[MPlayer-users] Question on DivX versions...

[David Norris]

On 5/10/05, Rainer Hantsch <office at hantsch.co.at> wrote:
> What's about XVID ? Many movies are available in this format. To which
> version of DivX is XVID compatible or can be compared with? Or is it totally
> different?

It's a completely different codec, and they're not interchangeable.
XviD was written to be a fully-open-source codec, avoiding any
patented algorithms and binary-only distributions like what DivX has.
It's at least as good as -- some would say better than -- DivX, but I
can't prove that -- but DivX has less hardware compatibility (lots of
set-top DVD players will play DivX, but few will play XviD yet). If
this is not a concern for you then XviD is, IMHO, *definitely* the way
to go. The implementations are very fast, very stable and produce good
video.

--
David Norris
danorris at gmail.com