poor. I'm not talking about sticking an mpeg file on a disc.Vitaulis goes on to assert "The suggestion that there will be sufficient consumer interest to drive the production of ubiquitous DivX enabled DVD players is simply ridiculous. This should be clearly seen even in the really quite poor support DVD players have for GOOD VCD and SVCD playback and even for CD-R/W reading for a while. "
Now I am not sure what vitualis is trying to claim here. Is he trying to claim that current DVD players don't support VCD and SVCD playback?
Surely not, for that's obviously wrong.
For instance, some Philips DVD players remain the only players that support TRUE S/VCD chapters. And I'm not talking about "entrypoint chapters" which segment-items I described in my guide.
New formats??? VCD has be fully specified and been around for over 5 years before the first cruddy DVD protypes came out in Japan. It was then a mature technology.Of course DVD players had trouble _for a while_ supporting those new formats.
As it would seem obviously from all the comments on this thread it would appear that you and the rest of us live in very different worlds. MY arguments and comments are based on real-world economics and sociology.I base my argument on economics -- what does vitualis base his argument on?
Your arguments are based on wishful thinking and a selective memory of historical events.
Right back at you mate.Mere ad hominem personal abuse will not help you persuade anyone...
And here I think we have our answer. You seem to look at the minutia and forget the larger econonics.And let's not forget MP3 -- lower fidelity than raw PCM .WAV or AIFF files, but MP3 players are a big industry now. Why? Once again, 'cause they save consuemrs money by cutting down on filesize at a slight cost in quality.
MP3 is not a big industry. Far from it.
Let us look at MP3. It had everything going for it.
It is almost an open standard. It had relatively few licensing and patents obstructing it's path. You can get the source audio easily (everyone has a few audio CDs). Furthermore, the access of that audio is easy (it's not protected by any sort of encryption).
Making an MP3 is even for the most computer illiterate person no more difficult than clicking "Go" on one of the many legal CD ripping/MP3 encoding proggies out there.
To add even more, audio fidelity is EXCELLENT, near if not at CD quality on the appropriate settings.
MP3 by all reasoning should have taken over the music industry.
But it has not. Do you want to compare the sales between portable CD players and MP3 players? I can guarantee that CD player sales will be higher by an order of a magnitude at least.
Want to compare the sales between Hi-Fi systems with CD players and Hi-Fi players with MP3 support? MP3 support hardly exists.
And, the last time I looked, ALL new audio released is still on audio CD not a super-duper MP3 CD.
With all that MP3 has going for it, it hasn't really made the "big time".
Now let us compare MP3 to DivX:
- MP3 is easier to make
- MP3 fidelity can arguably be better compared to the source than DivX
- MP3 has much less patent and licensing issues
- MP3 doesn't even really have any "serious" competitor formats of its class (DivX has to content with WM9, RealMedia, QT, etc.)
And yet, MP3 is nowhere even close to replacing the humble audio-CD. IMHO, DivX is in the same position, except, it is of relatively weaker commercial interest.
Consumers will choose the option that WANT. That may not be the technically superior option. It may not be the cheaper option either. If things were so clear cut, there wouldn't be any surprises in the world of business.My claim (like yours) is that consumers will always make a beeline fo rhte chepaer if lower-quality alternative. That was why the analog cassette became huge, it's why 6-hour VHS VCRs became huge ()as compared to the Beta-I 1-hour VCR) and it's why MP3 is now taking so much ground from the audio CD.
In the same progression, DiVX will obviously overtake and submerge and largely obliterate MPEG-2 - for exactly the same reasons.
It seems clear to my now that we do indeed live in separate worlds. In yours, you believe that MP3 is now taking so much ground from audio CD. I can assure that that it is not. As mentioned before, the total sale of MP3 related business would be a drop in the ocean compared to audio CD. If you believe that fantasy, however, I'm sure that DivX could look like it's "making it big" to you...
Regards.
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Michael Tam
w: Morsels of Evidence -
The Old One
- Aug 2000
- Hellas (Greece), E.U.
My friend xed, I needed an online translator to understand what you wrote! My english skills ain't that good you know...
Anyway, even that way it didn't work ... So, I don't undestand many of those you post. So, sorry, I can't reply you. I can't even understand you.
Please use mainstream english next time you post in an international forum. Or you think the whole world speaks fluently English like you do?
About mp3s.
The success of mp3 was a good (for us, the users) mistake. When mp3 grow, between 1995 - 1998, the big ones didn't undestand anything about internet. It was something new to them. It take time to understand it and when they did, they tried to controled it the same way anything else. Well they failed. Then, they try to kill it. The also failed. Now it is big enough even for them.
But still ain't that big enough.
Mp3 gave a good lesson to the big ones. The same lesson also teach them, not to allow mpeg 4 grow further. It is and always be an internet thing. And with DVB /s /t /c transmissions based on mpeg 2, and also optical storage media going bigger and bigger (blu ray), I don't see any future at all. Today I am able to grabb the transmission as is and burn it to DVD-Rs. The only reason I re-encode it is the price of discs: I have to use CD-Rs, there are cheap. But when DVD and blu ray became mainstream, I'll never encode again! Just grabb and burn direct!
So why to bother with mpeg 4?
Mpeg 4 is like the CCIF resolution and VCD: They both serve inbetween porpuses and only. Only present, no future! -
your speeches back mean nothing without some hard ware, and lets face a DIVX DVD palyer for $400+, but excuse me never gonna catch on until they bring it under $100, just like DVD players never really became bring until APEX came out and brought us the under $200 then uner $100 DVD players, so DIVX DVD players will never ctach on until they can bring them under $100, your average joe looks at price not at what it can do, DVD home rcorders are in the same pickle, never gonna really catch on with the masses until someone like APEX or Daewoo brings out the DVD home recorder for Under $200, your 80-90% of your buying public don't give a crap about quality or the WOW factor, if it cheap and looks half good they will buy, hell theybeen buying Crap VHS for over 24 years and they still more out there than DVD Players. So will DIVX DVD players be the next step only if in the next 1-2 years you can buy one at Walmart for $60. I know I saw how DVD started out, very slow until places like walmart sold the discs and the players.
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Think about this for a second.....
M$ is currently the big bitcher about "piracy" even though Bill G said " I don't mind that the chinese steal my stuff, it just makes them want it more"
This is a telling statement. It goes hand in hand with what the RIAA said concerning MP3 in '96 or'97. Oh my!! This will be the death of us!! Along with the MPAA doing the same thing now. Oh my!! They can get it on the 'net!! What will we do!!
Oh, please!! DivX is exactly that. MP3 for the video world. Something that makes it easy for us to get a taste of what is available. Nothing more. How many of you would rather see Star Wars at 320x240 DivX instead of BIGSCREEN MOVIE or DVD @ 5mbs? I would venture to say....none.
The current feeling about mpeg4 in the Hollywood circles is about the bottom line. If they could see through their bottom line there might be hope for this becoming a more mainstream format. I doubt that anytime soon the MPAA is going to accept widespread commercial use of a format they cannot control
MP3 didn't make it because there is no control over it by the "powers that be" Same issue with DivX. If this was such a great thing......be assured that someone out there in CA would have noticed and you would have heard about it in the media. Ya know...."Bold New Format" etc. All of heard about is the spread of "piracy"Let us look at MP3. It had everything going for it.
It is almost an open standard. It had relatively few licensing and patents obstructing it's path. You can get the source audio easily (everyone has a few audio CDs). Furthermore, the access of that audio is easy (it's not protected by any sort of encryption).
Making an MP3 is even for the most computer illiterate person no more difficult than clicking "Go" on one of the many legal CD ripping/MP3 encoding proggies out there.
To add even more, audio fidelity is EXCELLENT, near if not at CD quality on the appropriate settings.
MP3 by all reasoning should have taken over the music industry.
But it has not.
Mpeg4 has been, and will continue to be, a low bitrate format for media exchange over the internet. That's all. Never will the people with HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of dollers invested allow for something that is beyond the scope of their control to take over an already accepted format like DVD. How many websites are being sued over common proggies that rip and encode to SVCD. Quite a few in the US I think, and SVCD has been around for as long as DVD just not common.
In summary, I think this is more about bottom line than consumer demand. If you feel the need to increase the acceptance of DivX as a legitimate format then the best thing you could do is to speak out about infringement of "fair use" in the name of anti-piracy. Anti-piracy isn't about copyright people......it's about $$$$$$$$$$$. This will continue until someone can make money from it on a big scale. Then, maybe, you will see a DivX compatible standalone in Wal-Mart. It's definetly not anywhere in the near future. -
Since most people here will not be convinced either way dispite the evidence I'm moving this thread to off-topic.
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DivX won't replace MPG2 DVD, just as MP3 didn't replace PCM audio CD.
BUT, I believe that eventually, more and more DVD players will indeed support Divx, just as there are A LOT of DVD players today that support MP3.
Why? Because the consumer will learn about it and its benefits, and will start to suporrt it, just as we did with MP3.
Of course the arrogant and greedy MPAA won't support it, becuase as it has already been said 1) they can't control it with ridiculous money-protection schemes, and 2) they are not interested in selling less products. If they can sell a multi-disc set, even if the content can easily fit in 1, they will, because it will create the illusion of "more", of "a lot". Perfect example - look at the 3 box sets that came of the Buffy series. Each set, 3 tapes, 2 episodes per tape. This could have been easily fit in 2 or even 1 tape, but, a 3 tape sets creates the illusion of "wow, that's big", so, they can charge more. And that's the ONLY thing that despicable trash cares about.
The public will eventually learn about Divx. Back in 1997 you asked almost anybody about MP3, and the would say, "a what"?
Today it's a common word. I wouldn't be surprised if it will eventually appear in the dictionary.
There are very few (if any at all...) audio publications in MP3 (as probably won't be in DivX), but the CONSUMER learned about it and greatly supported it. It's the CONSUMERS wich learned about and use MP3. So, eventually, some companies made standalone mp3 players, which at that time were ridiculously expensive. Today there are lots of mp3 players, and now many, many DVD players, car radios, etc. support it. Last week I wnt to Sears, and ALL of the DVD players for sale had MP3 playback. *ALL* of them, of many different brands, and most of them below $200.
I believe the same thing will happen with Divx. The will be no "official" releases on this format, but it will gain popularity, and eventually, dvd players will support it for the consumer's use. -
Well, this is starting to degrade into a flamewar, but hopefully this will clarify a little. BTW there are a lot of good points on both sides, but I think that whatever the merits, DIVX is not headed to the mainstream yet. Mainstream is a hell of a lot more than just our community here, and things don't move instantly -- they can take years. If any of us could forcast accurately we'd be a bit richer.
Ever notice that some of the original two-sided and two-disc sets were done so that the manufacturer could use single layer (DVD-5) rather than Dual Layer (DVD-9)?Originally Posted by xed
Seriously, though, people buy the 2+ disc sets partially because having extra discs makes it seem like they get more for their dollar. If you see a one disc or a two disc special edition for the same price, which would you pick? The price is based on what people will pay for the content. Disc count doesn't control price.
Idiots are everywhere. Letting divx loose on the world will result in FAR more jacked up encodes because 1. it's a new technology and people are even less educated on it right now 2. it is not standardized at the moment so compatibility alone would be a nightmare and 3. more compressed content typically requires more attention for optimal output.Originally Posted by xed
They've been so accepting they've gotten Herr Hollings to introduce a bill that would turn all digital devices into police machines. They're not done with trying to screw us over.Originally Posted by xed
This is a major roadblock. Ever read these forums and seen how many people have problems playing video back on their home computers, the most versatile digital device we own? Set-top divx players will likely not play some xvid (or divx3) video with ogg or ac3 audio (and who knows what other junk people pick up on the net). Most of the people who know what a divx player would be good for want to play whatever junk they downloaded off the internet on their dvd player without reencoding. They're not buying much so they're not driving the market.Originally Posted by snowmoon
The bottom line is who stands to make money. It doesn't matter if there is demand for something or if there is money to be made. Only those who will make money off of it will support it. Divx players will be made because there is some demand for them. Commercial divx movies are not poised to happen because movie companies can't use it to squeeze more cash out of customers yet. The biggest way I see for divx/H.264 to get big is for a service to allow you to download a video, put it on CDR, and watch it on your set-top box. Otherwise there is little advantage to the average consumer to get a divx-enabled box. -
1) whether or not Hollywood likes or dislikes Mpeg 4(divx) is a m00t point. What will drive mpeg 4 suport in our units is consumer demand. Joe shmoe, on the street today, IF HE HAS BROADBAND, almost certainly knows what divx is. A high percentage of users on fast internet all find kazaa while looking for mp3'sm, and stumble on divx all the time. Then, joe shmoe looks in his catalog when his current dvd unit dies on him and sees "DVD unit Brand X, suports dvd, mp3, cd, cdr, cdrw, vcd,svcd, DIVX. Now at this point he is crapping in his pants.
"Wow, I can cram a helluva lot of my divx stuff on one disk, they are so goddamned small...."
Joe shmoe buys this unit. This will, imo, make mpeg 4 highly suported in hardware units as time passes. Then joe shmoe sticks in his divx clips hes got, maybe a few work, most wont prolly because of weird framerate, aspect etc, but that doesnt matter. hes already bought it and he sees in the manual it must be certain res etc, certain audio etc. he wont take it back because it plays everytuihng else ok, and the properly encoded divx too.
Now this part is the kind of thing we need first, to get the support in the units. I couldn't give a rats ass if holywood uses divx or not, and their cost of printing disks is very little, and they whipped up all the protection schemes, im sure they wont use divx(mpeg4) themselves, but thats fine for us, becuase they can fit all the content on 1 or 2 disk for movie and extras, and boxed sets do look better with multiple disks because they look bigger. This may eventually bite us in the ass if hollywood works out a brand new encryption scheme etc using mpeg 4 video then we have to wait for all new rippers out there.
VCD and SVCD are dinosaurs to be, as they offer no benefit over divx at all, except for their compatibility at the moment. And lets not forget, VCD and SVCD are a mode 2 format, and writable dvd media dont hav ethe right sector size to match properly, so they wont work on most unit when burned as VCD or SVCD on DVD writable media. One would not expect this limitation froman iso 9660 burned with mpeg 4 content. Mpeg 2 being better at handling very high bitrates may indeed be true, but who cares about very hig bitrates, except for hollywood DVD's, and a sI said before, wh cares if they stick with DVD. I can still fire up DVD decryptor and make a 1 cd divx out of it that is nearly indestinguishable from the original WHEN PLAYED ON A TELEVISION. And if I can do this and have it work on my dvd unit, i am a happy camper.
Now for another point to drive divx support in these units. The top seling DVD's are boxed sets of shows and are taking the market by storm. If one doesnt mind sacrificing a TEENY little bit of quality, then one can cram6-8 22 minute shows on one cd, or, 42-56 22 minute shows on one DVD -R. As more players support mpeg 4, more and more will encode in such as way as to work on them, much like the rise of VCD compliant media available for download now. Back in the day mpeg clips were never vcd compliant.
Joe shmoe may not know what the hell divx is at the moment, but he owns a computer and his nephew sure does.
As fans of this site is concerned, most of us just need the support in the player for all the good times to come, and whatever holywood does with it is irrelevant and they will encrypt, protect, and max out ridicously sized bitrate streams to try to slow down our legal copying of their stuff. I dont think hollywood will mpeg 4, they've no need to, and the units obviously already suport mpeg 2 out of the box.........
Divx a pirate codec??? Why do you think that was? Because it offered the best compression quality vs size and made for easiest distribution and best for archiving, and therefor, better, than any other lternative.
We are soon going to be able to rip dvd's to 1 cd and play on our home unit, and load up our cd R's with lots of shows and downloaded media. Good times are ahead. -
This may be because that early Broadband uptake is by the most technically aware people? Once there is mass broadband uptake (i.e., as common as say dial-up), once again, the vast majority of people won't know what "DivX" is.Originally Posted by duhmez
BTW, broadband uptake is SLLOOOWWWW especially worldwide.
This is the fictitious belief that "production produces its own demand" can be followed explicitly. Let me give you another possible scenario for the above.A high percentage of users on fast internet all find kazaa while looking for mp3'sm, and stumble on divx all the time. Then, joe shmoe looks in his catalog when his current dvd unit dies on him and sees "DVD unit Brand X, suports dvd, mp3, cd, cdr, cdrw, vcd,svcd, DIVX. Now at this point he is crapping in his pants.
"Wow, I can cram a helluva lot of my divx stuff on one disk, they are so goddamned small...."
Joe shmoe buys this unit. This will, imo, make mpeg 4 highly suported in hardware units as time passes. Then joe shmoe sticks in his divx clips hes got, maybe a few work, most wont prolly because of weird framerate, aspect etc, but that doesnt matter. hes already bought it and he sees in the manual it must be certain res etc, certain audio etc. he wont take it back because it plays everytuihng else ok, and the properly encoded divx too.
Company A thinks that they can sell more units by including DivX support. However, in doing so, they realise that the additional hardware costs and licensing agreements increase the cost of their player. They can do one of two things: (1) pass on the increased cost to the consumer or (2) reduce the cost of the player by removing, downgrading other components (or a combination of the two).
The effect? A more expensive player that does LESS than others models of the same class bar the fact that it can play DivX.
So what happens when "Joe Schmoe", who goes to an average job, is normally fairly busy, has 1 or 2 kids and only uses his PC for some general enjoyment (internet surfing, games) and work (word processing, accounting, etc.) decides to buy a DVD player? He looks at the models available and sees that they all play DVD reasonably well (which is why he is buying a DVD player) except that one/few units cost more but support "DivX".
Having vaguely heard of DivX as some sort of pirate video on the internet, he doesn't feel that interested in it and doesn't know what it is (and hences thinks that he won't use it) and so decides to buy one of the other CHEAPER DVD units that seems to do everything else just as well (if not better).
At this stage, the company producing the DivX units may find that this particular product line not being very competitive and decide to withdrawal / modify it.
Remember, the newer Apex DVD player's don't have VCD functions simply to reduce the cost of production...
VCD and SVCD are dinosaurs. Big lumbering ones. No arguments there. However, VHS is even a bigger dinosaur and let us not forget the humble audio tape and 3.5" floppy disc! They offer a number of benefits over DivX though. As you've suggested: (1) compatibility, but also (2) recognised set standards for both disc and hardware manufacturers, (3) inexpensive MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 decoders, (4) well defined, easy and cheap licensing, (5) a set established market, especially in SE Asia where VCD players have the same market penetration as VHS in the West and (6) S/VCDs support menuing.VCD and SVCD are dinosaurs to be, as they offer no benefit over divx at all, except for their compatibility at the moment. And lets not forget, VCD and SVCD are a mode 2 format, and writable dvd media dont hav ethe right sector size to match properly, so they wont work on most unit when burned as VCD or SVCD on DVD writable media.
BTW, you cannot burn VCD or SVCD onto DVD media so you suggesting that you could implies to me that you don't know that much about VCDs after all. You can author and burn a DVD using VCD source files in a compliant way. However, I think this is a fairly neutral point in terms of "DivX" taking over DVD.
The issue, however, is where this relatively limited and small market of DVD rippers, who by in large are making pirated material (i.e., they couldn't afford or didn't want to buy the original DVD) would be a large enough market to support the inital high price premium of stand-alone DivX players.One would not expect this limitation froman iso 9660 burned with mpeg 4 content. Mpeg 2 being better at handling very high bitrates may indeed be true, but who cares about very hig bitrates, except for hollywood DVD's, and a sI said before, wh cares if they stick with DVD. I can still fire up DVD decryptor and make a 1 cd divx out of it that is nearly indestinguishable from the original WHEN PLAYED ON A TELEVISION. And if I can do this and have it work on my dvd unit, i am a happy camper.
After all, why would you make a DivX copy of your OWN DVD just to play it on the SAME PLAYER as your DVD player?? There is no benefit apart from the video looking slightly worse and the loss of menus.
The reason MP3 became popular is NOT because you could play it on your CD player. It is because you could play it on your computer easily and have large varied playlists. Stand-alone MP3-CD players are probably the least popular of MP3 devices. Where MP3 devices became popular is in small handheld, portable devices where MP3 could show it's benefits over convension CD-DA.
I believe that this is where DivX or some other form of low bitrate video codec will shine as well (apart from low bitrate video distribution). Small, portable video devices. It does something that standard DVD or VCD or SVCD or any other form of optical media cannot do simply because of their form factor.
This is a great reason to have DivX. This is not a reason for companies to put DivX support onto players. There is a big difference.Now for another point to drive divx support in these units. The top seling DVD's are boxed sets of shows and are taking the market by storm. If one doesnt mind sacrificing a TEENY little bit of quality, then one can cram6-8 22 minute shows on one cd, or, 42-56 22 minute shows on one DVD -R. As more players support mpeg 4, more and more will encode in such as way as to work on them, much like the rise of VCD compliant media available for download now. Back in the day mpeg clips were never vcd compliant.
Unfortunately, it is "Joe Shmoes" of this world that has the money and do the purchasing.Joe shmoe may not know what the hell divx is at the moment, but he owns a computer and his nephew sure does.
Why isn't WM9 or RM considered "pirate codecs" when they do the same thing? Why are they considered bona fide commercial possibilities? DivX unfortunately began its life as a pirated version of the MS MPEG-4 codec. The stain continues to this day.Divx a pirate codec??? Why do you think that was? Because it offered the best compression quality vs size and made for easiest distribution and best for archiving, and therefor, better, than any other lternative.
That has yet to be seen. DivX has been around for a LONG time. Sigma has made their hardware MPEG-4 decoder for a LONG time. To date, there is ONE hardware manufacturer that makes a DVD player that supports DivX. There are no others that plan support. I believe that a number of other manufacturers are heading the way of supporting Microsoft's WM9 or the RM codec with an assortment of limitations and DRM.We are soon going to be able to rip dvd's to 1 cd and play on our home unit, and load up our cd R's with lots of shows and downloaded media. Good times are ahead.
Don't get me wrong. I think it would be FANTASTIC to have widespread DivX or ISO MPEG4 support on stand-alone players. I just don't think it's going to happen any time soon. People have been talking about this revolution for the last 2 and a half years and I think that the bubbling enthusiasm that people have now that ONE player has been released is misplaced. Have a look at the actual player. It is quite expensive. How many of you DivX fans are actually going to BUY it? It is sales that make the bottom line.
As for the contention that DivX is going to overtake DVD? It isn't going to happen.
Regards.Michael Tam
w: Morsels of Evidence -
WMV and rm have not taken off as well as divx, imo, for a very simple reason. They do offer excellent compresison, but are a real bitch to edit/ and/or convert to compliant vcd/svcd or dvd formats. If the compresion quality and size was the only matter, I believe we'd see much less divx. Then what Nando did pushed it over the top
Re: Authoring a vcd or svcd on a dvd media, have you got a link? ive read and scoured and all i've found is that it can't be done, for the most part, except on very few players that go the extra mile to suport it. I've alot of vcd and svcd media I would like to move to DVD in the near future, as I obviously do not want to reencode. -
Try: http://www.vcdhelp.com/vcddvdr.htm for VCD.Originally Posted by duhmez
Try: http://www.vcdhelp.com/svcddvdr.htm for SVCD
Note, the SVCD framesize is not a valid DVD framesize. To "future-proof" your current discs, you should use VCD or consider using CVD.
Regards.Michael Tam
w: Morsels of Evidence -
Despite claims that "this is becoming a flamewar," permit me to disagree. Vitualis seems to have calmed down and now makes some good points, as do the others who've joined the discussion
recently. In fact, Vitualis and I are probably not nearly as far apart in our opinions as he might think.
---
First, THXKID points out "your speeches mean ntohing without some hardware" and he further points out that the hardware has goota get cheap. TXKID is exaclty right on both points. Well, we have some hardware -- a DVD player and a camcorder, both of which support Divx. That takes of the first issue -- getting the physical hardware in place. The second issue, how cheap it will get, remains. Vitualis and others keep harping on how expensive things are *now*. But haven't you guys been around computers for any length of time? Remember when 1 gig hard drives cost $1000? Remember when a Pentium computer cost $2500? The great lesson of history in the computer realm is that stuff gets a lot cheaper real fast.
Let's take CD-R burners as an example. Does Vitualis or THXKID remember when the only CD burners you could buy were standalong units? Remember how much they cost? This was around 1994, if memory serves. $7500.
Now ask yourself -- how long did it take for CD burners to drop to under $100 and become a standard part of everyone's computers?
About 8 years.
How muchd o you think DiVX-enabled DVD players will cost in 8 years?
I'll bet you it won't be any more than $60.
Now here is where I content that Vitualis and I are not really that far apart. Vitualis remarks again and again that "DivX will not become part of the mainstream anytime soon." Depending on what we mean by "soon," Vitualis is right.
Note, however, that I did *not* specify a time frame for when DiVX would take over from MPEG-2 DVDs. It will certainly take years. Hollywood will certainly fight it. But every new technology takes years to infiltrate itself into the mainstream, and Hollywood has a long history of fighting *every* new technology -- remember hwo Hollywood despised TV at first? Remember how hard Hollywood fought against VCRs? But all these new technologies got incoprorated into the mainstrain (though it did take years), and DiVX represents the latest in that line of new tech.
In the case of DiVX, the obvious reasons for its incoroporation into the mainstream involve its ability to produce equivalent video resolution at smaller file sizes than MPEG-2.
Now, Vitualis' post was so long that it's impractical for me to rebut it point for point, but allow me, if you will, to rebut some of Vitualis' main points. First, he claims that MP3 has not taken over from audio CDs. But statistics refute Vitualis' claim. Last year for the first time more CD-R blanks were sold than audio CDs, and surveys show that the vast majority of CD-Rs sold are used to archive MP3s. This meanst that MP3s have indeed overtaken the audio CD. Indeed, a recent oxford debate centered around this issue, and around the suggestion that MP3s and free music is destroying the entire music industry.
Now, whether that is true or not remains beside the point. Regardless whether the music industry survives, MP3 files are now far more common than audio CDs. What I mean by this is that nowadays when somebody has a big collection of current music, it is more likely to be MP3 files than audio CDs. So Vitualis' claim is just flatly refuted by the facts -- MP3s have indeed taken over from audio CDs, and continue to make inroads.
EasyDVD goes on to claim that "mp3 is not big business." If we include MP3 playback capabilities on CD players and DVD players, that claim is again flatly incorrect. Many millions are being made today off MP3 playback capabilities in hardwarre devices, and the amount of money made off MP3 will continue to skyrocket as more and more devices are MP3-enabled. The latest devices inlude cellphones and pagers and PDAs. If you add up the total number of such ubiquitous devices and multiply by the fractin of the price and service costs devoted to MP3 plyaback, you get big numbers -- and the numbers continue to grow.
The noly reason it _seems_ as though MP3 is not big business is that the revenues from MP3 encoding and MP3 playback are concealed in liscensing fees paid by CD player mfrs, DVD player mfrs.
The MP3 revenues just aren't highly visible. But they're there. And lots of revenues, too.
Vitualis goes on to claim that it is a "fantasy" that supply creates its own demand because one or another dot-com startup failed. Now, really, that is the most faulty kind of logic, is it not? You cannot prove that X general condition is untrue merely because Y and Z specific conditions are false -- surely someone of Vitualis' insight realizes that, does he not?
That kind of lgoci is as faulty as the claim that oceans cannot exist because there are deserts. A general condition can be true even if specific situations situations exist which contradict the general condition -- thus, most women in the world are fertile despite the existence of some women afflicted by sterility (and so on).
In this instance, the isolated fact that one or another dot-com startups died is meaningless as an attempte drebuttal to the general claim that Ricardo's Law of Economics holds true. In fact, supply can and does create its own demand, as countless economic examples from the home computer to the electric washing machine to the automobile show us -- but this doesn't mean (obviously) that any and all products produced will become successful.
Vitualis' logical error here is the well-known argument from extremes. "We must eighter have marital law or chaos in the streets!" No, there's a big middle ground between the 2 extremes.
EasyDVD remarks "Oh, please!! DivX is exactly that. MP3 for the video world. Something that makes it easy for us to get a taste of what is available. Nothing more. How many of you would rather see Star Wars at 320x240 DivX instead of BIGSCREEN MOVIE or DVD @ 5mbs? I would venture to say....none."
This echoes Vitualis' claim that "Divx is a pirate format."
However, this argument (that DiVX will not go mainstream because it's a pirate format and pirate formats don't go mainstream) is self-evidently faulty, since history shows that ALL new home recordings formats started out as a so-called "pirate format."
Does EasyDVD or Vitualis recall the vituperation hurled at VCRs when they were first introduced? They were labeled "video piracy machines." Anyone remember what the compact cassette was called when it was first introduced? You guessed it..."a home music piracy machine."
Yet VCRs and cassette decks became popular mainstream technologies.
So the claim that something is a "pirate technology" is meaningless, for 2 reasons: [1] First, Hollywood and the RIAA make that same foolish claim about _all_ new technologies, so calling anything a "pirate technology" is meaningless, it's all just hype and scare tactics by the big coroporations; [2] the public pays no attention and goes right and head and buys new technology if it's useful -- the public doesn't care whether Hollywood or the RIAA likes or hates new tech and brands it as a so-caleld "pirate format." (Your computer is a pirate format, since software can be and is copied willy-nilly. Does that prevent computers from becoming mass-market products? The internet is a pirate format, since it allows the trading of warez. Does that prevent the internet from going mainstream? Please, people. The phrase "priate format" is nothing but a meaningless buzz-word used by hack Hollywood lawyers to demonize ANY new and extremely useful technology.)
EasyDVD goes on to imply that DiVX is somehow limited in bitrate or in pixel size when s/he remarks: "How many of you would rather see Star Wars at 320x240 DivX instead of BIGSCREEN MOVIE or DVD @ 5mbs? I would venture to say....none."
That claim is as true as it is meaningless, for EasyDVD does not appear to realize tha DiVX is _NOT_ limited by bitrate _OR_ by pixel size. You can encode DiVX at very high bitrates if you want to (I have done so) and you can encode DiVX at pixel sizes up to 720 x 480 (again, I have done so).
Moreover, my own experience is that at high bitrates (when encoded properly) DiVX produces fewer of the annoying artifacts typical of MPEG-2.
EasyDVD goes on to claim that we have only a 1 to 2 year window for DIVX to establish itself in cheap (under $60) DVD players. What evidence is there of that claim that DiVX has only 1-2 years to establish itself?
None.
I don't expect DiVX to become mainstream within 2 years -- even DVD players are not yet fully mainstream, since many of my friends don't own one. And many odler DVD players won't play DVD-R or DVD-R/W discs. So it will take longer than 2 years for DiVX to become part of the mainstream. But again, so what? Why does it matter how long it takes?
Thorn remarks "I think that whatever the merits, DIVX is not headed to the mainstream yet. Mainstream is a hell of a lot more than just our community here, and things don't move instantly -- they can take years."
Again, there seems to be a misapprehension of my claim. I don't claim we will instantly see DiVX taking over. I don't claim DiVX will go mainstream tomorrow. I don't claim it will happen "soon" (if we define soon as the next year or 2).
What I am claiming is that consumer demand for a smaller-filesize high-efficiency video ecndoing medium like DiVX, along with ever-increasing consumer use of that format, will force more and more DVD players and more and more hardware video encoding devices to support DiVX. I further claim that the support will evnetually become so widespready that DiVX will become the new video standard for home digital recording and playback -- so much so that Hollywood studios find themselves forced to support DiVX by issuing movies in DiVX format.
Let me make some further points along this line.
Now, clearly TV will go digital at some time in the future. This will cause the filesize of digitally recorded movies to explode. Again, I don't believe that the folks on the contra side of this issue are thinking far enough into the future. Recall that as TV goes digital and as plasma screens get cheaper due to mass production and as movie theaters go all-digital (some are now, most will soon follow as a cost-saving device to avoid those horrendous 70mm film developing and distribution costs), the need to store vastly larger digital files will become acute.
Here again DiVX will play a pivotal role.
Encoding a (say) 4000 x 3000 pixel movie at 32 bits of color depth with a 24-bit luminance signal woudl create MPEG-2 files so gigantic you couldn't store 'em even on a the most monstrous blu-ray disc. But encoding such a huge HDTV video source into DiVX would reduce the filesize somewhere between 6 and 10. Once again, DiVX will enjoy ane nromous advantage as our digtal video ramps up in quality and screen size and pixel count and color depth.
By the way, lest you think I'm fantasing, I chose 400 x 300 because XERXO PARC sutdies show that 4000 pixels square is the approximate point at which further screen resoution makes no difference. At that point, you've got roughly the same visible resoution as a phtographic print. So it's safe to say that eventually our video resolution will increase to somewhere in that ballpark and then plateau.
How long that will take, I can't say. It will certainly take years. Perhaps decades.
---
Now Thorn and others seem to believe that the fact that MPEG-4 hasn't been fully standardized represents "a major roadblock." But once again, this is just incorrect. Let me explain why.
Most standards we live with didn't come from standards committes. In fact, in the real world most so-called "standards" aren't fully standardized -- yet that doesn't prevent them from acting in the real world as standards.
What it forces mfrs to do is to accomodate variations of the crufty junky cheesy non-standard standard. And this mfrs have done.
Time and again, mfrs have shown themslves expert at accommodating wide variation of non-standard "standards." Examples abound.
There is no word processing file "standard," and each word processing software has a variety of incompatible file formats going back years into many previous versions -- so computer and software mfrs deal with this by providing programs to read those older non-standard "standard" formats.
Computer serial ports have never been fullly standardized, with some ports using +12 and -12 volts (older machines) and newere ones using lower voltages to save power. Mfrs cope by adjusitng oth e voltages you jack a serial device into your computer.
USB is no longer a standard, what with USB 1 and now USB 2, but again mfrs cope. SCSI is a notoroious non-standard standard, and once again mfrs make active terminators and other widgets that allow users to cope.
MEG-4 is just the same story. DVD players will cope witht he variations in MPEG-4 ecndoing and playback exactly as DVD player mfr's have coped with the notiriously non-standard "standard" of reflectivity in the various CD-R media. Remember phthalocyanine vs. cynaine CD-R media? Remember when some CD players wouldn't play blue discs but would play green discs? Or wouldn't play green discs but would play blue discs? Or wouldn't play CD-R/W discs? (Etc.)
Well, the CD player mfr's got over those problems by learning to accommodate all the variations of reflectivity inthe CD-R media. It took some time, but it happened.
MPEG-4 playback will have a few bumps on the road just as CD playback of home-made CD-Rs did at first -- and after a couple of years, the problems will be shaken out and no one will talk about MPEG-4 playback problems any more. History shows that mfrs are very _very_ good at accommodating variations in non-standard "standards" like MPEG-4.
So that is just a non-issue, as history shows.
Vitaulis is dead right that boardband uptake is very slow. Moreover, it is likely to be very slow for quite a while to come. The technical reason for this is supposedly that Cisco and the other router companies and standardized on internet backbone hardware optimizied for hte most common data format right now -- namely, 28.8 data streams. Sad, but apparently true. SO many end users employ 28.8 that it is reportedly most efficient to optimizie the digital switching systems which form the backbone of the internet for that type of data stream. If true, this means that we've got a chicken-and-egg situation in which a bad standards gets ossified in place for no better reason than that everyoneis using it -- a godd exmaple is the Dvorak keybaord layout. Impossibly inefficient, yet so many fokls use it that it has become THE standard on typewriter keyboards.
Vitualis' attempt to apply this argument to the MPEG-2 format is faulty because MPEG-2 is a new and not entrenched standard. Typewriter keybaords have been around for 100+ years, so they are fixed. Disco routers represent a vast investment of money and hardware, so they are pretty well fixed in place for the time being. But MPEG-2 is not nearly as entrenched as (say) the VHS NTSC standard, and as the buzz of activity on boards like this one show, it seems pretty clear that there's a whole lotta shakin' goin' on in the digital video community.
So the analog with MPEG-2 is a faulty one. MPEG-2 has simply not been around long enough and has not made enough market penetration to solidfy itself as the same kind of standard as, say, the QWERTY keyboard.
Let's remember that the DVD is still shaking out. Early DVDs did not incorporate 5.1 sound. Next-gen DVDs are likely to offer higher video resolution (for those digital TVS -- MPEG-2 at 720 x 480 looks mediocre on a digital TV, you need something better if you're gonna watch it on HDTV) and probably higher sound sampling rates.
Audio CDs have now moved to 96 khz 24-bit sound, and DVDs will probably eventually move to 5.1 96 khz 24-bit sound.
All these evoutions means more data. A *L*O*T* more data. And to cram it all on the same DVD, DiVX will come to the rescue.
Again, folks, let's not mistake DiVX for a low-res format. It needn't be. Like MPEG-2, DiVX is a scalable encoding format -- depending onthe codec, there's no reason why you couldn't encode DiVX at (say) 10 megabits with 1600 x 1024 with 32 bits of color. We would need a modification of the current MPEG-4 codec, but that's the nature of codecs, ain't it?
As SatStorm so insightfully pointed out, development and enhancement and inprovement of MPEG-2 codecs continues. Parituclar MPEG-2 encoders.
The same is equally true of MPEG-4. The main difference is that MPEG-4 does a better job while producing a smaller filesize.
As duhmez pointed out, this means that consumer adoptin of MPEG-4 will force its eventual adoption throughout the digital video industry. And for reasons of simple economics, Hollywood will find itself forced to eventually adopt the digital video standard which has become the de facto favorite among the general public.
We saw this with VHS (which Hollywood fought) and with laserdiscs (which Hollywood fought) and with direct broadcast satelllite video (which Hollywood fought).
As for the argument that DiVX cannot catch on because it's non-copy-protected and Hollywood is going besrerk making everything copy-protected... Well, here's a little anecdote for ya about copy protection:
I visited a friend of mine the other day. We was running a black Sharpie marker around the edge of audio CDs he'd just bought.
"Why are you doing that?" I asked.
"It gets rid of the new copy protection."
Yes, kiddies, it's just that simple.
Hollywood is fighting a losing battle and will eventually give up on copy protection. The Sharpie marker story brings home just how trivially easy it is to bypass even the most sophisticated and complex
copy protection.
And since Hollywood will eventually give up copy protection on its products, that leaves DiVX as an excellent and very efficient format for content distirbution. -
i do such encoding everyday ... we have no intrest now or in the next 5 years at least to release such resolution to the public, but only to be used for digital cinema in a controlled application .. and even if we did -- we still would NEVER use DiVX ... a mpeg4 standard ... the quality is JUST NOT THERE .. its beeen tested over and over ... furthermore at the bit rate and decoding level required .. its not worth it for hardware to be built for divx at those rates . releasing HDTV on disk is a possibility - but before 1080p resolutions are ever released on disk a lot of things will need to change ..Encoding a (say) 4000 x 3000 pixel movie at 32 bits of color depth with a 24-bit luminance signal woudl create MPEG-2 files so gigantic you couldn't store 'em even on a the most monstrous blu-ray disc. But encoding such a huge HDTV video source into DiVX would reduce the filesize somewhere between 6 and 10. Once again, DiVX will enjoy ane nromous advantage as our digtal video ramps up in quality and screen size and pixel count and color depth.
i could sell someone now an entire movie compressed into 1080p24 but its just not going to happen, but they are nice to watch that way in my screening room at home!
for this type of compression we use mpeg2 for shorter requirments (1.5gig per 5 minutes compressed) and wavlet compression for longer requirements (QuVis) .. both of which play nicely off hard drives in raid or non raid setups ..
and even then -- IF we were use a standard mpeg4 type , developed for low bit rates and web streaming , we sure as heck would still not use divx which is beat in quality by at least 2 other types of mpeg4 or in legality and lic rights by most of the othr mpeg4 clones .. QT has a lot more valid history than a hacked MS codec ... same with h264 ...
im apriciate your views but your going against a large unweildy ugly industry thats slow to change ... and changing were you think it should doesnt and will not happen as much as you would like it to and for your vaild in some cases points.. -
You have to ask yourself WHY CD burners became standard. It is not a given fact. Look at all the other forms of storage technology / disc formats that are now not only obsolete, but completely unsupported (e.g., a variety of magneto-optical drives, CD-i, etc.) Recordable CD players became so popular for a number of reasons. Firstly, the popularity and subsequent ubiquity of CDs.Originally Posted by xed
Audio CDs came out at a good time. Compared audio tape and LP, it's like DVD vs. VHS. CD-ROMs were also amazing when they came out. They provided an optical storage format that held 650 MB when HDD were around 100-200 MB in size. Furthermore, the production of CDs themselves were cheap. So despite the fact that early producers screwed over the public (? and still do ), the medium had the CAPACITY of being very inexpensive.
There were some factors with CD-R themselves too that made them popular. First and foremost, the EXCELLENT compatibility. Although there are always reports of early players not supporting CD blanks, this is nowhere to the same degree as modern DVD+/-R/W media on DVD drives. For example (although this is only anecdotal), I have never personally met a CD drive that would not read one of my CD-R discs. All my CD-R discs, in fact, can even be read by my old 1x Philips drive. Other facts, of course, is that you can make essentially perfect backups of audio CDs and CD-ROMs onto CD-R.
For all these and many more reasons, CD-R "made it" and became ubiquitious. The same factors do not apply to DivX so you cannot assume that it will become successful just like CD-R. Indeed, there are many reasons that would suggest otherwise.
Okay, this I can agree with. IF DivX is still around in a recognisable form in 8 years, it will be cheap. I will probably even be popular. I just don't think that it will survive as a viable commercial video format.How muchd o you think DiVX-enabled DVD players will cost in 8 years?
I'll bet you it won't be any more than $60.
There is a little bit of revisionist history here. "All these" technologies did not get incorporated into the mainstream. You've forgotten of all the other technologies that had their brief showing and now is barely remembered. For example, CD-i video. It came and went, and most people didn't even know. The same would have been true for VCD if not for the specific circumstances that pushed it into prominence in the Asian market.But all these new technologies got incoprorated into the mainstrain (though it did take years), and DiVX represents the latest in that line of new tech.
I would agree that MPEG-4 is beyond MPEG-2 in terms of digital video but I am unconvinced that it is necessarily the "next step" in commercial / home video consumption. If we are looking at it from the basis of a disc based medium, I would even say that it is unlikely. However, if the *future* (who knows how far) is going to be net based / distributed video, then yes, MPEG-4 is the way forward. However, this is far from certain and my opinion is that distributed video is not going to be a big factor for a long time to come (from poor broadband adoption the world around). By that stage, MPEG-4 may well have become obsolete. In any case, DivX is not the only MPEG-4 based codec and in terms of commercial interest / acceptability, it is quite far down the list.
Absolutely not. More CD-R blanks may have been sold than audio CDs but I seriously question the validity of any survey that suggests that the majority of CD-R blanks are used for archiving MP3s. I think a little bit of common sense needs to be applied here. What do most people REALLY use their CD-R blanks for? Backing up/copying audio CDs, making compilation audio CDs, backing up personal data, backing up other CD-ROMs.First, he claims that MP3 has not taken over from audio CDs. But statistics refute Vitualis' claim. Last year for the first time more CD-R blanks were sold than audio CDs, and surveys show that the vast majority of CD-Rs sold are used to archive MP3s. This meanst that MP3s have indeed overtaken the audio CD. Indeed, a recent oxford debate centered around this issue, and around the suggestion that MP3s and free music is destroying the entire music industry.
Now, whether that is true or not remains beside the point. Regardless whether the music industry survives, MP3 files are now far more common than audio CDs.
However, my point was that in terms of business, audio CD still generates a lot more profits than MP3. The music industry still by large sees MP3s as a threat to their profits rather than a viable business model.
They are in part hidden, but they are for the greater part non-existent. There are no "MP3 licensing fees" paid to the music industry. Furthermore, the "MP3 feature" itself is rarely the reason someone purchases a player (bar, MP3 only players of course). For example, is MP3 compatibility really the main determining factor when someone buys a DVD player? As such, it is not the MP3 ability itself that is generating the profits.The noly reason it _seems_ as though MP3 is not big business is that the revenues from MP3 encoding and MP3 playback are concealed in liscensing fees paid by CD player mfrs, DVD player mfrs.
How is MP3 generating profits? The same way audio tape did (sort of any way, MP3 not really being a "recordable format generally" and the music industry has yet to release MP3 versions of albums). Despite all of the music industry's moaning, I would bet that the proliferation and spread of music has actually boosted music sales. Sure, there may be some people who as a result of getting an MP3 will no longer buy an album they may have otherwise bought, but on the other hand, some people will have discovered music they like and BOUGHT it. Furthermore, this "word of mouth" advertising doesn't even cost the music industry a cent.
Not at all. You are implying an infallibility of Ricardo's Law of Economics. This is far from true. In the real world, the laws of supply and demand play a very important role, especially at the microeconomic level. You are suggesting that simply the production of DivX enabled players will generate it's own demand for such players. This is true. But, will there be sufficient demand to offset the cost of production? This is far from certain.Vitualis goes on to claim that it is a "fantasy" that supply creates its own demand because one or another dot-com startup failed. Now, really, that is the most faulty kind of logic, is it not?
And hence the examples of the failed dot.coms and other products like DataPlay. In may cases, especially in the production of a relatively obscure new product, it is far from certain.
For example, Coca Cola is not going to double its sales by producing twice the amount of coke.
Furthermore, there are situations where Ricardo's Law is actually false. For example, in the foreign exchange and stock markets. The increased availability of an item/stock/currency, will often lead to a drop in demand and vice versa (e.g., Australia's Reserve Bank sells Australian dollars on the foreign exchange market leading to a increase in it's availability --> a loss in confidence in the $AU and a drop in demand).
As above. You are implying an infallibility of the Law when it is very falliable and the situation for such is directly applicable to the question at hand (DivX enabled DVD players).A general condition can be true even if specific situations situations exist which contradict the general condition
Again, some revisionist history. There is a big difference between bona fide commercial products that the motion picture industry would like to claim as a "pirate format" (e.g., VHS) compared to a commercial start up where it actually was a pirated format (e.g., DivX).This echoes Vitualis' claim that "Divx is a pirate format."
However, this argument (that DiVX will not go mainstream because it's a pirate format and pirate formats don't go mainstream) is self-evidently faulty, since history shows that ALL new home recordings formats started out as a so-called "pirate format."
It should be plainly obvious that the motion picture industry doesn't want anything to do with anything named "DivX" and when they finally come to their sensess and "discover" MPEG-4 (or some variant) and announce it as the next great thing, it will most likely not to be "DivX".
I think I can safely say that this is so far in the future that DivX will almost be entirely obsolete by then. It would be like me saying in the 1980s that MPEG-1 will take over the world in terms of video distribution. It hasn't, but rather, MPEG-2 has. DivX has many competitors with much more legitimacy, and I doubt very much that DivX will become the main accepted format.Encoding a (say) 4000 x 3000 pixel movie at 32 bits of color depth with a 24-bit luminance signal woudl create MPEG-2 files so gigantic you couldn't store 'em even on a the most monstrous blu-ray disc. But encoding such a huge HDTV video source into DiVX would reduce the filesize somewhere between 6 and 10. Once again, DiVX will enjoy ane nromous advantage as our digtal video ramps up in quality and screen size and pixel count and color depth.
I would say that this is incorrect. MPEG-2 is the most widely used compression method used commercially. DVD, digital sallelite broadcasts, etc. It may not be "entrenched", but many companies from different fields have a lot of experience with using MPEG-2. It is the logical video compression format for people to use commercially (now). MPEG-2 is definitely standardised. For example, every DVD will play in just about every DVD player. If there is a problem, it is usually because of some other aspect of the DVD authoring, not a problem with MPEG-2 incompatibility. MPEG-4 has "just" been standardised. Unfortunately, it would appear the the common implementations of MPEG-4 are not necessarily adherent to the standard. This may nor may not be a problem.MPEG-2 has simply not been around long enough and has not made enough market penetration to solidfy itself as the same kind of standard as, say, the QWERTY keyboard.
As for your QWERTY keyboard analogy, it is a bit inappropriate. Very few things are as "standardised" as that.
That is on the assumption that it will be on the same media. This assumption may well be incorrect. Simply, DVD has standards and if you start putting stuff on it that will make it "non-compliant", it should by all means not be called a DVD any more -- and there is no need to either.Let's remember that the DVD is still shaking out. Early DVDs did not incorporate 5.1 sound. Next-gen DVDs are likely to offer higher video resolution (for those digital TVS -- MPEG-2 at 720 x 480 looks mediocre on a digital TV, you need something better if you're gonna watch it on HDTV) and probably higher sound sampling rates.
Audio CDs have now moved to 96 khz 24-bit sound, and DVDs will probably eventually move to 5.1 96 khz 24-bit sound.
All these evoutions means more data. A *L*O*T* more data. And to cram it all on the same DVD, DiVX will come to the rescue.
For instance, the next gen. audio discs (SACD and DVD-Audio) are not CDs. They get around the disc capacity problem simply by going upwards to a higher capacity medium. It would appear, that the same will be true for the "next-gen" video disc (presumably Blu-Ray).
If you are predicting that MPEG-4 (or even more generically, an MPEG-2 video encoder replacement that has more in common with MPEG-4 than MPEG-2) will replace MPEG-2, I will have to agree. Will it be "DivX"? I personally find it unlikely.As SatStorm so insightfully pointed out, development and enhancement and inprovement of MPEG-2 codecs continues. Parituclar MPEG-2 encoders.
The same is equally true of MPEG-4. The main difference is that MPEG-4 does a better job while producing a smaller filesize.
Sometimes, it is important not look at trivial examples. What this is an example of is probably more that putting copy protection mechanisms onto an EXISTING medium and still having it work is hard. Very difficult, in fact, and probably not worthwhile. If anything, this is a reason for the content providers to move to a NEW medium type for the "next great thing" where they can design even more intricate copy protection systems in place (e.g., SACD and DVD-Audio). Do they work? Not in the long run but it probably is a deterent enough for most people.Hollywood is fighting a losing battle and will eventually give up on copy protection. The Sharpie marker story brings home just how trivially easy it is to bypass even the most sophisticated and complex
copy protection.
For example, CSS and Macrovision on DVDs has, successfully I would claim, prevented the widespread HOME copying of DVDs. Of course, it has done nothing to prevent large scale commercial piracy, but the cynic in me tells me that these measures weren't really aimed at them anyway.
I hope so (the copy protection bit), but I don't think we have seen it yet.And since Hollywood will eventually give up copy protection on its products, that leaves DiVX as an excellent and very efficient format for content distirbution.
Regards.Michael Tam
w: Morsels of Evidence -
Let's remember that the DVD is still shaking out. Early DVDs did not incorporate 5.1 sound. Next-gen DVDs are likely to offer higher video resolution (for those digital TVS -- MPEG-2 at 720 x 480 looks mediocre on a digital TV, you need something better if you're gonna watch it on HDTV) and probably higher sound sampling rates.
Audio CDs have now moved to 96 khz 24-bit sound, and DVDs will probably eventually move to 5.1 96 khz 24-bit sound.
20 and 24 bit audio cd's in 5:1 have been aviable for a long time -- the whole DTS audio cd collection .. but bought only by very few really .. its obvious to "hollywood" that people on the whole are very happy with mediocre quaility - hence mp3 .... though i agree that the whole recording industry have their heads up somewhere dark really understanding why thier sales are bad , artists all hate them , and things dont look better soon ..
720 x 480 can look really really good even blown up to larger sizes -- what to watch 720 x 468 comming off my D5 or Digital beta ? sure higher resolutions will be better -- and on the D5 it can do HD resolutions .. but even then D5 is still JPEG compression ! and that what movies like star wars are shot on .. -
The Old One
- Aug 2000
- Hellas (Greece), E.U.
-
There are at least 5 areas on the digital Video market:Cinema, DVD, DVB, Intenet and TV. All of them use mpeg 2 except Internet
TV itself has 4 ways of digital distribution: Satellite, Cable, Terrestrial and Internet broadcasting.
The 3 first are using DVB, which is based on mpeg 2 and is like flexible DVD in technology.
So, only Internet uses mpeg 4 based solutions.
There are attemps to transmit mpeg 4 TV channels through satellite (just go to lyngsat.com and search for the eutelsat w3 satellite and the atlantic bird ones), but this is simply a (failed) additional service to the satellite internet subscripters (there is not only europe on line on astra, there are also other satellite internet services in europe, not very known). The picture is awful and the channels are FTA as typical DVB transmissions on popular satellites.
I don't know any further interest or appearance of mpeg 4, except -offcourse- a small part of the internet community, expecially at younger ages. The way I see it, is like taping on VHS a movie in US and send it to my cousin in Greece to see it or my friend next door who missed it. This is possible (but not easier) only to some countries with advance internet (US, UK, Netherlands and partly Germany. Some scandinavian areas also, but limited). Beyond that, there is no really interest to the main market for mpeg 4. The typical 35 something costumer, the one who spents money for his home entertainment, don't even know it or if so, he don't have time to learn about it or even learn to use it. Also, mpeg 4 don't give any STATUS to that 35 year person. And new technologies, always define generations. It is a marketing trick also...
About the new generations: Those generations are adapting new ideas fast, and most of themspent money only to PC solutions, which is not good for big manufactures AND the music/movie indestry. The needs of those (teens and post teens), which are capable to use mpeg 4 on advance technologies in general, are much different the average costumer.
Example: For a 19 year old, to simply see a movie is enough on a PC monitor. Show me a 35 year old do this...
And even if those generations grow in 5 - 10 years and start being active members of the market (buyers with other words), who said that they gonna continue support those solutions and not turn standard? And what solutions gonna be in a 5 - 10 years? More advance ofcourse any today's technology proposition. Just imagine, mpeg 2 has only 7 years history, and now is somehow technological outdated.... And it was a true revolution at its time.....
Now, let's see the present:
MPEG 2 is the standard to so many things beyond internet, which we -the internet west world users- can directly understand. Mpeg 2 has another benefit. It is an indesty standard and because of this, it gonna stay one way or other for at least 30 years. It is noted, by any technology/economy analyst, that a succesful technology has at least one generation before it fades. Cassete tapes used for 30 years before partly replaced by CDs (still used today), VHS is used about 20 years (it defenitelly have more than 10 years infront of it) and satellite analogue transmissions have about 30 years of existance worldwide, just now they are replaced by digital ones. This is how the market works.
Now, let me remind to those who forget, that this hobby, ain't only DVD and movies. There are people who simply want to tape TV, as there are people simply want to tape radios to cassettes. There are people which want to tape their favorite football matches and other who want to tape their favorite music. Now, if anything is mpeg 2 (DVB for example) and we have enough storage to put it as is on a disc (DVD9 discs doulbeside DVD5 discs, Blu Ray on the way..) why to bother re-encode to mpeg 4? Why to loose time? DVB television transmissions are about 1.6 GB per hour as is, so it is very easy to store about 3 hours of TV programs in one DVD5 disc -AS IS-. It is the same amount as a 2.5 hour VHS tape, which is close to the tapes we mostly use on vcrs today (3 hours).
To understand further what I am saying, visit http://www.hauppauge.co.uk
The DVB/T transmissions of FTV channels in UK started. By simply buy a DVB-T card from Hauppauge, you grabb the transmission as is on mpeg 2 format, ready to burned to CD-Rs and DVD-Rs as is and watch them to most DVD standalones (first tests show that the transmission is 720 X 576 full pal, so those transmissions are ready to be burned and played on standalones, without any aspect probs).
Show me now, why to re-encode those grabbs to mpeg 4 if I have a DVD burner... There is no reason! And the DVD disc price reason, it only affects this year and the next. From 2005 the DVD-R disc prizes gonna be very low.
So, for Europe, I don't see any reason for mpeg 4. Not today, not in the future. And for US, I don't see any reason for mpeg 4 IF HDTV appears the same time with Blu Ray Discs. It's gonna be the same as here in europe. Direct HDTV ripping to blu Ray. Why people bother with mpeg 4 even there?
Back to the mp3s:
Mp3 succed also for one more thing: Music indestry stayed stereo for more than 50 years! So, there was NOT a new technology in audio for a long time in music from a technical point. So, when you rip to mp3, you loose nothing with pop music.
Those who love fidelity, wan't rip to mp3. Did you ever seen a music lover of the 18 century music rip to mp3? No. Why? Because for that kind of music, mp3 isn't enough. But for pop/techno/trance/house/electro/rock music, mp3 is more that enough.
But now, just imagine: If the last 15 years, the pop/techno/trance/house/rock/etc music hits was on multichannel format, who gonna rip them to mp3? None. It whould be lilke listen mono music today.
The music indestry pays that it remained the same for MANY years. More than 1 generation, which is in a way acceptable.
The movie indestry, is another story.
And also, between mp3 for audio and Mpeg 4 for movies are a big difference: Mp3 for most uses ain' loosy. Mpeg 4 is! (combared to the source which can be a DVB or DVD or pro material).
That is a HUGE difference.
Mpeg 4 isn't even close to mp3 in this matter. So, the use of mp3 to support the mpeg 4 future, is like messing apples with oranges. It is a different thing! -
Although I agree that the studios and their lobbies are WAY TOO POWERFUL, I think we shouldn't forget that they don't always win. They still haven't won with filesharing. And even with DRM, they seem to be losing. They want to force DRM on hard drives but I personally don't think this is gonna work.
Anyway, more to the point, just because the studios don't like it, doesn't mean it doesn't have a chance. For example, the studios were never too pleased with tapes but they lost that battle. They aren't too pleased with TIVOs and related products but they appear to be losing that as well. I expect with TIVOS and then DVD rewritable (whatever format wins), we may see MPEG4 starting to be quite common in the home. They probably won't wipe out MPEG2 DVDs which will still be sold by the studios but I suspect that most DVD players will support some sort of MPEG4 DVD. And of course, not forgetting HD-DVDs will def use MPEG4 (it has already been decided to use this rather then bluray I believe) although this will be to support high resolutions and DVD bitrates rather then a lot of stuff on one DVD.
As for VCDs demise, well you're looking at the wrong market. The VCD market get's it stregth not from those home CDR burners who want to play CDs they made in their DVDs but from the Asian market. Until the Asian market switches away from VCD, it will still exist. For this to happen, several things will need to happen. Firstly, there needs to be more DVD pirating plants and the production cost needs to be about the same a s CD. Also DVD players need to come down in price so that most Asian homes will have them (this may be a while since they will need to upgrade their VCD players). Then, there has to be a reason to switch to DVD. I suspect this reason will be the issue of space and price. The pirates will prefer 1 DVD then 2 or 3 VCDs if the price is cheaper. It's easier for them and the consumer. The quality issue issue may take a while to have any effect. Many Asians still have small TVs and put up with the often very crap quality you get from something recorded from the cinema. Even the better quality of a video tape or high quality cinematic recordings are not likely to gain that much from moving to DVD. So I suspect that it will the issue of numbers which make VCDs die out... -
Of course, I negelected to mention the possiblity that Asians may start to care more about quality and pirate less by the fact that the average Asian starts to have goood TVs and more money to spend. This will happen over time but I suspect it will be a good 5-10 years before it spells the end of mass scale piracy...
-
Skate Zilla HD Studios
- Apr 2002
- Virginia Beach Va
-
Originally Posted by Greg12
Why Would You Waste anothr 64 + Mb On Bill Gates Propaganda Sh-it?
Why Make Him Richer.?
More Money Backing the Co. Doesnt Always Mean the Best Product. -
accually for Digital Cinema we use wavlet compression more than mpeg2 , though its used some also ..SatStorm wrote "
There are at least 5 areas on the digital Video market:Cinema, DVD, DVB, Intenet and TV. All of them use mpeg 2 except Internet ....."
-
Originally Posted by Digital-Overload
something like 90% of computer buyers/users just accept things as what is on thier system , thats why walmart is selling like nuts 199$ computers .. -
The Old One
- Aug 2000
- Hellas (Greece), E.U.
-
You don't get it huh?
There is no reason to re-encode to mpeg 4.
You can use "as is" a DVB -Cable/-Terrestial/-Satellite source and burn it on DVDs (and CDs going the -x- way).
You can store about 2 - 3 hours per DVD-R today that way (depending the channel).
And who said that big ones like that? No, they don't. But they can't do nothing about it.
But they can do something else: Show attention to limited interest stuff like divx and mpeg 4 in general. (yes, the interest for mpeg 4 is limited. Only to young ages and advance PC users. A small market compared to the global market). So, they spotlight something mainstream difficult for cover the true: They can't control mpeg 2 technology overall.
That way, they hope that they can prevent a VCR like situation of early/mid 80s (in the analogue days).
In other words, they afraid the power user! If the power user understand that it is possible to use mpeg 2 so easy with todays mainstream technology, then the whole system of today's distribution gonna fall (not true, but who said that they have brains? They have only pockets!). But if they make those power users focus to something else, then the damage gonna be less.
Examples:
- We all know that an mp3 with 300+kb/s gonna be fidelity and audio quality equal a CD. So: Why we buy our favorite songs original, even if we have already download them before?
- We all know that we can clone a DVD (to one or two DVD-Rs). So, why we keep buying our favorite movies on original DVD and don't simply rend, rip and burn them?
Now, if someone say: "I do this", well it is mistaken!
Why I said this? Because we are enthusiasts! The market is overall. What that means?
It means that the mainstream DVD costumer buy 2 - 3 movies per year. So we, the enthusiasts. We buy 2 - 3 movies per year, even more. So, from that point, we are simply mainstream costumers.
Since we support the system the mainstream way, we are not problem even if we copy 10 - 20 movies per year. We gonna became a problem if we and a great part of the simply mainstream costumers of DVD-Videos, gonna copy only without buying original.
The problem, is that we, the internet users, we don't realise that we are a minority and nothing more. We have to think global to understand the market.
Anyway, in a dawn of new technologies, always some ideas appear and some lost. In the analue years, there was a battle between Beta and VHS and also some other formats like Philips video 2000 or that japanish VHM or how they called it. VHS only win the battle for various reasons.
Now, we have mpeg 1, mpeg 2 and mpeg 4. Mpeg 2 wins the battle.
There is still beta today, so gonna be mpeg 4 in 15 years. But that means nothing.
@ BJ_M: I mean distribution market. No pro-market.
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