Free DivX

One day only! Hurry up and get your free copy of the DivX Create Bundle during their 5th year anniversary. Sure, I’ve already paid for my copy, but I’m making sure to get a couple extra serial numbers while I’ve got the chance.

I’m still a little miffed at how DivX handled the whole release of version 6, but I’m also somewhat attached to the codec. You see, the Create Bundle comes with a little app the gives you a no frills way to quickly convert videos to DivX6. Unfortunately it was initially buggy as all hell and crashed with the most useless messages. DivX’s response was… nothing. They took about a month to really communicate with their paying customers and rather rudely pointed out how to get refunds since we were so impatient rather than provide us with any real information on when things would be fixed.

But there really aren’t many other options for decent video codecs out there. XviD will never release a standard binary that assures all videos will play properly on different machines. WMV is just way too proprietary and leaves me with DRM nightmares. Quicktime is one of the biggest pieces of crap, and pretty much forces you to install the horrid iTunes along with it. Real… well that goes without saying. Nero Digital looks most promising, and since I paid for Nero I already own it. However, it’s still in limited use and there’s no guarantees I’ll ever be able to play it on my precious DVP642.

That leaves me with the least of many evils… for now.

(thanks to Owen, for the link not the rant)