Audio Video News

For years, DivX has been one of the major video codecs used by movie pirates. The codec (and the company) itself has no real sinister origin, but since it can compress videos to a conveniently small size while maintaining respectable video and audio quality, it's been a go-to encoding method for people who pirate video. It's also gotten a significant boost in legitimacy thanks to a large selection of DVD players, set-top boxes, and other gadgets that support the format. Now the codec is hitting the market in a big way, thanks to a handful of studios who have decided to start releasing their own legitimate digital video copies in DivX format.

Paramount, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures, and Lionsgate have all entered partnerships with DivX and online video store FilmFresh.com to release their movies in DivX. Currently, several hundred movies are available on FilmFresh.com, with new releases costing up to $16 and older films available for $10.

The DivX format is convenient not only because of its compression method, but because it features much less digital rights management (DRM) than Microsoft and Apple's video formats (commonly used in the iTunes Store and other large digital media stores). Once a DivX video is purchased from FilmFresh.com, users can put it on any device that can play DivX files with a minimum of hassle, without the issues of authorizing the file over the Internet after it's downloaded.

— Will Greenwald

[Source: Engadget HD]