First, the marketing, the usage, and other stuff: 1. Phone line connection. I don't know about most people, but I do not like to run cable all over my house just for a piece of equipment, plus the fact that that particular piece of equipment is calling SOMEWHERE that I don't know about. Yeah, the call will be in the middle of the night, but for some reason, that's usually when emergencies happen.
2. Viewing habit. Of course, DIVX people say they're not going to sell your info to other people, but let's consider the following: what about to DIVX's affiliates, DIVX's investment groups... And can you really trust them?. Have you ever receive junk mail stating that "We were referred by so..and..so...".
3. Monopoly. Whenever you're using something that is totally exclusive to someone or something, then there are no competition, and the result will be greatly exaggeratted prices, with lousy service... sound like a product running on a computer that I'm writing this post on. But even though I uses it, that doesn't mean I like it.
4. Support. The real meats and potato. Where's the DIVX stuff?. Studios are releasing stuff on Open-DVD faster than I can say "DIVX-sucks".
5. Cost. DIVX player cost more than DVD player. And only a few companies are making them, raising long term support issues.
6. Portability. Panasonic came out with a really nice portable DVD player, which can be use on the road. Some laptop now has DVD player, which can be use on the plane (now, now, you know the movie on the plane aren't that good). So how can DIVX disc be played?. If the answer is to use the phone on the plane (which costs a fortune) to activate the DIVX player (which does not exist yet), then you know where I am (rolling around on the floor with laughter). Of course the same applies if you want to take your DVD collection to your friend's house, who happens to have a TV that is 0.01 inches bigger than yours (for now..).
Now the technical stuff: 1. DIVX can't do widescreen. The whole idea of having a home theater is to reproduce the experience of being at a movie theater, so what is the point of not having widescreen. Yes, there are movies that are still released on 4:3 format, but more and more are widescreen now. 2. Picture quality. DVD (both Open-DVD and DIVX) video are based on MPEG-2 compression. This is an aggressive algorithm requiring a lot of hardware computation. Add on another layer of encryption, and the bandwidth (for the final display) goes way down. That's why DIVX movies sometime breakdown. 3. DIVX is not an international standard. DVD is. Of course there are regional codes, but at least DVD have them. The whole idea of technology evolving is to make everybody share a common usage platform, sharing the same data. This has been done with CD. Not we're stepping backward with DIVX. 4. DIVX is missing a bunch of features. The additional joy of owning DVD is to have a number of features that standard VHS simply cannot deliver. To upgrade to a digital standard without these features is simply not worthwhile. Sure, the studios can put these onto DIVX disc, but let's talk present time. I feel that the Y2K problem will hit us before DIVX can be anywhere near the quality of DVD.
Conclusion: DIVX is simply a marketing ploy, conjured up by people who want to know who you are, your viewing habits, charging you for every viewing, then sell your information to others for marketing purposes. It is lacking technically. It limits your freedom of ownership and your rights to privacy. It is a failure both as an idea as well as a product.
