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You left out the DIVX pushed by Circuit City with the DRM crap limiting the number of plays. I never truly looked into the format, but I once heard that the for

You left out the DIVX pushed by Circuit City with the DRM crap limiting the number of plays. I never truly looked into the format, but I once heard that the format would use IPB long-GOP encoding, but left out the B-frames and used in their place the code that made it locking. It's demise couldn't come fast enough. I seem to recall it needing a phone cable to work as well, but the wiki page does not mention that, but does mention something implying connectivity "The player's Security Module, which had an internal Real-Time Clock, ceased to allow DIVX functions after 30 days without a connection to the central system."[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX

ptaffs 1y ago
DIVX/XVID is ambiguous, it is a video format and separately a crappy DRM ecosystem from defunct Circuit City. The format DIVX would compress a full length movie to about 700MB (a CD capacity), where VCD MPEG-1 only got 75-80 minutes. LaserDisc owners were already trying to solve the disc-change interruption problem with premium two sided players. The format was also better to watch, in that the compression artifacts were less obvious. But the Rights Holders at the time, like for music, were more concerned with piracy, even though everything they did would make the consumer experience worse and drive more piracy. DIVX the DRM is a great example of an anti-consumer consumer format, and environmentally wasteful too as the plastic disc became "spent" after 30 days.
- dylan604 1y ago
  Don't forget the discs that had the special coating on them so that they would become unplayable after 30 days.
- Scoundreller 1y ago
  Why pay to watch unskippable warnings about piracy when you could pirate and never see such crap?
justsomehnguy 1y ago
As I thought I reall should had specified what I meant DivX ;) 3.11 and the later derivatives. No restrictions and from a some year - even a built-in support in the hardware CD/DVD VCRs

ptaffs 1y ago

DIVX/XVID is ambiguous, it is a video format and separately a crappy DRM ecosystem from defunct Circuit City. The format DIVX would compress a full length movie to about 700MB (a CD capacity), where VCD MPEG-1 only got 75-80 minutes. LaserDisc owners were already trying to solve the disc-change interruption problem with premium two sided players. The format was also better to watch, in that the compression artifacts were less obvious. But the Rights Holders at the time, like for music, were more concerned with piracy, even though everything they did would make the consumer experience worse and drive more piracy. DIVX the DRM is a great example of an anti-consumer consumer format, and environmentally wasteful too as the plastic disc became "spent" after 30 days.

dylan604 1y ago
Don't forget the discs that had the special coating on them so that they would become unplayable after 30 days.
Scoundreller 1y ago
Why pay to watch unskippable warnings about piracy when you could pirate and never see such crap?

justsomehnguy 1y ago

As I thought I reall should had specified what I meant DivX ;) 3.11 and the later derivatives. No restrictions and from a some year - even a built-in support in the hardware CD/DVD VCRs