divx or xvid

[LOCO10]

Not too well up on new technology ( it's an age thing so bear with me). What's the difference with divx and xvid. Can you play divx
movies on an xvid compatable player and vice versa.

[shady77]

in my experience mate, there only difference i know of is that divx is closed source and paid for, whilst xvid is open source and free. both are mp4 files formats and both should play on any player that supports one or the other.
I say should because certain players are fine and others are fussy

[LOCO10]

Thanks shady77

[Takeshi]

That's not exactly accurate. First, we have to differentiate between media containers and codecs. Both xvid and divx are ASP (Advanced Simple Profile) codecs hence they encode video in a similar way. The former is opensource, the latter is commercial. xvid has encoding features that are incompatible with divx certified players so encoding options should be set carefully.

MP4 is a media container which supports a wide variety of video and audio formats (including ASP). AVI and MKV are also media containers and should not be confused with codecs!

And last but not least, ASP is old technology. The new technology is AVC (Advanced Video Coding) aka H.264, the successor to ASP.