Petteri Pyyny
18 Jan 2001 1:39
Guys working the "next generation of DivX ;-)", dubbed as Project Mayo have decided to release their project as an open source.
DivX ;-) which was originally a hack based on the Microsoft's MPEG-4 codec, adding an MP3 audio to it, has transformed the video distribution of the Internet in past year or so.
Project Mayo's purpose was to develop a legal solution (the original hack of course violates Microsoft's copyrights as well as some other copyrights) for MPEG-4 video with MP3 audio.
Now, when the source of the Encore (DivX Encoder Core) and Decore (DivX Decoder Core) is released as an open source project, we might see a flood of video applications supporting this "standard" without requiring any hacked CODECs or so.
In the mainstream media, DivX ;-) has been dubbed as a threat against the movie industry, because it allows people easily to ditribute good quality movies over the Internet. But just like the MP3, DivX ;-) itself doesn't do anything illegal -- it's purely up to the user how he/she decides to use this format. I think we will pretty shortly see first legal music videos over the Internet spread in this format -- downloading a full-length movie with good quality in DivX ;-) format still requires more bandwidth than the regular Joe the User has in his home PC.
To learn more about Project Mayo and the OpenDivX visit their website in this url.