Assassinator Wrote:DivX and XviD are both video codecs. A difference being that DivX is proprietary, while XviD is freeware. I think XviD is actually tested to give better results than DivX.

Not really.  If I recall correctly, Xvid was actually developed by the same people who did DivX.  The issue is that you have to pay a license fee for using DivX.  Since Xvid is based on MPEG's technology as well, you should theoretically be doing the same thing, however, the developers got around the issue by distributing the source code on their website, as opposed to a compiled binary (probably some obscure clause in the license?).
It's still somewhat a legal gray issue.

Assassinator Wrote:Most MKV stuff you find out there probably uses x264.

Most of the MKVs I've seen, interestingly, use Xvid.  But a large proportion use H.264 as well.

Senseito Sakura Wrote:HOLY Spoon!!

Have you actually watched all of those!?!??!

Nope.

Assassinator Wrote:Each company wants their own codec so that people will have to pay to use theirs, and so that they don't pay others to use others. If some company wants to use their codec, they will have to pay. So if a game has DivX stuff in it, they would have to pay the owners = $$$.

Microsoft have theirs, so does apply (quicktime), Nero (Nero digital video), DivX is proprietary too...

There's not that many formats.  The majority as based off MPEG-4.  WMV is probably the only other one.



Anyways, with Adobe implementing AVC and HE-AAC into their latest versions of flash, I wonder how long it'll be before they become more popular streaming formats. (if you've noticed, all the embedded videos I've uploaded here are AVC + HE-AAC)