First of all Divx Networks confirmed they would release Divx 6 early march. An improved image quality will surely be introduced, but the most interesting features for us, standalone players users, seem to be the official support of subtitles which will be integrated in the video container (which we do not know yet if it will still be .avi). Navigation features such as menus or maybe chaptering should also appear. Divx6 tends to become equal to DVD as far as quality but also functionnalities are concerned. Difficult to confirm, but should Divx Networks respect their commitments regarding compatibility, it is most likely that a simple firmware update will make our players Divx6 compatible... at least in its standard version.

[Updt] According to some tests of our boards members Divx6 seem to be supported by some existing players already, and thiswithout any update !. Whatever the chipset is (Mediatek, Sigma-design, ESS or Zoran) the feedback of compatibility with the video supplied by Divx Networks Labs is optimistic...

  Ahead Nero has also officially introduced Nero Digital which is directly inspired from H264 codec. It remains 100% conform to ISO MPEG-4 Part10 standard. Conform means « probably compatible » with hardware supporting MPEG4 standards. It is dificult for now to confirm what makes the exact difference between Nero Digital and H264 as far as quality or structure of the files are concerned. Which is sure already is that Nero will add in its .mp4 video container the possibility of integrating subtitles, menus and chapters... Exactly as Divx6 does. The use of the .mp4 container may confuse users a little bit more against the "official" .mp4 container. It is not difficult to predict that Divx6 and Nero Digital will compete directly very soon.

High-resolution video is also planned, however current chipsets are not able to decode such videos. The only Nero Digital compatible standalone player to date is the Siemssen SCO 5000 ND, and it is "only" compatible with ND standard resolution (same as DVD i.e. 720 x 576). The newest recorder DP-558 of Kiss will soon be compatible as well. And that make us realize that a new chipset is not absolutely necessary for Nero digital compatibility. One may think that the current standalone players should be in a position to read ND videos through a simple firmware upgrade...if updates follow, anf if the licence is paid.

Both evolutions of ND and Divx6 clearly remind us of the possibilities offered by other video containers like .ogm or matroska. But with the obvious advantage for the new comers that they belong to companies who make business out of this and who will undertake the necessary steps to push their product...at least to make it recognized.

Even if they are not new, some words about H264 and Wmv9 are useful at this stage.

  H264 comply with the very official mpeg4 standard, it’s part of it in fact. Its container is .mp4 too and it is included in several encoding software already. What’s new today is that this codec is under the footlights, as it is about to be adopted for digital TV projects and also in mobile phones or portable game stations. In a few words, and to make things understandable (our excuse to purists !) H264 represents more or less the official MPEG4 codec. The developpment of the a.m. applications may make H264 unavoidable in our standalone players too. More information about this codec (in French) in this complete review on Planete-Numerique ). One FAQ in English on Apple’s website.

  Wmv9 from Microsoft. We have been talking about this codec on our boards for a long time, but curiously it still can’t be read by a standalone player. But the chipset to do it already exists : it’s the Sigma-Design EM8620L. Everyone knows that it will be integrated in the next Kiss DP-600 players, amongst others. But nothing happenned yet, everybody’s waiting. Without going into much details, one should know that this codec is also based on mpeg4 standard, however it’s proprietary and not compatible. One of its advantage for now is that it is mentionned in DVD Blue-ray and HD-DVD specifications.

It’s easy to understand that all these codecs and formats are all very interesting and in most cases superior to divx as we know it today. More or less they all propose the same thing and all bring, amongst others, high-definition video. This aspect was not mentionned yet, but there are also news on the audio side : AAC encoding and multichannel audio for some of them. Probably the best way to rate all codecs is to have a look at the different trailers which are supplied on the internet. We may think that the difference may come from the encoding times, which are clearly varying from one codec to the other.

All this lead to the conclusion that the endusers’ task will be more complicated on the short term, while they were just starting to get used to current codecs and containers : it has now been some years that divx was based on xvid and the 3 evolutions od divx 3/4/5 which even after some modification were still compatible with standalone players. The relative stability enabled the launch of several decoding chipsets based on these unofficial standards, together with plenty of compatible standalone players.

If all the announcements have absolutely only advantages, they also have drawbacks too : all are submitted to licences and it is quite sure that manufacturers will not invest in all of them, making a universal player very unlikely. Adding the multiplication of video containers to this trend, the immediate future of standalone players is not compromised...but totally unclear. As for other fields (HD-DVD against blue-ray, DVD-audio against Super Audio CD etc...) multiplication of standards tends to limit the sales and what is naturally considered as a real technological evolution curiously hurt the development of these technologies. The enduser does not know what to buy and therefore refrain from investing.

Sometimes first comers take the advantage. In our case it is Nero with its Nero Digital format and the associated compatible player : Siemssen SCO 5000 ND.

However the other codecs are supported by large companies like Microsoft for Wmv9 or Divx Networks with its divx format which has became a standard in facts, as it was the first to adopt a standardization and classification programe on which electronics manufacturers now rely. Except if some of thes major players cooperate or take over the other, it is quite unlikely that a multicompatible chipset will arise, and this will bring a new war in MPEG4 standards. Let’s hope that it will be as short as possible.

Back to our project, we are proud to confirm that all these codecs will be included in our v2. This means you will be able to burn BBdoc’s CD without worrying that it gets obsolete too quickly :)