TechCrunch TV is now really TechCrunch TV. When TCTV launched last year, the focus was on viewing our videos on the computer. Not on TV. Ok, we called it “TechCrunch TV” because it sounded a lot better than “TechCrunch Video”. But today, we are launching on the AOL HD platform and you can find us on your connected TV set.
Our videos are live on Roku, Boxee, Divx and Yahoo Connected TV platforms. Together, these platforms reach over 12 million devices. And that number is growing. Don’t be surprised if more platforms get added as well. (AOL, the owner of TechCrunch, didn’t want me to say anything about that. Oh well.) → Read More
We didn’t get an official announcement, but it looks like Sony is going to be selling their own version of a Netflix and Amazon video streaming netbox. Get this though, the Sony product plays the much wanted MKV and DivX files – something conspicuously missing from other company offerings. The Sony product (who’s name we don’t have yet) runs on wireless N, supports 1080p, has a USB storage connection, and is controlled via Sony’s iPhone and Android apps. Price is expected to be at $130, and Gizmodo says that should see them around the end of September. We’ll update you as more information becomes available. → Read More
CineXPlayer, a free app for the iPad that plays back DivX video, was just released today and should be down within the week. Why? Well, generally anything that isn’t iTunes compatible is frowned upon, leading to many “homebrew” DivX implementations in the Cydia store but no real ones. → Read More
Sonic Solutions and DivX, both listed on Nasdaq, this morning announced that they are to become one. Under the terms of the agreement, Sonic would acquire all the outstanding shares of DivX and merge DivX operations into those of Sonic.
DivX stockholders would receive a combination of cash and stock equal to $3.75 in cash and 0.514 shares of Sonic common stock for each share of DivX they hold. The offer was worth $9.83 a share at Tuesday’s closing price, or around $323 million in total. The price is a 41% premium to Tuesday’s closing price for DivX shares.
Sonic says the purchase could potentially double fiscal year 2012 earnings per share on a non-GAAP basis. Following completion of the merger, DivX stockholders will own approximately 35% of the combined company’s capital stock.
The acquisition is expected to close in September 2010. → Read More
The “anybody but iPod” crowd has another portable media player to choose from, and it’s from Samsung. It’s called the R1, and it’s your standard issue touchscreen PMP. It does play Divx-encoded video, which should be a benefit to those of you who haven’t moved into Blu-ray rips, or who enjoy watching standard-def rips of TV shows on the subway. → Read More
JVC Japan announced the XV-BP1 today [JP], a new Blu-ray player that comes with two interesting features and a fair price. The player supports DivX/MPEG-4/MKV/AVCHD files and sports a USB port at the front so you can plug in a USB stick with your DivX-movies (you know, the ones you downloaded legally earlier) into the device and directly start watching. → Read More
Panasonic is about to make playing back DivX a bit easier on its plasmas. The next-gen sets will be able to access the content over DLNA or SD/SDHC cards. But why do you care? → Read More
More layoffs today at DivX, the publicly traded video codec supplier that recently sued Yahoo over canceling a contract that makes up as much as 20 percent of its revenue. According to a tip that came into our Layoff Tracker, 21 people were let go. I just confirmed that until-now unannounced number with DivX investor relations. It represents just under 10 percent of the workforce in San Diego, where DivX is based (although there were some cuts globally as well).
Its stock is trading under $5, about a third of where it was a year ago. → Read More
Sometime in the near future, Samsung TVs are going to have DivX playback capabilities built-in. This should allow playback of the video format from a connected USB mass storage device or Ethernet connection. The certification will probably start with the top-tier models and eventually work itself down market. A handy-dandy front DivX logo should reveal wether the set is equipped with the video playback goods. → Read More
DivX is making its way into more and more CE devices. Pioneer’s latest Blu-ray players couldn’t withstand the DivX invasion and the BDP-LX71, BDP-LX08 and BDP-51FD all earned the certification that states the unit can playback high-quality DivX material. These players are already shipping worldwide, so just because yours doesn’t carry the logo on the front bezel doesn’t mean that the player isn’t certified. PR → Read More
Here’s a five-minute look at the DSM-330 from D-Link. It’s a DivX Connected player, which basically uses your home PC for most of the menu rendering and downloading horsepower. We’ll have a full review up in the not-too-distant future. So far, I see promise in the plug-ins feature, which allows developers to create their own stuff – I installed a Digg.com thing, an HD movie preview function, and a Google Maps application. Streaming HD content over my 802.11G wireless connection has been so-so. If the files are already on my PC, everything works great. Files that need to be downloaded and streamed on the fly tend to stutter from time to time. All in all the device looks pretty good, though. I’ll run it through some more tests over the next week or so and report back. → Read More
DLink’s DSM-330 is now available for $299. It connects to your home networks via Wi-Fi or Ethernet and can play back high definition DivX content on your TV using DivX Connected functionality, which basically streams DivX, Xvid, WMV, DV, MPEG-1, and MJPEG video content (various audio formats too) from your computer and also harnesses your CPU’s horsepower to make all the pretty menus. There’s HDMI output along with component, composite, S-Video, and Scart, plus RCA, S/PDIF, and Optical audio outputs. D-Link is selling the DSM-330 for $299, but you can find it for cheaper elsewhere – Amazon.com has it for $199 after rebate, for instance. More photos and full press release after the jump… → Read More
Remember DIVX? Not DivX the codec, but DIVX as in Digital Video Express — from Circuit City — the ill-fated self-destructing DVD system from lo those many years ago. A similar idea just might be able to succeed where DIVX failed. Or not, who knows? Anyway, whereas DIVX relied on special DVD players that could play DIVX discs (and also regular DVDs), a new disposable DVD coming from a German company called DVD-D will supposedly work in any DVD player, will cost €3.99 ($6.44 US) and will expire in 48 hours. According to the Register… DVD-D Germany Ltd’s ‘Einmal’ (German for ‘once’) – discs incorporate a self-destruct chemical coating to render them unreadable after a pre-set time. The process begins as soon as the discs are removed from vacuum-sealed packaging. After 48 hours (or longer, depending on the price) the DVD gives a ‘No disc’ error when put into a DVD player or PC. There appears to be no DRM (digital rights management), so you couldcopy the disks, if you’re quick enough. The DVD-D discs are available in Germany currently and may or may not make it stateside. I’m guessing probably not, with all the On-Demand and Apple TV stuff. Would any of you red-blooded Americans do this? Let’s assume that they’d cost $4 apiece here, not $6.44. Let’s just forget the whole weak dollar thing never happened. → Read More
After we thought the bizarre story of Stage6 was over, Brad Greenspan’s LiveUniverse has gotten involved, and the plot gets even thicker. According to a release from LiveUniverse, the company offered to acquire Stage6 prior to the site being shut by DivX 25 February. The offer was $11 million in cash & carriage plus an equity Stake in Stage6 and Promotion of DivX Software. LiveUniverse then claims that the DivX Board “refused to engage in any direct dialogue with LiveUniverse for over 5 days, and during this time, DivX shuts down Stage6.” Despite the site being shut for nearly 2 weeks, LiveUniverse still wants to buy it and is appealing to DivX shareholders to pressure the company into selling. DivX shareholders can visit www.livevideo.com/SaveStage6” to take initiative and proactively push the Board to do the right thing for shareholders.” LiveUniverse is claiming that “despite daily outbound calls and emails, LiveUniverse was and is unable to reach any of the DivX executives including General Counsel David Richter who LiveUniverse was originally referred to for the purposes of buying Stage6.” The go on to say that “Directors of public companies have a fiduciary duty to shareholders to try to get the best deal and represent their interests, first and foremost” and “DivX Board’s decision to destroy website and its community when there was and is a firm superior offer on table from LiveUniverse raises questions of whether proper sales process was followed.” The one part missing from LiveUniverse’s statement is why? why do they want to buy Stage6? Sure, it was a great site with a ton of traffic, but it was only great because it offered a BitTorrent style smorgasbord of pirated content without the need to download it. Without the pirated movies, the traffic on Stage6 means nothing. Either LiveUniverse knows something we don’t about the site, or they’re taking a big risk. CrunchBase Information DivX LiveUniverse Stage6 Brad Greenspan Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
[photopress:usenethow.jpg,full,center] If and when the **AA have Usenet shut down after the piece appears, feel free to blame Biggs. He’s making me write it. I occasionally mention Usenet when talking about piracy here, but I’ve never really explained what it is or what it does. I’m still not going to explain what it is, technically, (that’s what Wikipedia’s for), but I will put it in layman’s terms. Think of Usenet as a big, unregulated, uncontrollable message board in the sky. The Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy even logged onto Usenet when he needed to know the star of Radioactive Man! The key difference with Usenet is that users can attach files to their messages. That’s the gist of it, at least. And since you can attach a file to a message you can, conceivably, attach many files to many messages. That’s what people do. You’ll find these file-laden posts on something called binary groups. And that’s where the piracy aspect comes into play. Literally thousands of groups devoted to literally thousands of categories, each one filled with all sorts of pirated content. Entire albums, entire movies, entire video games—getting 0day DreamCast games back in the day was top-notch—et cetera. Basically, Usenet rules and is what all the cool kids use. Hopefully you’ll be able to use it, too, after this. → Read More
Yesterday San Diego based DivX announced the shutdown of popular video site Stage6, to the surprise and dismay of the site’s 17.4 million happy monthly visitors (the post on the shutdown has over 5,000 comments). There’s lots of speculation around why DivX is shutting the site down, ranging from piracy issues to the spiraling CDN costs of streaming all that HD content. But what really happened, according to multiple sources, is that a ridiculous battle of egos at the DivX board level caused most of the team to simply quit. DivX, essentially, snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. First a bit of history – just before DivX went public in late 2006 it launched Stage6 as a way to show off the capabilities of the DivX codec. Without any promotion at all the site quickly gathered users. By mid 2007, when the site went into beta, it had millions of users and tens of millions of page views. The high quality video was key – users simply flocked to it. DivX cofounder and CEO Jordan Greenhall knew he had a potential hit on his hands. He decided to explore a sale of Stage6, and hired investment bank Montgomery & Co. to see who might buy it. He also started pitching VCs on the idea of funding it as a spinoff. Given the conflict of interest, he resigned as CEO of DivX – president Kevin Hell took over the company. Darrius Thompson, (DivX co-founder), Mark How (DivX VP Business Development), Mark Chweh, Chester Ng and about 20 other DivX employees joined him. All shared the title of “cofounder” at Stage6. Montgomery spent the second half of 2007 pitching Stage6 to buyers, although there wasn’t much interest. But VCs were eager to buy in to the idea of a spinoff. By November they had commitments from Crosslink Capital, Sofinnova France and Mission Ventures to invest $20 million at a $90 million post money valuation. Another $5 million was committed from a strategic investor, plus $2 million more from “friends and family.” All in all, Stage6 was preparing to close a $27 million round. DivX was to retain 20% ownership in the new funded entity. Not only was DivX to receive a substantial chunk of equity in the new company, they’d be able to get the operating costs, estimated to be around $1 million/month in CDN costs alone, off their books. And → Read More
We covered Stage6, a DivX-owned site, in October 2006 as part of a roundup of up and coming video sites. The site, which allowed users to upload video in the high quality Divx format, streams video that makes YouTube look shabby in comparison. The site won’t be around long, though, Uploads have already been shut down, and the site itself will go offline on February 28. The official reason: “So why are we shutting the service down? Well, the short answer is that the continued operation of Stage6 is a very expensive enterprise that requires an enormous amount of attention and resources that we are not in a position to continue to provide.” Translated, that may be that the pirates took over the site. New movies and tv shows were constantly being uploaded and then taken down by the site staff. Sites like Joox.net took all that pirated content and repackaged it on their own site. The combined costs of hosting, plus all the monitoring for infringement, may have been more than Divx was willing to deal with. Update: Ok, we’ve been shaking the trees on this story a little. According to one source, the planned spinoff of Stage6 from DivX apparently had $24 million or so in committed venture capital but negotiations with the DivX board broke down over ownership percentages. We’re still digging. Update2: Comscore says Stage6 has 17.4 million monthly unique visitors and 360 million page views. We also hear that their monthly CDN bill from LimeLight is $1 million, about 11% of their revenues. That’s going to hurt them. CrunchBase Information Stage6 DivX Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
[photopress:padivx.jpg,full,center] As always, Penny-Arcade flies above all of our stupidity to make a point: what makes the iTunes Rental service so different from DIVX, the failed disc format? That all-mighty, all-knowing Apple is behind it? That it has the support of all the studios? Are you really going to stop downloading movies from the usual places? ::Taps nose:: What Goes Around [Penny-Arcade] → Read More
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