DIVX is Dead Day 5th Anniversary

A day long remembered...

- Steve

These kids these days with their 2-disc DVD special editions and box sets of DVD TV shows. They don't remember sweating bullets watching player sales slowly slog through the six-figure bracket and reading Circuit City press releases with fear and loathing. They've never heard of Dick Sharp. To them, Divx is a harmless codec.

Which means -- job well done, everyone. Happy fifth. (And drink a toast to the fondly remembered DVD Resource while you're at it.)

Ryan

Hic. :b

- Steve

I miss your site Steve, it was awesome. Why did you shut it down?

Wow! I totally lost track of time.

anyone remenmber that funny web site that spoke of how great divx was.
i think it was a joke but no one owned up to it.

Being a dead format collector, that was my cue to go to Circus City and pick up 15 DIVX discs for my collection. I got:

Tomorrow Never Dies (16x9 widescreen)
Amistad (16x9 with making-of feature that says "May be viewed at any time without charge")
Deep Impact- widescreen
Armageddon- widescreen
Who Framed Roger Rabbit- widescreen
Star Trek: First Contact
48 Hrs. (an appropriate title I thought)
The X-Files
There's Something About Mary (the biggest-selling DIVX title I'm told)
Enemy Of The State
Patch Adams (one of the final releases, street date was after the announcement so it debuted at clearance price)
Home Alone 3 (one of the first releases)
Alien Resurrection
Alice In Wonderland (remember the outcry that Di$ney allowed this to be released on DIVX but not DVD?)
Dumbo

They're on my shelf dividing the watched DVDs from the unwatched ones. All of these show a message when played on a non-"enhanced" DVD player: "You have attempted to play a Divx disc on a DVD player without the Divx feature. The Divx Feature is required to play this disc. For more information on Divx please call 1-800-456-Divx."
I've also got the Instore Demonstration Disc, but it too only gives you that message on a regular player. I'm hoping to find a Divx player cheap somewhere so I can try to play it. I have the free VHS tape that was sent out also. I know there were employee training tapes, I'd love to get copies of those too. I have a copy of a printed script for DIVX sales presentations which is incredible; it includes notes on what to do if "hecklers" show up and try to ruin the sale.
I didn't mess with the salespeople too much, but it was fun to go there and listen in on them trying to sell it to other customers. I remember one old guy going in trying to get a DVD player and ended up just totally confused after getting the DIVX lecture, and priceless statements such as "DIVX is an enhanced DVD in every way" and claims that all the big titles would only be released on DIVX.
Things got really interesting near the end, as Paramount suddenly stopped putting out titles (they had originally put out DIVX discs but no regular DVDs) and sales figures were never made public and while there were rumors of big retailers like Wal-Mart and Blockbuster carrying DIVX nothing ever happened. It was quite comforting to see that laserdisc actually outlasted DIVX by a few months!

I still haven't read a Ken Pohlman(sp) column since.

It's been 5 years already? wow.

And we still haven't discovered who "trillium 9" is.....

Good memories.

Some people today don't appreciate what some of us went through back in those days....

- lack of titles
- lack of studio support for dvd
- DIVX
- higher prices
- less special features (when dvd artwork is listed as a special feature you know something is not right)
- DIVX

Things were stressful for the early adopters. The day divx died was a very happy one for me.

BTW, I got my first player, a Toshiba 2006, in June 1997 and here in Canada, there was a real lack of new good titles for months and months. When I consider some of the titles I almost bought, or did buy, it scares me.

How comfortable things are today in comparison.

The reason I never trust a thing any Circuit City salesman says:

"If you're going to buy a DVD player, make sure you buy one with DIVX!"

A Circuit City rep could tell me the sky is blue and I'd have to go outside and double check for myself.

Quick question, with those older divx titles, if you have the discs and an old player, can you still use them w/o paying? Or are they locked out forever?

Mike

No. You can't play the discs without a "registered" player, and without the central billing system, there are no registered players.

If I remember correctly Steve was sick of the shit he'd get in from peope that were fans of the DIVX "thing" among other things.

B

I see the Divx Lover's site has finally been pulled:

http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Screen/6139/

I was able to access it only a few weeks ago.

Misty water-colored memories of the way we were...


A death in the immediate family and personal medical problems made me re-evaluate my priorities in life.


I'd love to see how they proposed to handle hecklers.

I have a DIVX salesman pack from the early days which included a shirt, a training tape, and some literature. I still have it somewhere, except I think my cat peed on it. Smart cat.


Interesting tidbit on that...several people thought I over-reacted when I posted that "Disney is the wh@re of the home video industry" for releasing an animated feature exclusively to DIVX. That earned me a call from their (then) head of home video marketing, who wanted to point out that this was considered a 'B' title, and that DIVX was only getting this 'B' title for now.

This before any 'A' animated titles had even been announced for DVD. Grrr...

Thank goodness my blood pressure is under control now.

And thank goodness Disney ultimately embraced the DVD format, and has also released some incredible titles from their vault since the dark days of the Evil Electronics Store Empire.

You know, I heard somewhere that some DIVX titles sold less than twenty copies. Total. Nationwide. Studios like Paramount dropped support due to lackluster sales. Then "The Matrix" came out and showed that a movie could achieve gargantuan numbers at a reasonable price, drive hardware sales through the roof, and make DVD the hottest thing since...well, since the format had been unveiled two years earlier.

Today, you can buy some new-release DVD's for $10-$15 and decent catalog titles for $5-$10. Now granted, hindsight is always 20-20, but who'd have thought that you would be able to pick up movies in the $5.88 bin at Walmart with unrestricted viewing, when DIVX was trying to sell us on $4.50 for a 48-hour viewing period?

Doesn't it feel good to be vindicated? Everyone who fought this battle deserves a salute!

- Steve

HAPPY DEAD DAY, DIVX!!!
Long may you BE dead.
The 'product' that almost took down an entire chain.
And, Dick finally lost his job over DIVX, didn't he?

Yes, it's true that one Divx title (Madigan) sold less than 20 copies (nine, to be exact), and Alice sold only 50. In contrast, a number of hot new releases of the day had had five-figure sales on Divx by early June 1999, including The Waterboy (32,125), There's Something About Mary (45,933), and Six Days, Seven Nights (35,673).

If those figures vindicate anything, it's DVD File's primer on home video software pricing (which asserted that some popular titles were unsuitable for the rental market). Seriously, the reason these titles (and a lot of others) were released to the format was because Divx was trying to build up a catalog, even one where most of the titles had modest rental appeal.

My highly-placed inside sources insisted that the reticence of Paramount and Dreamworks was mainly due to a combination of copy protection worries and wait-and-see. Because Divx paid up-front for the rights to license any titles, anything released to them should have been win-win for the studios, but Paramount and Dreamworks did not see it that way.

For those who remember, it would be some time before those two studios fully supported the DVD format, and bitter debates raged among enthusiasts as to why so many Spielberg A-titles were witheld from the premier home video format.

RD

Ahhhhhhh, the good ol' days. When DVD was an interesting, new format.

Neil

I started working in the Circuit City warehouse near the dying days of DiVX. Apparently we had lax managers--because the kids out on the salesfloor weren't even pushing it. We all knew it was bullshit. The DVD section was EXPLODING, and the DIVX was sitting in a couple standees. Near the end, the DIVX section was one of our warehouse push carts with a sign taped to the front.

And then, when they didn't sell for 99 cents a pop, I got to throw them in the trash compactor. that was pretty funny. I remember the big memo that went around the company talking about the refunds and the rebates customers would be eligible to get after buying this failed format, and marking down all the DIVX players to rock bottom (they still played regular DVD's, so it was a decent deal)

DIVX pretty much crippled that company. I saw it from the inside--all kinds of new policies and rules started coming down after that, and I watched plenty of people end up getting shoved out (me included) because of the money they lost over DIVX and their piece of the pie getting eaten up by Best Buy. Circuit City's never been the same. It was their one huge gamble--and they lost so big. Now they're pretty much a supersize Radio Shack.

Thought I'd drop in and post the remaining "DIVX only" releases from back in the day. I've been tracking this list for 5 years now and I've watched it slowly dwindle (from well over 100).

We're down to 21 now:

Buena Vista (5):
Jack (coming soon)
Ed Wood (coming soon)
Marcenary 2: Thick And Thin
Rocketman
Shall We Dance?

20th Century Fox (3):
Bad Girls
Oscar & Lucinda
Two For The Road

MGM (3):
12 Angry Men (remake)
Mulholland Falls
Son Of The Pink Panther

MGM/Orion (4):
Evidence Of Blood
I Love You Don't Touch Me!
Paperback Romance
This World, Then The Fireworks

Universal (6):
High Art
Kiss Or Kill
Pure Luck
Safe Men
Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, A
TwentyFourSeven

High Art is slated for a summer release, while Soldier's Daughter has been released to R1 DVD in the past, but is now out of print (Amazon has 34 used copies, if you want one).

RD

Did DIVX ever do that, pay a one time fee disc?
If they did, do those sucker's still play?

Has it been that long already? Wow.

Gadzooks. I'm having flashbacks to the E-Town forums.

Say it with me now...

FOX IS IN!!!!!

Good days, good days. How far we've come.

Ryan

There was a sell-through variant of Divx called DivxGold, but no DivxGold discs were ever marketed to the public. One title (Mulan) was prepared for a DivxGold release, and in fact was ready for mass replication, but Divx management (not Disney) ruled against releasing it for fear of starting a format war.

RD