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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 68.10.142.29 (talk) at 16:45, 10 May 2006 (→What about their other controversial antics?). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

In section: "Quality" there is broken links:
DivX has been beaten by XviD in the 2003[1], 2004[2] and 2005[3] tests.
Those links leads to deadend --CONFIQ 15:57, 18 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

non-title

It should be MPEG-4 PART 2 not LAYER 2, right? --62.85.195.133

I don't see either one of those phrases in the article. --Mulligatawny 05:58, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

What does tongue-in-cheek mean ? --200.208.45.2 02:46, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

http://www.answers.com/tongue-in-cheek --The number c 19:56, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Packed bitstreams

I'm removing the "compliant except for packed bitstreams" snippet because they're quite different issues.

"Packed bitstreams" refers to the reordering and pasting-together of consecutive frames within the AVI container to work around horrible limitations in the Video for Windows decoding API. ASP is the video compression algorithm and doesn't concern itself with in-file ordering or framing at all.

By the same token, I'm also removing the "compliant except for *.mp4 container" snippet because compliance with ASP (again, just the compression algorithm) doesn't imply compliance with the MPEG-4 container format.

Cheers.

—Ghakko 04:30, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Bias

There was a biased slant to the opening description, particuarly the line that compared 700MB DivX files to full-size DVDs. I have re-written the beginning to what I believe is more neutral. -- Broken Arms Gordon 16:42, 30 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What's in a name...

02:42, 16 November 2005 J. M. m (Put back the smiley deleted by 209.179.168.55 (DivX ;-) was not DivX, the wink smiley was a part of the name))

Can you show that it was a part of the name? -- Lardarse 07:17, 22 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Screenshot - see the DivX ;-) name there, MPEG-4 in Brief (quote: "smiley face is really part of the name"), Afterdawn.com Glossary - DivX ;-) (quote: "DivX (without smiley) supports old DivX ;-) movies and also adds new features and better compression quality than "original" DivX ;-)".
The first DivX version was DivX 4. DivX ;-) was a different software product (hacked Microsoft codec), initially made by "Gej", then came the OpenDivX open-source codec (again, the name was "OpenDivX" and not "DivX"), which, again, was a different product made by a different group of people and only then, finally, a company called DivXNetworks released their own product which they named "DivX". Only products by this company (now DivX, Inc.) are called "DivX" - it's their trademark. J. M. 11:55, 23 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

EKG

I came to this page looking for an explanation for what EKG is. When searching for the acronym one comes to a disambiguation page with these links 

   * Electrocardiogram
   * Electrokompressiongraph

The second link just brings one to the DivX page but unfortunately the DivX article gives no explanation as to what Electrokompressiongraph is. It doesn't even mention the acronym. If someone could include an explanation to what EKG is I think it would help a lot.

--Zigbigadoorlue 06:30, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Added a reference to the Electrokompressiongraph™ as well as the outmoded Dr.DivX where I thought was appropriate. Feel free to move it to where it needs to be. -JeebusSez 06:36, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Neutrality: What about Gator?

I put the neutrality flag up to draw attention to the fact that this article seems highly biased toward all the good features of the DivX codec.

For example, the line 

   The latest generation, DivX 6, [...] expands the scope of DivX beyond "just a codec" ...

is clear advertising, for DivX is still "just a codec".

I also notice there is no mention of the adware installed with DivX. I ask that a section or at least a mention of that be put in.

  1. Actually, the sentence seems to be true. DivX Media Format was introduced with DivX 6, which really expands the scope of DivX. Plus, even earlier DivX versions included the DivX Player, which was also used for their proprietary pay-per-view system, which, again, showed that there was something more to DivX than just the codec.

    The main problem is that it's not entirely clear what DivX really is (you certainly can't tell from the official explanations on their website, which is full of marketing lies and obfuscations). They currently offer several products - DivX Play, which includes the DivX codec and DivX Player, DivX Create, which includes DivX Converter, DivX Pro codec and DivX Player and DivX 6 for Mac. So what is DivX? Is it the whole bundle? Is it only the codec (is the official name of the codec "DivX" or "DivX codec")? They call the codec "DivX codec" or "DivX Pro codec", not DivX. So DivX looks more like a brand name - actually, it's their trademark. But DivX itself doesn't refer to a particular product. (That's why the first sentence in the article could be changed - DivX is not a codec, it is also not a format, it is generally a brand name of the products made by DivX, Inc. And then the DivX codec should be mentioned separately.)

  2. You say "for example". So could you please offer any other example, besides this very doubtful one, which proves that the article is highly biased? You said that the article was "highly biased toward all the good features of the DivX codec". But if there are good features in DivX and they're mentioned (just mentioned, without any judgement) in the article, I don't see what's wrong with it. It's true and that's what matters. We could only argue about things that are not true or things that are subjective opinions rather than facts. J. M. 01:28, 1 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

DivX.com has a documented history of bundling the Gator/GAIN spyware package with some of its software. The fact that this isn't documented in Wikipedia shows bias in favor of DivX.

References:
DivX apologizes for Gator and claims it won't infect anyone else:
A skeptical Slashdot reader:
216.23.105.20 07:21, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, adware was included in old versions of DivX Pro. So if you feel this should be mentioned in the article, you could add it to the History section, as it was a part of DivX' history. You should also specify the affected versions.J. M. 23:50, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Neutrality: What about it?

Why does the fact that Gator/GAIN software was included? It's no longer included in current releases so it makes no difference!

Kyle 04:59, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe that's the reason it should be mentioned in the article (in the History section). To make it clear that it's a part of their history and GAIN is no longer included in any DivX bundle. Some people may still think DivX includes GAIN software or other adware. J. M. 20:39, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What about their other controversial antics?

I seem to remember a very big stink raised over how DivX asserted total control over the use of it's codec, leading to many places having to take down and/or re-encode their movies with a different codec... This should really be included as a warning to anyone seriously or even casually thinking about using this codec, not to mention the bug it places on videos encoded with it. Off the record, don't use DivX... use XviD instead so we'll all be happy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.10.142.29 (talk • contribs)

I don't know what you're talking about. But I know that Wikipedia articles certainly need stronger evidence than some vague statements like "I seem to remember that some people perhaps didn't like it for some reason, even though I don't remember why exactly." And helpful suggestions ("use XviD instead of DivX") also don't belong in Wikipedia articles - Wikipedia can only present objective facts, not opinions. Readers are free to think whatever they want to think about it. As for the "bug" you mention - DivX doesn't place any watermark into video it encodes. The DivX decoder adds it to the picture during playback, to inform the user that the video is being decoded with DivX. Besides, users can turn it off in preferences. --J. M. 22:00, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's why I didn't put it in the article, I put it on the talk page. 68.10.142.29 15:30, 9 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
OK, but then I don't understand why you're saying "This should really be included as a warning". When it's not clear what you're talking about, the warning is not convincing on the talk page either. --J. M. 04:35, 10 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I put this here in the hopes that someone with a better memory would come along and verify this, I'm quite sure that it did happen, but I don't feel that this is requisite confidence to make an edit to the article. To elaborate, I believe the issue occured when sites offering pornographic videos were forced by the controllers of DivX to remove all videos on their sites which were encoded with the DivX codec because they didn't want their codec associated with such content. While this is entirely within their rights, I see such forced control as a reason to seek alternatives. 68.10.142.29 16:45, 10 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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