"Charles M. Hannum" wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 12, 2001 at 04:30:12PM -0700, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> > On Thu, 12 Apr 2001, Tomasz Luchowski wrote:
> > > I'm happy to announce first DivX movie player that actually works on NetBSD!
> >
> > What is DivX? Or what can I use this DivX movie player for? (Where do I
> > get DivX movies?)
>
> DivX is essentally a warez format for DVDs.  It uses MPEG-4 to compress
> a DVD movie down to approximately CD size.  There are many such movies
> available through gnutella, among other places.

That's kindof a one-sided answer to the question. DivX is a DVD format that was
created & marketed exclusively by Circuit City as a rental replacement. You would
purchase the DivX disk for a small fee, which would allow you to play it for 3 to 5
days. If you wanted, you could then throw it away, or you could keep it, call a
number, and pay more for the right to watch it in the future, or pay a large fee to
permanently unlock it.

Of course, when Circuit City ditched the format as unsellable, all those people who
had bought DivX players and disks were up the creek with disks that wouldn't play
anymore. I for one applaud whoever came up with this DivX player, even though I
wasn't stupid enough to fall for the DivX scam.

> It's copyright infringement *and* patent infringement, rolled into one.

It's justice for those that got ripped off, and a warning to those greediest of
movie studios who thought they could make a few extra cents going with DivX rather
than standard DVD.
--
 - J. Buck Caldwell

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