Shrinking video down to size
Even with today's fast PC s, digital video remains the great untapped medium. The files are just too big--typically gigabytes--making them unwieldy to edit and move around digitally. That may be changing now, as a surge of products that can handle DivX--the software that's been popular among teens for swapping movies over the Internet--is hitting the market.
DivX is to video what MP3 is to music. It stuffs huge video files into a 10th of the space without losing much quality. That's why Keith Clark, an Oregon software engineer, uses video compression to store TV shows he's recorded on his PC to writable DVD s. Problem was, until recently those disks could play only on a PC. Now companies like Philips, JVC, Samsung, and KiSS Technology are shipping DVD players that can play DivX files. There's also a new device from Plextor, which makes PC peripherals, that can quickly turn old videos or new camcorder footage into DivX files.
The first to flock to the new DVD players are the bootleggers who swap movies and TV shows across the Internet. Ben is a 31-year-old Chicagoan who downloads old episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 -a cable show that mocked bad movies before going off the air. Jai, a Chinese grad student on the East Coast, downloads new movies from his homeland. "They're usually pretty old by the time they make it here on DVD," he says. Both--who asked us not to use their last names--want a way to play DivX files on the living room TV. Folks at DivXNetworks, which developed the software, say they don't encourage piracy and support legal download systems like those emerging for music. Already, DivX offers thousands of movies for legal downloading, some free, through divx.com.
Even with the new devices, DivX playback can be tricky. Two we tried, the Philips DVP642 ( $70 ) and the KiSS DP-1500 ( $330 ), played most but not every DivX file we threw at them. The Plextor ConvertX PX-M402U ( $135 ) worked well at converting camcorder video and was quicker than translating the same footage on a PC but created a file or two that wouldn't play properly on other devices.
The Plextor foreshadows DivX chips in camcorders themselves, which would produce smaller files and encourage home-video editing and sharing across the Internet. "We've got to get away from the idea that DivX is only used for pirated stuff," says Clark. "It's about excellent quality video in a fraction of the space--for your own movies, too."
This story appears in the June 21, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
advertisement
