ray_gillespie

The latest beta update to the DivX Web Player has just been released and brings with it a host of new features, including one that could help DivX carve up a slice of the web video market.

The new feature, known as DivX HiQ™, allows you to switch the videos you watch on popular video websites like YouTube, Vimeo and Daily Motion, to a high quality DivX format. According to DivX, the videos will feature "fewer interruptions, smoother playback and more vivid colors".

Flash have a solid hold on the web video market but after some serious criticism from Apple recently, as well as the emergence of HTML 5, Adobe might find Flash playing catchup for the first time in a while.

The main new features of the beta release of DivX Plus Web Player are as follows:

• DivX HiQ™ – use DivX Plus Web Player on YouTube and more
• New Format Support – MP4 & MOV
• HTML5 <video> tag support
• DXVA Hardware acceleration

For downloads, further information (and a URL that needs re-writing!) visit the DivX website here.

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Xie

I think I'd rather run flash. Also what does "vivid colors" mean? Are they changing the video that much when they convert it? Sounds like a great way to make already borderline video even worse (yet another transcode) ...

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ray_gillespie

I'm not sure - I'm always sceptical about 'vivid' colours on screens, it usually means they're pumping extra colour in to make it look better but actually it just looks weird.

I remember when I bought my LCD TV it came with all this special colour/dynamic contrast stuff - I found I got the best picture quality when all that was turned off!

I don't think Flash have too much to worry about - the very nature of installing and enabling this software will mean that the vast majority of people don't even know it exists! That might change in the future of course...

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American Zombie

Soon everything will lean toward HTML 5 instead of flash.

JeetDivX

ray_gillespie thanks for starting this discussion

It's not transcoding, but decoding and rendering colors better through a high performance DXVA enabled web player instead of using the Flash Player engine. Flash is a great technology, but DivX lives and breathes high performance video playback. DivX HiQ is more about choice and gives you more than 1 option now to playback video. The new web player also supports the HTML5 API so video publishers can control and embed it with the <video> tag.

Feel free to give it a test drive and post your results on this thread Share Your Performance Screen Shots / Results | DivXLabs - Everywhere Communication Occurs Community Happens

Here are my results:

My PC: Dell Dimension 9100 (2006)
Intel Pentium D 820 (2.8GHz) Dual Core Processor
512MB PC2-4200 DDR Memory
160GB 7,200rpm SATA Hard Drive
ATI Radeon X300SE Graphics with 128MB Memory




Thanks,
Jeet - DivX

Johnny

Yeah, once html 5 and silverlight catch on more, flash will be a thing of the past ..

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Xie

Once HTML 5 catches on Silverlight will be a thing of the past.

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ray_gillespie

LOL Silverlight is already a thing of the past .

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Johnny

LOL .. Good points lol ..

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dreamliner77

Apparently doesn't work with Firefox 4 Beta?

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