| There's a company called DivX, Inc, formerly | | | | today. It was a French hacker Jerome Rota |
| the DivXNetworks, Inc. that introduced the | | | | who, rather than modify his video resume |
| DivX family of video codecs. Made extremely | | | | which could not play on the new Windows Media |
| popular because of its ability to produce | | | | Player at that time, reverse-engineered the |
| high quality video using lossy MPEG4 Part2 | | | | MPEG4 format together with a German Hacker |
| compression or MPEG4 ASP, DivX has cemented | | | | Max Morice to come up with an MPEG4 format |
| itself as one of the most popular multimedia | | | | encapsulated in AVI instead of the ASF it |
| codec for the home market. | | | | originally had. It only took them a week. |
| | | | Between 1998 and 2002, the DVD hacking |
| DivX is known to create a balance between | | | | community had independent hackers enhance the |
| quality and file size with its highly | | | | format that later came to have the Divx with |
| efficient compression abilities. And because | | | | a smiley emoticon  attached as |
| of that, it s one of the codecs used for | | | | version 3.0. |
| ripping where audio and video are copied from | | | | |
| a source to the PC hard disk for archiving | | | | In 2000, Rota was hired by Jorda Greenhall to |
| and transcoding. | | | | form a company called DivXNetworks (later |
| | | | renamed to DivX, Inc.) based in the French |
| The commercial DivX competes with Microsoft's | | | | Riviera. The association resulted in the |
| Video for Windows in WMV, Apple's QuickTime | | | | OpenDivX codec a year later. Its source code |
| in the MOV and RealNetwork's Real Video in | | | | was open to anyone and could be downloaded |
| the RMM file formats. An open source version | | | | from the website. The following year, the two |
| released by Xvid solutions in 2001 is the | | | | left for San Diego and developed the OpenDivX |
| Xvid file format. | | | | software to become DivX version 4.0. Other |
| | | | developers took the Encore2 software to |
| While DivX has long been renowned for its | | | | enhance the open source OpenDivX to arrive at |
| excellent video quality, its free and open | | | | the rival Xvid format.maintained by Xvid |
| source equivalent Xvid today offers | | | | Solutions, Inc. |
| comparable quality, also based on MPEG-4 Part | | | | |
| 2 (MPEG-4 ASP). In a series of subjective | | | | The DivX Company continued to enhance the |
| quality tests at Doom9.org, the DivX codec | | | | DivX software that in 2002 has taken on the |
| has been successively beaten by Xvid every | | | | fifth version. By 2004, the features of the |
| year since 2003.[11] | | | | DivX format are as complete as we know it |
| | | | today. In May 2007, the Windows Vista version |
| Confusion clarified | | | | DivX 6.6 for the PC and the Mac was released. |
| | | | |
| DivX are two different things from two | | | | The advantages and benefits of using DivX |
| different companies. One is DIVX created by | | | | |
| Circuit City, a US electronics retail giant | | | | DivX found itself at the heart of video |
| that attempted to market a DVD rental system | | | | piracy in the late 90s as its format became |
| that used special players and discs. And the | | | | widely popular for ripping copyrighted DVD |
| other is the DivX multimedia codec | | | | materials for bootleg replication and |
| trademarked and marketed by DivX, Inc. which | | | | distribution. A number of generic DVD players |
| is actually a reference to the failed Circuit | | | | as well as branded ones are claiming to play |
| City system. | | | | DivX materials. |
| | | | |
| A short history | | | | What's so appealing about the format is that |
| | | | it's free. Same with the software players you |
| DivX roots can be traced back to 1998 as a | | | | can use to play it with. It belongs to the |
| hacked version of Microsoft's MPEG4 version 3 | | | | open source community together with Xvid |
| which is inferior to the MPEG4 that we know | | | | offering competitive if not better quality. |