DivX 4, 5 and 6

DivX began as a Pay-Per-View protection format used by Circuit City.

Later the name DivX ;-) including the happy face was used by hackers who reverse engineered the Microsoft MPEG codec. Now DivX Networks has applied for a patent for their codec which is version 4.

Here's what they say in their FAQ:

"...the DivX™ codec is a patent-pending (as in, patents owned by DivXNetworks) technology created from scratch (as in blank screen, blinking cursor) by DARC (the DivX Advanced Research Center) and the team at DivXNetworks..."

The version 4.11 and 4.12 codec are stable and they do what the company claims it can do except that they will not run properly on any processor other than the Pentium Pro.

The Version 5 codec runs on all systems but has some bugs in the earlier releases.

The Version 6 codec is a good piece of software but very invasive unless you are using the DivX tools. Support for external editors is poor.

http://www.divx.com

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