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