What is DivX

A new legal version of DivX ;-) video encoding technology, released by company called DivXNetworks.

Originally the development of DivX codec went something like this:

First there was Microsoft's MPEG-4 codec. Hackers made a more flexible version of it and started calling it DivX ;-) (note the smiley -- name was a pun towards failed DIVX pay-per-view format).

Then more people got into DivX ;-) and there became a reason to build a compatible codec that wouldn't rely on stolen Microsoft code. They formed an open source development team, called at first as OpenDivX and later on as Project Mayo.

Out of this development, a commercial company, called DivXNetworks was launched. First commercial -- although freely available -- codec that was developed by DivXNetworks was DivX v4.

Some developers that were involved with the OpenDivX/Project Mayo phase, didn't drop their open source idea and developed the codec further and now that sidekick is competing against DivXNetworks' "legal DivX" and is called XviD.

DivX, like many other MPEG-4 formats, can be played with certain MPEG-4 compatible, stand-alone DVD/DivX players.