AfterDawn: News

DivX for GameCube -- kinda..

DivXNetworks' PR department must be busy writing their press releases so that general public get excited, even aroused of the distant possibility to have DivX playback on their consoles/DVD players/fridges/etc. But as usual, this is one of those "aww, nothing for us" news once again. Anyway, DivXNetworks has joined with Factor 5 and released a DivX for Nintendo GameCube Software Developer's Kit which allows game developers to use DivX playback in their games, etc.

The SDK aims to overcome the fact that GameCube's game discs can hold only 1.3GB of data, limiting the amount of video available for games, etc to very minimum -- when compared to PS2 and XBox which both can use DVD discs, upto 8.5GB per side when using dual layer discs. Traditionally games use MPEG-2 encoded video, just like DVD-Video does, but by allowing developers to use MPEG-4 instead, the video bitrate can be significantly lower and still maintain decent video quality.



Source: DivXNetworks' press release

Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 1 Oct 2002 8:19

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• 12 comments

• Ghostdog

  So why did they go and use those 8mm DVDs?
  And why does it look like a freakin' toy when compared to a XBox or a PS2?

  1.10.2002 09:37 #1

• MrFat

  Just Great! Now i get to watch porn with the kiddies!
  
  
  
  
  
  Can Someone Pass Me A Razor Blade? My Wrists Are A Little,ITCHY!!!!

  1.10.2002 12:30 #2

• A_Klingon

  I used to admire DivX a litle bit. It gave me a convenient excuse for creating at home something I could never have created before, watchable copies of store-bought dvds.
  
  After 3.11 alpha, and almost a hundred burned movies, I moved on....
  
  So, I must thank Gej (Jerome Rota) -- sort of -- , but since then, a/D has given me FAR more reason to rejoice. a/D is honest. DivX is, unhappily, consistently reminding me of, well...
  
  MS/RIAA/MPAA/Liquid Audio/Fraunhoffer/.....
  
  - Mike -
  

  2.10.2002 01:15 #3

• VCDjunkie

  Klingon, at the risk of sounding completely stupid, what exactly is a/D ?

  2.10.2002 08:21 #4

• Ghostdog

  Why does DivX remind you of evil/MS, RIAA, MPAA....?
  
  I haven´t involved myself with digital-video for probably months. For me it was sort of a hobby, a temporary interest. It was cool technology, something new and exciting. I don´t really have need for DVD-Rips. Besides, I neither have the time to watch a lot of movies nor make DVD-Rips. It is a time consuming process.
  These days it´s all about hardware for me. Graphics Cards. That´s why I´m spending all my time over at the THG forums instead of over here. I lost intererest in AD forums after a couple of succesfull rips.
  
  But this news commenting is very stimulating. Speaking your mind about stuff that matters and having people respond to your opinions, something that doesn´t work to well at the moment in real life. At least not in my case.
  
  OK, now we´re off topic, way off.

  2.10.2002 08:28 #5

• Dela

  Is it try that Sony are developing a new mp3 player that can play divx if hooked up to a tv. I know that they already have vcd versions of this but I hear of divx as a rumour.
  
  By the way I mean the mp3 players that play mp3 off a cd not in there memory!!

  2.10.2002 12:10 #6

• A_Klingon

  Hi VCDJunkie. "a/D" simply means "After Dawn", the site you are now on.
  
  Ghostdog, DivX seems to be becoming more and more commercial all the time. DivX used to be touted as a free alternative video format, but a quick visit to their official site, which I haven't visited in some time, now reveals many for-pay-only video clips which are (or at least were) only viewable for 3 days, after which they 'expired' or went dead. Then, to watch them again, you would have to RE-download them all over again, and get your credit card out for the priviledge of viewing them for another 3 days.
  
  Kinda smacks of the OLD Circuit City DivX, doesn't it?
  
  In other words, Divx now has the dreaded DRM "feature" which the most evil Microsoft itself flogs around.
  
  Although Gej is "trying" to keep Divx free, his latest encoder has built-in ads. I don't know how it works, because I never tried it - suffice to say, I think that advertising and video codecs should be kept miles apart - they have little place in each other's company.
  
  Gej, naturally, wants to make a bundle off Divx, and the most unwelcome incorporation of Digital Rights Management into the latest Divx codecs, will help to ensure that.
  
  (But it reeks of commercialism).
  
  -- Mike -
  
  
  

  2.10.2002 23:40 #7

• Mohi

  Cool!! More movies of Mario running around being an idiot. Now I have to get one!
  
  If I melt the top off of the cube will it play DVDs?
  
  Can I hack into a network and record activity in MPEG-4 format. I need my XBox back.

  3.10.2002 12:42 #8

• Ghostdog

  Klingon:
  Yes that is certainly something we wouldn´t have seen a few years back.
  
  The "Pro" versions of DivX 5 and up came bundled with spyware, if you weren´t willing to pay 30 bucks for it. Is this what you mean by adds? Actually calling it spyware is wrong, since you simply could not miss the warnings about bundled adware on the download page and when installing the codec.
  
  A bit of shame that Gej and his crew went commercial. But then again a man can´t live on making free software.

  3.10.2002 21:34 #9

• A_Klingon

  Yes, but if a codec is good, if it is really a *quality* format, I believe that it *will* catch on, and yes, it will be worth paying a reasonable price for.
  
  The trouble is that there is so much distrust in the marketplace, and largely, I think that that distrust is justified. A simple matter of corporate greed, and too many "me too!" people wanting a piece of the action.
  
  Too many fingers into too many pies.
  
  -- Mike --

  4.10.2002 06:52 #10

• Jake

  I think that DivX codec never come popular to all users, because it is much people who don’t know anything about DivX XviD MPEG-2 or anything about video codec’s. They just buy recording standalone players and record and watch movies those things. And right now (S)VHS and MPEG-2 (DVD) are most popular. But never know how DivX-players develop in future and can we never get good standard on it. But it’s hard to believe..
  

  Jake
  Please read aD guides before posting questions! Guides are available here:
  http://www.afterdawn.com/articles/

  4.10.2002 08:07 #11

• A_Klingon

  Oh my gosh! [rubbing eyes...] Is that a "Jake" I see there with a 'dot.k' after his name? (WoW!) - I envy multi-lingual people, I'm just not that smart myself! (Welcome, Jake). Do you gents over on the 'other side' discuss pretty much the same things? (A quick perusal of the forms over there with it's familiar telltale words would indicate so.)
  
  Well, some form of mpeg-4 (DivX or otherwise) may crop up in the future - it does have it's advantages - like getting a whole, high-quality 120-minute movie on a single present-day cd-r. But there are *so* many roadbocks to it's becoming widespread - recordable dvd's are burgeoning mainstream; DivX has patent issues and at least Gej is putting in DRM now, requiring specialized players; the .ogg people over at Xiph.org are putting together *their* own (largely free) video codec due to be released next summer; there is blue-laser to think about; Sanyo's new double-density recording format (which although *terrific* in concept, has come too late in the game I think); we haven't even gotten into Hi-Definition yet (much), and yes, the public-at-large knows little to nothing of video codecs, so the future is indeed One Big Question Mark !!!
  
  It's going to be interesting !
  
  -- Mike the Klingy --
  

  4.10.2002 13:33 #12