ITT: people confusing DIVX with DivX
Don’t act like they’re stupid for not knowing the difference because of the caps lol.
Sorry, I’ve only ever seen the “ITT” comments used to make fun of people.
I’m actually surprised no one got sued for trademark infringement. Two video-related products having such similar names.
What’s hilarious is that divx was the most popular pirate format back in the day before they went commercial use and xvid replaced it.
I think that was deliberate, and some pirate cheekily named the file format after a hated junk DVD format
IIRC, they were just normal DVDs, with a layer which would gradually become opaque after exposure to air, turning them into garbage.
That video is why I was so confident in saying FlexPlay was a different product lol. He’s one of 11 subscriptions I have on YouTube
I remember this. I absolutely hated the DIVX format, and was rooting for it to die.
lets make a reusable item single use, cuz landfills won’t top themselves
It was reusable. The idea was basically the current iTunes model (rent for two days or buy forever) except with abstracting the license from the data since internet speeds weren’t fast enough to stream video.
So you’d “buy” or “rent” the license to watch the disc. Once your rental was up, you could give the disc to a friend who could buy or rent it. The idea was to basically use sneakernet to handle the heavy lifting and the internet just for license/DRM purposes.
Considering people today are willing to pay $10 to “own” a movie that’s on some server they will never see, it really wasn’t a terrible idea. Especially since the licenses were stored on the hardware, so your movies would continue to play even if the server shut down. It’s just separating content from rights management is a really abstract concept and they didn’t do a good job explaining it.
See also: people getting upset about day1 DLC being included on the game disc, but have no issue buying a digital download.
And people forget that Netflix’s original model was also sneakernet. Before streaming was viable they would physically mail you a DVD, which when you were done with you had to drop off someplace or physically mail back. The difference with Netflix was that if you didn’t give the disk back they’d whack you for a (rather inflated, as I recall) purchase price for the movie. DIVX would just disable your ability to play it until you coughed up, obviating the need for a return trip for the disk.
If you had a subscription, you could have a Netflix disc indefinitely. You just couldn’t rent any new movies/shows until you returned it.
If you cancelled your subscription and kept the disc, then yeah they hit you with a “higher than cost” fee.
Even worse, there was a special “rental” DVD meant for sales in gas stations and convenience stores that didn’t require a special player like this one, but it literally would degrade and become unplayable after you opened it. And that’s how they controlled the rental period. So unlike this DRM scheme, it would literally be unusable garbage.
