DIVX dies
from the we-hardly-knew-ye dept
Todd writes "Circuit City is killing DIVX, citing inadequate studio and retailer support. Though this personally saddens me, it doesn't surprise me. Expect Circuit City's stock to tank on this announcement, btw... " Considering Todd is the only person I've ever known who was madly in love with Divx, I'm not so sure the stock will tank. I think most people might be happy with the news. People seem to have an irrational fear of Divx.
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Market reaction
I couldn't hope to educate consumers on why DIVX was never a threat to DVD, because so many people just don't get it. Hating DIVX as a "different" format seemed akin to hating cassette tapes in favor of CDs; both formats offer a tradeoff of convenience and quality. Most people didn't accept the convenience of DIVX as superior and thought that their DVD players would be obsolete if they didn't publically espouse hatred of this other format.
Lastly, I'm surprised (and not surprised!) that CC didn't decide to sell DIVX discs only over the web. Their site had made great strides, allowing you to forward-buy titles and getting them shipped in anticipation of release date. Granted, they had a continuous backlog of "titles" to "wrap" (sound familiar, Mike & Prash), but they were making progress there, too. At least they could have lowered costs sufficiently to make it more profitable for the time being.
Oh well
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Re: Market reaction
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Good riddance!
I mean, it's bad enough to have to get the Macrovision and regional lockouts disabled at the point of purchase, but now you have to worry about getting billed every time you play the stupid disc. Even after you "buy" the disc, you can get billed playing it at your friend's house. That's way more inconvenient than returning the disc to the rental store was in the first place.
It's a shame for people that bought lots of discs, though. Hope you can get your player modded once the two years is up.
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