Hollywood has been very slow in cottoning on to the fact that how people consume media is changing rapidly. Thus making the same mistake the music industry has made for the past decade. But in the same way as record labels are starting to come round to the change, so are the movie studios.

Film Fresh

The DivX format has been with us for many years but has all but ignored and rejected by Hollywood. Until now. This week has seen four major Hollywood movie studios sign up to offer their movies in the format through the little-known (until now) movie retailer, Film Fresh.

Sony Pictures, Warner Bros., Paramount, and Lionsgate have all agreed to have both old and new titles sold through Film Fresh.

This signals a complete change of pace for Film Fresh, which has up to now mainly focused on independent titles. Probably not through choice though, more forced due to the majors being resistant selling their product via this method.

Continue Reading…

Internet television is growing at a phenomenal rate, with services such as Joost, Hulu and Stage6 all providing more reasons than ever to turn to your PC or laptop rather than that square box sitting in your living room.

One of the biggest problems with watching television programmes, or movies online however, is the size of the screen you are being forced to watch it on. Unless you are rich, or an early adopter of future technologies, the chances are your PC or laptop screen just isn’t up to the job any more.

You do have an option though, and that is to hook your PC or laptop up to a projector, and have all your favourite video clips, and web episodes, in glorious full screen, home theater sized goodness. But, where’s the best place to begin?

Buying A Projector

First you’ll need a PC or laptop, and a home theater projector. There are plenty of places to find them, but I’d recommend reading through lots of projector reviews before you blindly purchase one which then doesn’t suit your needs.

Prices of projectors can vary wildly, but you’ll be looking to spend between $1,000 and $3,000 for reasonable quality and a good brand.

Be aware that there is a difference between a projector being HD Ready and actually outputting HD. HD Ready simply means it can accept a HD signal, but may output in standard definition so won’t look as crisp as you might expect.

If you want to make sure your new purchase is 100% HD then look at the output. An 800×600 output is not High Definition, whereas 1280×720 (720p) or 1920×1080 (1080i or 1080p) is.

After last month’s announcement that DixX support was coming to the Sony PS3 games console, there was speculation that the same would be happening on the Microsoft Xbox 360 soon.

It now seems that in the latest dashboard update, there was the inclusion of limited DivX support, although it’s not 100% functional, and Microsoft tried to call the files anything but DivX.

The Xbox Team’s official blog announced:

“[The Xbox 360] now supports files encoded using MPEG-4 Part 2, Simple and Advanced Simple Profile, [which are] often referred to as Xvid or DivX video files”

This is sure to be great news for the millions of Xbox 360 owners, as it increases the library of media content they can now have access to through their trusty consoles.

Earlier this week, DivX announced they would soon be offering support for the Sony Playstation 3 games console.

The codec technology will be added to all existing PS3 consoles by way of a forthcoming software update, although no date has yet been given for when to expect it.

Up until now, the PS3 has been woeful at supporting multiple video formats, with Sony making the ridiculous decision to ship with just MP4 support, a niche format at best.

Press Statement

Kevin Hell, CEO of DivX, Inc. announced in a statement:

“We are excited to work with Sony Computer Entertainment to bring DivX to PS3. Our technology will expand the multimedia functionality of PS3 by enabling users to enjoy access to the broad library of content in the DivX digital media format.”

The PS3 Media Hub

“Expand the multimedia functionality of PS3″ is exactly right. This, more than anything to date is helping take the Playstation 3 out of the realm of being a mere games console, and more in to media hub sitting in people’s living rooms.

Tom Huntington, a spokesperson for DivX has announced that DivX, a growing video compression software company, has signed a two year deal with Yahoo! that replaces a previous agreement that DixX had with Google.

As the terms of the contract state, DivX software will now be offered with a co-branded Yahoo Toolbar and a version of IE7 pre-configured with Yahoo tools. Yahoo!, in exchange, will now provide links to DivX and its online video service, Stage6, within the Yahoo toolbar.

Could Yahoo! possibly be a better partner for DivX than Google?

Divx Connected is a platform and software standard that will enable users to stream content throughout a network. Think of it as enabling AppleTV for the Divx world.

The company plans to license an SDK to OEMs and chip manufacturers, and encourage them to build the technology into different products from different OEMs. The strategy is that Divx Connected could be integrated with cable boxes, DVD players, and set-top boxes.

The feature of a Divx Connected box would be similar to most streaming devices. Users could view pictures and video or listen to music from any computer on their network while also streaming video from online video sites like Stage6.

TvSquad recently was shown the interface of Divx Connected devices. Divx is currently in the process of securing third-party hardware partners and showing off the interface is a good way to promote the standard.

In case you blindly missed Stage6 Day here on Web TV Wire and also on Web TV Hub, you may not know that DivX is boasting the compatibility of its DivX videos in over 70 million consumer electronic devices.

Those 70 million devices span from the many partner companies that DivX has teamed up with over the past few years. Davis Freeberg decided to delve a little deeper into these partnerships to see who has come one board with DivX and who has been jumping ship.