New DivX video portal rocks, but will you download it?

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I love the new DivX Stage 6 video portal (er, YouTube competitor). The video quality ABSOLUTELY ROCKS compared to other video portals I’ve seen.

One problem? You need to download the plug-in and install it. It worked well on my browsers, but some people might have trouble and it takes a few minutes to wait for your first video.

So, will you rather go to YouTube, which runs on Flash which you probably already have installed, or will you go to Stage6, which has bigger and higher quality videos, but requires a few minutes of setup?

I’m going to DivX, but quality is important for me.

Here’s a session on video blogging from the Sundance Film Festival that I’m watching right now. Widescreen. Sharp. Nice audio.

The other thing to look at is how much processor time these things take. My processor on my Lenovo X41 Tablet PC is running at about 65% while playing that video.

Thanks to Katie Fehrenbacher on Om Malik’s new supersite for linking me to this.

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Published by Robert Scoble

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48 thoughts on “New DivX video portal rocks, but will you download it?”

  1. wow, i didn’t think it was going to be that great but it looks awesome, sure the files are larger but i love the quality on some of the videos. This is what video should look like on the net.

    Like

  2. wow, i didn’t think it was going to be that great but it looks awesome, sure the files are larger but i love the quality on some of the videos. This is what video should look like on the net.

    Like

  7. I loveeeeeeee the DIVX people…a great compressional look, not any suprise to Video types tho, DIVX has awlays kicked it, funny how the hacks are always better than the real, XVID and DIVX being best, tho H.264 holding own. I know such be mainly considered pirate formats, but at least with me, has legit uses.

    I hope this takes off…YouTube has had a heck of a good start…and codec plugins is always seemingly a killer for the masses.

    And PS – I agree with l.m. orchard, XBMC works great here. XBMC ROCKS! My fav Media Centerish Player…easy to demo my photo-montage and Weddingish .avi’s, without having to spend hours encoding to DVD. Makes it darned annoying after getting the perfect edit and finding out they don’t want so many shots of the family black-sheep Uncle…etc.

    Like

  8. I loveeeeeeee the DIVX people…a great compressional look, not any suprise to Video types tho, DIVX has awlays kicked it, funny how the hacks are always better than the real, XVID and DIVX being best, tho H.264 holding own. I know such be mainly considered pirate formats, but at least with me, has legit uses.

    I hope this takes off…YouTube has had a heck of a good start…and codec plugins is always seemingly a killer for the masses.

    And PS – I agree with l.m. orchard, XBMC works great here. XBMC ROCKS! My fav Media Centerish Player…easy to demo my photo-montage and Weddingish .avi’s, without having to spend hours encoding to DVD. Makes it darned annoying after getting the perfect edit and finding out they don’t want so many shots of the family black-sheep Uncle…etc.

    Like

  9. Plugins that you have to download and install are a very difficult barrier to over-come for something like this. It’s taken years and years for the Flash plugin to become ubiquitous.

    The reason why YouTube is so successful is not because of the quality of the video but because of the number of videos uploaded and how easy it is to view them, embed them in your blog, etc.

    As soon as it becomes just a little bit more difficult, you won’t get the critical amount of content that can contain the tiny percentage of gems that have lead to the popularity of YouTube.

    It’s the amatuer, not-particularly-tech-savy end users that have made YouTube the success it is, with very little to do with the quality of the video playback. If it’s slightly fuzzy, it still makes us laugh.

    Chris

    Like

  10. Plugins that you have to download and install are a very difficult barrier to over-come for something like this. It’s taken years and years for the Flash plugin to become ubiquitous.

    The reason why YouTube is so successful is not because of the quality of the video but because of the number of videos uploaded and how easy it is to view them, embed them in your blog, etc.

    As soon as it becomes just a little bit more difficult, you won’t get the critical amount of content that can contain the tiny percentage of gems that have lead to the popularity of YouTube.

    It’s the amatuer, not-particularly-tech-savy end users that have made YouTube the success it is, with very little to do with the quality of the video playback. If it’s slightly fuzzy, it still makes us laugh.

    Chris

    Like

  11. with very little to do with the quality of the video playback.

    Exactly…divx is going to have to make it invisible and start a community…and YouTube is more about the community hive and the amount of material, most are passable enough quality…no one cares about HD there…

    People have been trying for years to crack this market, and no one until YouTube has ever passed my ‘tech-phobic sister test’, if she can get a vid on it, anyone can.

    Like

  12. with very little to do with the quality of the video playback.

    Exactly…divx is going to have to make it invisible and start a community…and YouTube is more about the community hive and the amount of material, most are passable enough quality…no one cares about HD there…

    People have been trying for years to crack this market, and no one until YouTube has ever passed my ‘tech-phobic sister test’, if she can get a vid on it, anyone can.

    Like

  15. Not only do you have to install a plugin, but FireFox doesn’t know what plugin to install either, you cant automatically download it from within Firefox, so theres anywhere from 10-40% of their potential audience lost.

    Like

  16. Not only do you have to install a plugin, but FireFox doesn’t know what plugin to install either, you cant automatically download it from within Firefox, so theres anywhere from 10-40% of their potential audience lost.

    Like

  17. Actually it gets worse…they claim it’s optimized for FF and yet there seems to be no plugin for it…according to them the only way to view the videos is to install the DivX web player.

    Like

  18. Actually it gets worse…they claim it’s optimized for FF and yet there seems to be no plugin for it…according to them the only way to view the videos is to install the DivX web player.

    Like

  19. The divx people lost it for me when they started ‘bundling’ their software (when you JUST want the g-damned codec, thankyouverymuch).

    Even worse, on their download page there are several options including a ‘download codec’ item. Brill, but it TAKES YOU TO THE SAME BUNDLED PACKAGE.

    So, like realplayer has been replaced by realalternative, quicktime by quicktimealternative, divx is replaced by ffdshow/ffmpeg.

    http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alternative.htm
    http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternative.htm
    http://www.free-codecs.com/download/FFDShow.htm

    Like

  20. The divx people lost it for me when they started ‘bundling’ their software (when you JUST want the g-damned codec, thankyouverymuch).

    Even worse, on their download page there are several options including a ‘download codec’ item. Brill, but it TAKES YOU TO THE SAME BUNDLED PACKAGE.

    So, like realplayer has been replaced by realalternative, quicktime by quicktimealternative, divx is replaced by ffdshow/ffmpeg.

    http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alternative.htm
    http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternative.htm
    http://www.free-codecs.com/download/FFDShow.htm

    Like

  21. Pingback: thund3rbox » Blog Archive » My emusic grabs and a new site launch

  22. Looks like the front page coverage on Digg is puttin a hurtin on Stage6 servers.

    However, when I was able to get on the site, the video quality was amazing and just a notch (or several notches) above any other video sites out there. Can’t wait to try making money off my own videos!

    Like

  23. Looks like the front page coverage on Digg is puttin a hurtin on Stage6 servers.

    However, when I was able to get on the site, the video quality was amazing and just a notch (or several notches) above any other video sites out there. Can’t wait to try making money off my own videos!

    Like

  24. The quality is brilliant. I was watching Speed Dating 101 inline my browser and noticed the ‘full screen’ icon. I clicked it and it immediately switched, no rebuffering or delay in changing video modes to full screen. I kicked back about 10 feet from the screen and it looked better than standard TV to me.

    Like

  25. The quality is brilliant. I was watching Speed Dating 101 inline my browser and noticed the ‘full screen’ icon. I clicked it and it immediately switched, no rebuffering or delay in changing video modes to full screen. I kicked back about 10 feet from the screen and it looked better than standard TV to me.

    Like

  26. Pingback: nonsmokingarea.com » Blog Archive » Stage6: DivX video portal

  29. Downloads easy enough under Mac Safari. Plays fine in VLC, but is black in Mplayer OSX, which was initially, the default app.

    Like

  30. Downloads easy enough under Mac Safari. Plays fine in VLC, but is black in Mplayer OSX, which was initially, the default app.

    Like

  31. Aha! My predictions earlier were correct! (In your blog entry about the number of “Beta” Web 2.0 services)
    I notice the DivX service proudly sports the banner of “ALPHA”. That’s a huge 1-up on all those BETA services. ahem 🙂
    I’m sure we can look forward to seeing more public web services dub themselves ALPHAs in the near future. Perhaps even those that are currently BETAs 😀

    Sheesh

    Like

  32. Aha! My predictions earlier were correct! (In your blog entry about the number of “Beta” Web 2.0 services)
    I notice the DivX service proudly sports the banner of “ALPHA”. That’s a huge 1-up on all those BETA services. ahem 🙂
    I’m sure we can look forward to seeing more public web services dub themselves ALPHAs in the near future. Perhaps even those that are currently BETAs 😀

    Sheesh

    Like

  33. The video quality is amazing and the same goes for the sound. It was a treat to watch the high quality video in full screen 🙂

    Like

  34. The video quality is amazing and the same goes for the sound. It was a treat to watch the high quality video in full screen 🙂

    Like

  37. Hm – as he other commenters said, it is not about quality, and it is not about saving bandwith costs.
    I compare it to mobile phone videos you can easily send around. By the way, that would be a cool feature for YouTube – sending videos via MMS. 😀

    Have a look at the Clerks 2 production blog. They offer high quality QuickTime Videos from their servers, and a YouTube link.

    This makes a lot of sense for me, and I´m thinking about taking this road, too.

    If DivX network figures out a way to automatically install the plugin in the most popular browsers and under pretty restrictive security policy, then we will have a YouTube rival.

    Like

  38. Hm – as he other commenters said, it is not about quality, and it is not about saving bandwith costs.
    I compare it to mobile phone videos you can easily send around. By the way, that would be a cool feature for YouTube – sending videos via MMS. 😀

    Have a look at the Clerks 2 production blog. They offer high quality QuickTime Videos from their servers, and a YouTube link.

    This makes a lot of sense for me, and I´m thinking about taking this road, too.

    If DivX network figures out a way to automatically install the plugin in the most popular browsers and under pretty restrictive security policy, then we will have a YouTube rival.

    Like

  41. Your point about quality of DivX content compared to other user-gen sites is correct however, remember the adage: garbage in garbage out – much of what is on these sites is not well produced to begin with. Plug-in resistance is a large issue to address. While not a problem for most early adaptors forgets about civilian’s en mass.

    I was at one of the largest financial firms in the late Nineties when our team brought streaming media to the firm, it took a gigantic effort to get their IT department to permission new software to run on their custom OS, everything had to be tested and certified. Today, you will not find people at these firms running Flash players for video, the defacto standard for IPTV; instead, it is all WM or Real media. Forget about ever seeing DivX in these firms, it will not happen…

    Now DivX core market to be fair is embedded system on chip for DVD hardware companies and yes, the quality is excellent; I just do not see it making huge in-roads into the IPTV market in the near term.

    Like

  42. Your point about quality of DivX content compared to other user-gen sites is correct however, remember the adage: garbage in garbage out – much of what is on these sites is not well produced to begin with. Plug-in resistance is a large issue to address. While not a problem for most early adaptors forgets about civilian’s en mass.

    I was at one of the largest financial firms in the late Nineties when our team brought streaming media to the firm, it took a gigantic effort to get their IT department to permission new software to run on their custom OS, everything had to be tested and certified. Today, you will not find people at these firms running Flash players for video, the defacto standard for IPTV; instead, it is all WM or Real media. Forget about ever seeing DivX in these firms, it will not happen…

    Now DivX core market to be fair is embedded system on chip for DVD hardware companies and yes, the quality is excellent; I just do not see it making huge in-roads into the IPTV market in the near term.

    Like

  47. I love Stage6 to be sure, but what always ticks me off is people who upload low quality video. I swear there are people ripping vids from youtube and converting to Divx to put on Stage6. Maybe they think they are helping by increasing the content available on 6, but all they are doing is watering it down. Please if you have low framerate 320.240 video put it where it belongs!

    Like

  48. I love Stage6 to be sure, but what always ticks me off is people who upload low quality video. I swear there are people ripping vids from youtube and converting to Divx to put on Stage6. Maybe they think they are helping by increasing the content available on 6, but all they are doing is watering it down. Please if you have low framerate 320.240 video put it where it belongs!

    Like

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