Want a good meal? Write about Divx...............................
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DIVX DIRTY LITTLE SECRET, PART 2
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Many DVD aficionados know Geoff Tully as coordinator of the DVD Special Interest Group of the Interactive Media Association (IMA, now absorbed by the Software Publishers' Association). Fewer know him as co-patentee of the Divx technology. That may explain the brand new Jaguar in which Geoff whisked me last Saturday to one of Beverley Hills' smartest eateries. Geoff had asked me if minded if he brought along a 'couple of Divx people'. Surprise, surprise. I was ushered into a private dining room to be find all the top brass assembled.
You know me. I never say no to a good meal, and the filet mignon and fine wines went down a treat. But what had I done to deserve it? Could it be because I seem to have been in a minority of one in presenting a balanced case for the Divx model?
Those guys certainly are in need of some good publicity. Never have I seen such an outpouring of unreasoned wrath in articles and news groups. You would think they had been brought by God or the devil to sink DVD. Hardly. Let's try and put the record straight.
The history of Divx is documented on page 6. It reveals that the Divx concept was not a hastily thought-up scheme to throw a spanner in the works of DVD. It has been around since 1991, when Tully was hired by a Hollywood law firm as a consultant to the then video-on-demand project.
The backers of Divx told us last week that they have been frankly shocked by the adverse publicity the project has engendered. They admitted that their timing, just when DVD was hitting the streets, was unfortunate. They point out that the project was conceived long before DVD was even invented. They are merely trying to give the consumer a choice, a 'better mousetrap'. They ruefully concede that when sales of DVD do not meet expectations this Christmas then Divx will be used as the whipping boy.
They scoff at the idea that Divx will undermine sales of DVD. The Hollywood law firm sees DVD as an addition to VCR, not a replacement for it, and that means more money for their talent clients. VHS plus DVD means more not less. They laugh off the idea that retail video is an endangered species. They believe that VCR is going to be around for another 30 years and DVD is going to be slow to replace it. They argue that their business model is more consumer friendly than open DVD. It certainly gives the single-view renter a lower price product, albeit at the cost of a higher-priced player.
Media innovations always create a knee-jerk reaction from people who think that all existing media will be immediately made obsolete. These are the guys who predicted that TV would kill the movie industry! I believe that DVD-Video will indeed fail to reach its projections this Christmas and this will have little to do with the arrival of Divx.
The idea, fostered by Warren Lieberfarb of Time Warner, that DVD is solely a sell-through model seems presumptuous and illogical. There will be DVD rental and Divx represents a viable alternative to the conventional rental model. The worry would be if the Hollywood studios plumped for a Divx-only strategy. That would be serious because the consumer would be in the hands of a monopoly. Divx has a number of unknowns and there are legitimate grounds for debate. But there's an upside to Divx. For example, the movie industry is a hit-driven business where only the blockbusters survive on the retail shelves. Divx could offer an alternative business model which could benefit the smaller film producers, possibly using direct mail for distribution of low-budget movies to specialist audiences. All we are saying is don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. |
