Jim Styn, Author at DivX Video Software

DivX Connected Brought the Internet Video Experience to the Living Room

The groundbreaking DivX codec first became popular in the early 2000s, a more innocent time when Mac computers came in bright colors, Toby Maguire was Spider-Man, and the best way to get high-quality video content from the Internet was to download it to your computer. Of course, once you downloaded a DivX file it essentially took up residence on your hard drive, as there was no easy way to play a DivX video on a television.

That all began to change in 2003, when the first DivX Certified® DVD player hit the market. Soon, millions of DVD players and other devices were DivX Certified, making it easy for users to burn DivX files to a disc (you *do* remember burning to CD or DVD, right?) or USB stick and play it back in all its full-screen glory in their living rooms, a method some in the industry called ‘sneakernet’. This was great as long as ‘download-and-play’ remained the dominant mode of media consumption for Internet video fans, which it did for many years. Little did we all know know that, along with the end of boy band dominance and the introduction of Andrew Garfield … and later Tom Holland as Spider-Man, a streaming revolution lurked just around the corner…

When streaming video first appeared on the Internet, the experience was far from ideal. Technologies like Flash enabled only grainy, postage-stamp size video quality, and dial-up and early broadband connections were not fast enough to support anything resembling a high quality of service.

As technology improved and broadband became more ubiquitous, the streaming experience moved out from the Internet shadows. A small start-up called YouTube debuted in 2005, quickly gaining traction with a diverse collection of user-generated videos that were just “good enough” in terms of visual quality to attract a large audience. DivX Stage6, the first video sharing site to offer HD quality, came to the market soon after, along with a number of other sites. Video streaming had hit the mainstream.

Once users embraced streaming video online, they naturally began to clamor for a way to get that same content to the television without having to burn a disc or plug in an external hard drive. Early living room streaming solutions like Microsoft Media Extender and similar products from Apple brought media to the television, but unsurprisingly they tended to be proprietary, supporting only Windows Media or QuickTime playback, respectively. DivX, long the format of choice for online video, was not invited to the party.

Jerome “Gej” Rota, the creator of DivX and co-founder of the namesake company, conceived of a solution that would offer the kind of truly “open” experience that lay at the heart of the DivX phenomenon. Instead of a “walled garden” product that only supported a handful of technologies, he envisioned an open platform that would bring the vast, rich world of Internet media directly to the television. Thus, the DivX Connected platform was born.

In 2006, the DivX team began engaging with chip makers and consumer electronics manufacturers to find the right partners to make the DivX Connected vision a reality. D-Link, one of the world’s leading networking equipment manufacturers, shared the DivX Connected vision and the two companies began collaborating to create a video streaming device.

The D-Link DSM 330 DivX Connected Media player was announced in August of 2007. Released first in Europe, the DSM 330 let users steam HD DivX files and wide variety of other formats directly to their televisions, no sneakernet required. Support for DivX Stage6 was built directly into the device, so even if you didn’t have a library of DivX movies sitting on a server, it was easy to find great content.

As Jerome Rota said at the time, “The DivX Connected platform is the next step in our high-level mission to transform the digital media experience and offer a truly new way to experience and discover content from the living room. We’re bringing the open and vibrant power of the internet to the world of consumer electronics devices.”

Video promotion for DivX Connected

After a successful European debut, the D-Link DSM 330 hit the US in 2008. Internet video lovers and casual users alike were impressed by the device, and Wired magazine wrote, “DivX is now trying to work with anyone and everyone in the industry to release devices that can playback DivX-encoded content, including movies, MP3s, pictures, traffic information, weather – basically anything that can be wrapped up in a DivX format.”

This open approach was embraced by the large, global community of DivX users. Jerome and the DivX team soon opened up the platform to third-party developers, and hundreds of “plug-ins” were created by the community to support all kinds of services and apps, ranging from photo-sharing to gaming and much more.

The DSM-330 continued to sell well for a number of years, as more and more content and plug-ins were added by DivX the company and the DivX community. Over time, technology progressed to the point that connectivity was built directly into televisions, gaming consoles and DVD players, rendering a dedicated streaming device unnecessary, and DivX Connected eventually headed out for the sunset.

Ironically, streaming devices would find a new life when the popularity of streaming services like Netflix and Hulu gave rise to the Rokus and Fire TV sticks of the world. Like many early DivX innovations, DivX Connected was ahead of its time, but it’s innovations and consumer adoption helped pave way for the video streaming renaissance we’re all living in now.

How Stage6 Changed the Video Sharing Game

In 2006, DivX® was a thriving technology company with a popular video codec used by millions of people around the world. DivX technology was integrated into tens of millions of DVD players and consumer electronics devices from major manufacturers, enabling consumers to playback DivX videos on their televisions.

Though DivX and other technologies were enabling high-quality Internet video in a way that had never been seen before, “video sharing” as we know it now was still in its infancy in 2006. YouTube had just launched the previous year and was growing quickly, while the increasing popularity of smart phones and digital still cameras that shot video was giving rise to a new category of videos called “user generated content.”

Early user-generated-content generally consisted of relatively low-quality, short “snackable” clips that people passed around online—dogs on skateboards, pratfalls and pranks, etc. Vlogs and longer-form content were less prevalent, but more and more creators were starting to become interested in the Internet as a platform for substantial, high-quality content.

The DivX team saw an opportunity to create a video-sharing site that offered some key features that other sites at the time lacked, namely:

HD-quality video. YouTube and other similar sites at the time used Flash to deliver video, resulting in low-quality video that was fine for a quick clip of cat playing keyboard but was far from cinematic. DivX technology enabled real HD-quality playback on the Internet, comparable to Blu-ray DVDs, something other services couldn’t offer. YouTube content was also streaming-only, so users couldn’t download files and play them back later.
Big screen playback. Flash and other competing technologies were not integrated into consumer electronics devices, making it difficult if not impossible to play user-generated content beyond the PC. The huge installed base of DivX Certified® devices would allow users to download files from the site and enjoy them in their living rooms, or even stream video directly to their televisions using connected devices.
Higher–quality content. YouTube catered to casual users and video creators who wanted light, short-form content. The DivX team saw an opportunity to offer a platform for talented, creative directors and creators who were creating high-quality, engaging content.

The DivX team spent months developing the bones of what would become Stage6 (initially codenamed “Zen Garden”) focusing not only on technical innovation and product usability but also looking to create a true community where users could explore, share and engage with creators.

As DivX co-founder Darrius Thompson said at the time, “We’ve tried to create a site that lets content creators give their viewers a true ‘lean-back’ video experience, with the highest possible visual quality, the greatest amount of options to bring content beyond the PC and the ability to create a real, engaged community around their content brands.”

The site was built around the notion of “channels”, enabling creators to build their own branded mini sites to feature their content and interact with users. The DivX community team reached out to filmmakers, video bloggers and multimedia artists from across the globe, amassing a diverse and engaging collection of content that would be available at launch.

Stage6 launched the first Alpha version of the site in August 2006 with little fanfare or marketing. The site proved an immediate hit with users thanks to the high-quality of the video and the wide range of compelling content. As Stage6 continued to grow in popularity, more and more creators were drawn to the service and the community of users flourished worldwide. DivX later launched updated versions of the site, with a new look and feel and better tools for creators to interact with their fans. These later versions of Stage6 were powered by DivX’s innovative HTTP-based web player, which for the first time offered a high quality home theater-like experience for web video.

Later in 2007, DivX launched a new product called “DivX Connected,” a media streaming device that let users play DivX content on their televisions directly from the Internet. Stage6 was integrated into the device, offering content creators the ability to distribute their videos directly to the living room, a feature not possible on other video sharing sites.

By early 2008, Stage6 had over 17 million monthly unique visitors and over 360 million page views. The site was hailed by technology journalists and beloved by millions of users all over the world. Leading industry publication TechCrunch hailed the “stunning video quality” that Stage6 offered, and many others agreed. “One reason it was so great was the fact that the content was compatible with over 70 million electronic devices from major manufacturers,” wrote Cybernet News. “This meant playing back videos gathered from Stage6 was easier than ever.”

Like all good things, alas, Stage6 was destined to end. The enormous popularity of the site led to huge hosting costs (bandwidth was a lot more expensive back in those days), and the DivX board of directors found it difficult to justify continuing to operate the site from a financial perspective. Efforts were made to separate Stage6 into a separate company or sell the asset to a third-party, but no deal could ultimately be reached, and the site was unfortunately shut down for good on February 26, 2008.

The legacy of Stage6 lives on, though. Over time, YouTube and other video sharing sites would come to adopt many of the innovations that Stage6 pioneered (and which we now take for granted)—HD quality video, TV playback, longer-form content, community tools. The notion of full-length, cinematic quality video delivered over the Internet has become ubiquitous, and the cost of operating a video-sharing site dropped significantly over time. Stage6 is remembered fondly by the DivX team that built it, the content creators that found new audiences through the site, and millions of viewers who got their first taste of truly high-quality video on the Internet.

The DivX Open Video System: A Forerunner of the Streaming Revolution

Video streaming services have never been more popular than they are now. With dozens of different streaming providers, it feels like virtually every movie or television show ever created is available for anyone to watch, anytime on any device. But the streaming video nirvana that we now take for granted seemed like a distant dream back in 2001 when a brash San Diego start-up company created one of the first Internet-based video-on-demand platforms.

streaming platforms — Some of the many, many streaming options we enjoy today.

The DivX® Open Video System — first introduced nearly twenty years ago — pioneered many of the technology innovations and product features that would become key components of the services we now use every day, helping lay the foundation for a massive change in media distribution and consumption.

It all started with a codec. In 1999, Jerome “Gej” Rota, a young French animator, created a version of an MPEG-4 video codec (a portmanteau of “coder/decoder” that encodes a data stream for transmission and then decodes it for playback) that enabled DVD-quality video at small file sizes. Jerome started a company with a few other budding technology entrepreneurs, and in August 2001 DivX 4.0, the first official DivX codec, was released to the public. The Internet video community responded with great enthusiasm, and DivX soon became the standard for full-length, high-quality video transferred over peer-to-peer networks.

DivXNetworks, the company behind DivX, had been working in parallel to create an Internet-based video-on-demand system that built upon the quality and performance of the DivX codec. The goal was to create an end-to-end system for the secure sale and rental of feature films over the Internet. Due to the inferior quality of incumbent technologies, industry concerns about the effectiveness of existing digital rights management solutions, and the lack of universal broadband access, Hollywood studios and content creators had been slow to embrace an Internet based video-on-demand strategy.

The DivX Open Video System sought to address these concerns by implementing a few key innovations:

A flexible, key-based digital rights management system that tied purchased content to a user rather than a device, making the videos more secure while improving the viewer experience.
A core codec that offered industry-best compression and performance enabling full-screen, DVD-like quality that was vastly superior to the pixelated, postage-stamp size viewing experience associated with Internet video at the time.
A “progressive download” feature that allowed the viewer to begin watching a purchased or rented video after only a few minutes while the file continued to download in the background. Downloading a full-length feature film over early broadband connections could take 45 minutes or more, and at the time users were accustomed to waiting until the download was complete to begin viewing.

The development of the DivX Open Video System (OVS) was led by Director of Engineering Eric Grab and a team of dedicated programmers, codec engineers and video technologists. Eric and DivX co-founders consulted with the MPAA and Hollywood studios before beginning development to better understand the needs and concerns of the film industry and created a digital rights management system tailored to address those needs. “We worked hard to understand the very real concerns that Hollywood had about security, and we took those concerns seriously. The digital rights management solution we created tried to balance the concerns of rights holders with the needs of the viewer, and I think we got that balance right,” said Grab.

A small start-up where each employee wore many hats, the entire company participated in the development and testing of the OVS. Employees volunteered to stay after hours conducting QA, testing playback quality and logging bugs. “It was a true team effort,” recalls Tom Huntington, an early DivX marketing employee. “Everyone did their part to help the product get over the finish line, and we all believed deeply in what we were doing.”

Meanwhile, the small DivX sales team met with every film studio and content distributor they could find. The big studios were intrigued by the technology but still hesitant to dip their toes in the waters of online distribution, in part out of fear of cannibalizing the then booming DVD business that was bringing in record revenues. Smaller production companies and distributors proved more open to the idea, and several signed up as launch partners.

On September 6, 2001, the DivX OVS officially launched with partner Strand Releasing, an independent film distribution company. The first feature film available on the platform was called “World and Time Enough,” offered as a five-day rental for $4.95 on the Strand Releasing web site. Several more companies followed suit, and over the next few years thousands of independent titles were sold and rented by DivX OVS partners.

With the launch of the DivX Certification program for consumer electronics devices in 2003, support for DivX DRM was built into every DivX Certified device, ensuring customers could play back DivX OVS titles on their televisions. Hundreds of millions of devices spanning virtually every major CE manufacturer were released supporting DivX OVS playback over the following decade and beyond. Today, there are over 1.5 billion DivX Certified® devices shipped worldwide.

The DivX OVS was one of the first commercially available Internet-based video-on-demand platforms, enabling viewers to experience high-quality feature films in an entirely new way. Far ahead of its time, the DivX OVS launched a time where broadband Internet access was not yet ubiquitous, in a business environment where Hollywood studios were not yet ready to embrace digital distribution for a variety of reasons.

In 2007, a full six years after the launch of the DivX OVS, Netflix introduced streaming to their platform, eventually proving successful in breaking the loggerhead that kept Hollywood from embracing digital distribution. Many of the features that we take for granted in our everyday video consumption were pioneered by the DivX OVS, from DVD-quality picture over IP networks to flexible, transparent DRM and the ability to watch a purchased or rented title on multiple devices. “When I look back on it now, it’s clear that we were ahead of our time in a number of ways,” Grab said. “I’m proud of the work our team accomplished, and it’s gratifying to see the vision we had for the future of video come to fruition.”

The moment before everyone argues about which streaming service to watch.

The Birth of the DivX Revolution

Jerome Rota didn’t set out to create a digital video revolution—he just wanted to show off his work and maybe attract a few clients along the way. In 1999, Jerome (nicknamed “Gej”) was a young compositing animator and video engineer living in Montpellier, France. Fresh out of school, Jerome was looking to create an online portfolio that would showcase the video and animation work he was doing for various clients.

The state of the Internet in 1999, needless to say, was quite different than it is today. Dial-up was still the primary connection method for most users (broadband was a luxury that wouldn’t roll out to the mainstream for a few years yet) and the idea of high-quality video over the Internet was a novelty, at best. Streaming video, to the extent that it existed, meant grainy, postage-stamp size blips in the corner of the screen.

But things were starting to change. A group of leading technology companies had collaborated to create a new video compression standard called MPEG-4 that promised to deliver high-visual quality at file sizes small enough to distribute online. Microsoft released an early version of an MPEG-4 compatible video codec (a portmanteau of “coder/decoder” that encodes a data stream or signal for transmission and then decodes it for playback) that looked encouraging, and for the first time high-quality Internet video seemed like a realistic proposition.

Circuit City DIVX — Circuit City’s failed DIVX product

That’s where Jerome came in. He played around with an early MPEG-4 codec while putting together his video portfolio but was dissatisfied with some of the settings and format options. After a few hours of tinkering, he created a version that produced the kind of quality and compression performance he was after. Jerome called the codec “DivX ;-)”, a tongue-in-cheek reference to an early competitor to the DVD format from Circuit City called DIVX that was widely reviled by the online video community for its cumbersome digital rights management restrictions. Not thinking too much about it, he shared his creation with a few fellow video technology buffs online and went about his business.

It wasn’t long before “DivX ;-)” found its way into the wilds of the Internet and was widely adopted in video technology circles for its ability to create highly compressed video files that maintained visual quality at small file sizes. In true viral Internet fashion, millions of people were using the codec to encode and share DVD-quality videos over newly created peer-to-peer networks, and a true cultural phenomenon was born. “This is hard to believe,” Jerome is quoted as saying at the time. “It grew all by itself.” (CNET, 2002).

Young American entrepreneur Jordan Greenhall watched the DivX ;-) phenomenon grow with great interest from across the sea in San Diego, California. An early executive at streaming music pioneer MP3.com, Jordan had turned his interests toward video and thought DivX ;-) might be just the thing to ignite a still nascent industry. After much searching through the untamed IRC channels that made up the online digital video community at the time, Jordan attempted to track down Jerome. “Nobody knew whether he was real,” Greenhall is quoted as saying (CNET, 2002). Eventually, Jordan managed to get in contact with Jerome and suggested they form a company, create a new codec from the ground up that would build on Jerome’s version, and see where it all went.

Despite some early reservations, Jerome soon agreed to give it a shot. Before he knew it, he was boarding a plane bound for San Diego, with nothing but a couple of bags and a pack of cigarettes in his pocket. Jordan recruited three other budding technology entrepreneurs, and together the five co-founders launched a stealth start-up known as “Project Mayo,” the company that would one day become DivX®, Inc.

It was agreed from the beginning that the team would create a new codec from the ground-up that built on the work Jerome had created. Toward that end, the team went about the work of tracking down and recruiting the best video codec engineers they could find from all around the world. Soon, Jerome and company had assembled an international team of video technologists from multiple countries, including Italy, France, England and Russia, and brought them to San Diego to collaborate on the new project.

Without an office space to call their own, the team rented a house in the Mission Beach area of San Diego. Fueled by burritos and local craft beer, the global crew worked around the clock to create a codec that built on the MPEG-4 standard with innovative, proprietary features that improved compression and performance. The first iteration of a new codec was released as an open-source project by the Project Mayo team in January 2001. Called “OpenDivX”, the codec was a kind of “alpha” version designed for community feedback and testing. After a few beta releases, DivX 4.0, the company’s first official product, was released on August 22, 2001.

The new codec was MPEG-4 compliant but featured significant performance and quality improvements. This included new features such as 4x improvement in encoding speed, multi-pass encoding and two different variable bit rate modes, improved visual quality and de-interlacing. DivX 4.0 was an immediate hit with the digital video community thanks to its groundbreaking ability to enable near DVD-quality video over the Internet, which was virtually unheard of at the time. “Our remarkably talented team of codec engineers and video technologists has worked tirelessly to optimize the performance, speed and quality of the codec, and we’re amazed by the result of those efforts,” Greenhall said at the time. (DivX 4 Press Release)

In the first five months it was available online, DivX 4.0 was downloaded over 5 million times, and subsequent versions of the codec would go on to reach over 1 billion downloads (and counting). The codec was licensed to numerous software companies, including CyberLink and Magix, for use in video editing and playback products, used by leading video game companies such as Blizzard for in-game cinematics, and was the foundational technology that enabled the DivX Open Video System, the company’s video-on-demand platform. Future versions of DivX technology were integrated into over 1.5 billion consumer electronics devices, enabling Jerome, Jordan and team to build a massively successful company that would go public on the NASDAQ stock exchange six years after the team first got together.

Twenty years after the first DivX codec was released, the name DivX is still synonymous with high-quality video. DivX continues to innovate in order to deliver groundbreaking experiences to consumers around the world.

“It was just a good codec,” Jerome said at the beginning of the DivX era in 2001. “I made it for me, for my infographiques.” (Salon, 2001). The rest, as they say, is history.

The First (and Second) Rule of Installing

Not to get all Brad Pitt in Fight Club on you, but … the first rule of DivX Software is there are no viruses in DivX Software. The second rule? THERE ARE NO VIRUSES IN DIVX SOFTWARE. Even though it’s been written here in all-caps, why do some antivirus software programs flag the DivX Software installer? The reality is some users may see a ‘false positive’ for malware from their antivirus software (e.g. McAfee, Symantec) when downloading the free version of DivX Software. Why? This is likely due to third-party offers within the DivX installer. As you’ve probably seen, when you install our software we may offer you an ad for an optional software product — which you can always decline. For what it’s worth, it usually takes a few days after a new version of our software is released to get whitelisted.

So if offering these ads causes issues, why include them? Quite simply, we include offers or ads in our software so we can make it available for free. (If you choose to purchase DivX Pro or Ad-Free, you will no longer see any outside ads in the software or installer.)

As you can imagine, there are costs associated with running DivX. There are employees (including high-priced blog post writers), technology fees and licenses, offices and more. One main way we cover these costs is to include partner offers during installation. Of course, if you aren’t interested in the product offered by our partners, just decline the offer.

One way to get past this inconvenience is to make sure you’re running the most up-to-date antivirus software, which may fix false positives. Please try updating your antivirus and/or try temporary disabling your antivirus software when running the DivX Software installer. Also, be sure you have downloaded an authentic copy of our software from DivX.com or are updating through our in-product updater. We don’t recommend downloading a copy from any other site.

We know this situation can be frustrating and we’ll keep trying to resolve it as quickly as possible. If you have any troubles installing, check out our Support article. Please keep enjoying the software and, unlike Fight Club, feel free to talk about the first and second rules of installing DivX Software.

Music Videos in Your Car … and the Return of the Car Mixtape

Unless you were born after 1999, you likely know the joy of a mixtape or mix CD. The enjoyment and effort of curating the perfect mix of 10-12 songs to give to a friend, significant other or keep for yourself was a time-honored tradition. The handwritten list of songs — along with the thoughtful care put in to song order — created the ultimate personal playlist to enjoy in the car, on your walkman or through a boombox. While I know you can make playlists on all the streaming music platforms, it’s definitely not the same as the pure, tactile experience of the mixtape.

So why so nostalgic about mixtapes? Well, we all know watching videos while driving is a less-than-ideal way to stay alive. And you may know that many cars now have DivX Certified® devices that allow passengers to enjoy video in the car. You also may know that you can go online and download music videos to be played back later. Soooo, this means you can create a sweet “music video mixtape” (or “collection of videos on a disc or USB stick”) to play in your car. You can enjoy the music and your passengers can enjoy the videos. The mixtape (of sorts) is back!

If you’re interested, you can learn more about DivX in-car playback or find out if you have a DivX Certified device. If you need to convert video to ensure it works on a DivX device, just use the free DivX Converter (included in DivX Software) And if you buy a new stereo for your car, and want to revisit the pure joy of creating a killer mix of tunes, don’t forget to look for the DivX logo.

How the Original “DivX ;-)” Guides Us Today

Next year, DivX® will celebrate 20 years of creating video technology. While we’re still hard at work on some new and exciting innovations, this looming milestone has us reflecting on our past and the wild ride of nearly two decades in the tech industry. There have been impressive accomplishments (Over 1 billion software downloads! Live 4K streaming! A billion DivX Certified® devices worldwide! Occasional blog posts!) and interesting twists and turns along the way (multiple acquisitions, massive shifts in how we consume media). Even as the industry changed and our role shifted, we’ve always remained true to our original mission: to create a better media future.

The original mission, and the story of how DivX came to be, is an interesting one. Instead of a garage in Silicon Valley, the DivX story began in an apartment in Montpelier, France when Jerome “Gej” Rota created “DivX ;-)”, so he could better share his video creations online. The name was a dig at Circuit City’s DIVX (Digital Video Express) product that sold proprietary DVDs that could only be played on DIVX players and would expire after 48 hours. (Here’s a great TV ad for this failed product.)

DivX (the company) was formed soon after, as a collaboration between Rota and Jordan Greenhall, a former MP3.com executive based in San Diego, and three other founders. DivX quickly developed a codec that offered DVD-like visual quality with great compression and became an immediate internet phenomenon.

Long story short, after many versions of the DivX codec and adoption around the world, the company they formed continues to be guided by the initial desire to create a better video experience. Through many different products and years of innovation, this same desire drives us to create products today with the optimism and enthusiasm the team felt nearly 20 years ago.

Whether you’re a DivX user from when it was called “DivX ;-)” or downloaded the software for the first time this week, thank you for being a part of this journey and for helping us create a better media future. (And stay tuned … more to come soon!)

Still striving for a better media future…

DivX In-Car Playback: Highway to (Video) Heaven

For years I’ve been trying to get the office to go all in on a DivX Certified® car windshield to play stunning DivX® video while driving. I would get the usual responses like, “Ha, ha, ha, yeah totally … wait, you’re joking, right?”, and “Please stop talking to me about your absurdly dangerous windshield idea.” Ah, co-workers.

While my dream (nightmare?) of 4K windshields is on hold, playing video in your car is not.

DivX In-Car Devices

You may know that over a billion devices supporting DivX video have been shipped worldwide (Blu-ray players, TVs, gaming consoles, etc.), but you might not know that you can enjoy DivX video in your car. Each year, more and more in-car entertainment systems are capable of DivX playback, and supporting other video formats enabled by DivX technology as well. Brands such as Land Rover, Infiniti, Nissan, GM, Volvo, Hyundai and more are offering DivX-enabled features on many of their cars. This means you can bring your favorite videos on the road to entertain you and your passengers.
Say you’re going on a roadtrip with your family or friends and want to keep everyone occupied on the long drive. You can transfer movies to your car through a disc, USB drive or even SD card slot. With the low cost of storage, you can get a 16GB flash drive for less than $5 USD (I picked up a Kingston Digital 16GB for $4). And even 16GB will store tons of DivX video content since DivX video files have been compressed but remain high-quality.

Finding Videos Online to Play in Your Car

There are many ways to download videos that you enjoy. In addition to peer-sharing, there are sites like Vimeo offering videos that can be downloaded to your computer. Even the kids (the young ones at least) luck out as you can download videos directly from Sesame Street’s site at https://www.sesamestreet.org/videos. Check out their collection of Sesame Street short videos, click on the video and select “Save video as…” to save a copy to your computer.

Playing Music Videos In Your Car

Skip the DJ banter and fast food ads on the radio by curating your own music video playlist. Find music videos online and download them to your computer. Depending on the file format, you can always drag and drop the file onto DivX Converter to convert the video to a format that will work in your car, such as the DivX Home Theater profile. (More on video conversion below.) Put those music video files onto a USB drive and take it to the car. Your passengers can enjoy their favorite videos and you can enjoy the music.

Why Doesn’t My Video Play in the Car?

Soon you’ll have an assortment of videos to keep your rear seat passengers entertained. The only problem is, the videos will likely be in a variety of formats that may not play in your car. For example, some car systems won’t play high definition MP4 files. You’re in luck as that’s where DivX Converter comes in (part of the free DivX Software suite). Simply drag and drop your videos on to DivX Converter, choose the Home Theater profile (many of the in-car systems are certified for standard definition playback) and click “Start”. DivX Converter crunches your video files down to the standard definition Home Theater profile that is compatible with your DivX Certified in-car system.

Once conversion is completed, simply copy the converted videos on to your USB flash drive and plug it into the USB port. That’s it. No need to worry about DVDs that warp in the hot sun or get coated with sticky fingers. The USB drive just plays file after file with no fuss. You can even watch along on the front seat monitor … while you are in park. While driving you’ll only hear the audio (no video) but that’s still pretty handy if you have a collection of music videos or TED lectures.

Registering your device is usually unnecessary

Keep in mind that you only need to register your device with DivX if have purchased DivX content to play. If your content was downloaded from Vimeo, Sesame Street or wherever, you won’t need to register your device to enjoy your videos. Just plug and play!

Now you know how to enjoy videos while you cruise around in your car. If I could just keep you another minute to pitch you on my 4K windshield/screen idea … wait, where are you going?

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New Year: New and Improved DivX

It’s been an eventful year for DivX! We’re excited to round out 2018 with an update to our software (version 10.8.7 is now live) and the launch of a new website.

After DivX® became independent again this year, we had a lot of work to establish ourselves as a standalone company. Fortunately, we’ve wrapped up the behind-the-scenes work and are ready to move forward. The first step is the release of a new version of our free software.

The launch of DivX 10.8.7 brings you a smoother, better operating software suite. Play a variety of video formats up to 4K in DivX Player, cast video from your computer to your TV with the media server within Player, or drag and drop video files onto DivX Converter to convert video to play on your computer, phone, tablet or device. (Check the version history for specifics on what’s new.) You can download the free version and start using DivX 10.8.7 today. Plus, if you want the best possible experience, get DivX Pro® to make the most of your video. Learn more about why it’s worth it to buy DivX Pro.

We’re also happy to announce that we’ve redesigned our website. In addition to a new design, we tried to streamline information to make the site easier to use and more valuable to our visitors. Check it out and see for yourself. You can find out information about DivX Software, learn about the features of DivX Pro, search for DivX Certified® devices or get your Support questions answered. If you have any specific feedback, please let us know.

As we start a new year, we’re excited about what comes next. Thanks for being a part of our history as well as our future.

Happy holidays and happy new year!
-The DivX Team

Halloween Movie Trivia

With Halloween around the corner, we thought we’d test your skills at Halloween movie trivia. Below are ten clues to ten of the top scariest movies of all time. Scroll down for the answers and see how you do. (FYI: The answers are linked to the movie trailer.)

Halloween Movie Trivia

Call me a dull boy, but I’ve never tried Red Rum, and I’m not interested.
The top three things to consider when buying a new home are location, location, location … and ensuring that location is not on an old cemetery. Also, make sure you get a good cable provider. You don’t want your TV to have a bunch of static.
“After school got out we, ya know, worked on our tans, went to some parties and, like, may have killed a guy.”
As if hockey goalies weren’t scary enough, this movie kinda sealed the deal.
At least Brad Pitt didn’t sparkle in the sunlight.
No map, no tissues and clearly no tripod.
For sale: A lovely 2-story tract house in a nice San Diego neighborhood. This house features crown molding, a walk-in closet, and a tortured demon.
Is it a Halloween movie? Is it a Christmas movie? Is it TimBurtontastic? Definitely.
This movie is why I don’t go to motels. Or use a shower curtain. Or shower at all, for that matter.
Sadly, this may be when many people first heard of fava beans. And why we get the chills if we see lotion in a basket.

Answers Below….

No cheating….

How’d you do? Not sure if you should be proud or a bit frightened if you got them all correct.

Happy Halloween!

Author: Jim Styn