DivX and Xvid now on appleTV

[balamw]

for a tv top set that costs $300
Im surprised u even make such statement. sounds like u think apple profits barely nothing from this apple tv?

No, I think that makes a decent margin on the device and wants it to stay that way.

I think you're missing the other fact of TV. It's not a mass-market appliance. It requires a widescreen TV/monitor (yes, I know some have made it work on 4:3 TVs) with HDMI or component inputs and also requires a computer with iTunes.

If you assume a high, but not atypical, 40% gross margin allocated equally to R&D, General & administrative costs, marketing and profit. Apple only gets ~$30 profit and/or R&D money from each TV. Even with tech support in India, a few hours of time on the phone will easily eat up that $30, not to mention the extra development time/costs.

EDIT: Just to clarify. I'm assuming the recurring cost of an TV is ~$180 and $120 on top of that is margin. $180 seems perfectly reasonable to me for the cost of the components Apple has picked.

B

 

[clevin]

I think you're missing the other fact of TV. It's not a mass-market appliance. It requires a widescreen TV/monitor (yes, I know some have made it work on 4:3 TVs) with HDMI or component inputs and also requires a computer with iTunes.

u probably right on that.

I'm sure AppleTV supporting Divx/Xvid would go over very well in their negotiations to get more Hollywood film studios signed up for the iTunes Store.

if u mean not supporting divx/xvid will give apple more weight in negotiations, then plz say so.

however, do remember for hollywood business, h.264 isn't any different from any other codec on piracy issue.

 

[Krevnik]

if u mean not supporting divx/xvid will give apple more weight in negotiations, then plz say so.

however, do remember for hollywood business, h.264 isn't any different from any other codec on piracy issue.

Yes and no.

H.264 is used in the iTunes store (which has DRM). XviD is popular in the pirate scene that provide rips to BitTorrent, and for personal DVD rips (both of which make CEOs in the MPAA unhappy).

So, by supporting a format Apple doesn't use to make the MPAA money, why should the MPAA help Apple make money?

And as for the piracy issue, it is possible to make a DVD rip that is Apple TV-friendly personally... so Apple has even less reason to support XviD/AVI.

 

[Krevnik]

also, are you saying divx/xvid codec with MP4 container will work on ATV? Never have any experience with that, care to share some links?

even if so, there will be still a process of conversion, no?

Look at Handbrake. It lets you use XviD to encode to an MP4 container. It works great in iTunes and Apple TV too.

The only incompatibilities is that when in an AVI container, DivX/XviD do some unsupported things to make MPEG-4 in an AVI container work. So when you pass that stream from the AVI container, it doesn't always work as expected once it is in an MP4 container (since there are no apps that will analyze an MPEG-4 raw stream and set the right bits in an MP4 container yet, but encoders can do the right thing).

 

[Yvan256]

also, are you saying divx/xvid codec with MP4 container will work on ATV? Never have any experience with that, care to share some links?

even if so, there will be still a process of conversion, no?

Neither DivX nor XviD are CODECs. They both (usually) contain MPEG-4 video with MP3 audio, inside an .avi container. Some files have VBR MP3 which AFAIK isn't even supported by .avi, why is why some DivX files hang my Mac mini for 30 seconds and others play just fine.

The TV supports MPEG-4 and H.264 audio with AAC audio inside regular industry-standard .mp4 containers.

If your DivX/XviD files contain valid MPEG-4 video data, simply re-encoding the audio into AAC and then repackaging everything into a .mp4 file should be possible.

Just because the whole underground scene has settled on MPEG-4/MP3 data inside .avi containers doesn't mean it's a standard. I agree that it's widely used, enough to have mainstream brands DivX-compatible DVD players, but we also see lots of those DVD players with "WMA compatible" stickers and I don't anyone who uses WMA for storing his music.

Instead of being angry at Apple for only supporting real standards, be angry at the pirates for settling with .avi and even sometimes breaking the specs of the container they've chosen themselves.

I, for one, am happy that we finally got a mainstream box with H.264 support instead of the usual DivX crap.

 

[Krevnik]

Neither DivX nor XviD are CODECs. They both (usually) contain MPEG-4 video with MP3 audio, inside an .avi container. Some files have VBR MP3 which AFAIK isn't even supported by .avi, why is why some DivX files hang my Mac mini for 30 seconds and others play just fine.

DivX and XviD are codecs (XviD is an open-source attempt at replacing DivX, and DivX was a reverse-engineering of a Microsoft reference codec for MPEG-4 before it went final, and DivX has recently started following the spec more closely). It is just that 'DivX files' have grown to mean: "MPEG-4 video encoded by DivX/XviD, and MP3 in an AVI container". Matroska has been growing in popularity as a replacement for AVI lately.

You have to admit, a codec getting strong branding on its own, when really just being an implementation of an MPEG-4 video codec is pretty impressive.

 

[clevin]

Neither DivX nor XviD are CODECs. They both (usually) contain MPEG-4 video with MP3 audio, inside an .avi container. Some files have VBR MP3 which AFAIK isn't even supported by .avi, why is why some DivX files hang my Mac mini for 30 seconds and others play just fine.

DivX/Xvid is container not codecs? are you serious?if u wanna establish a totally new terming system, I guess we can't do any discussion anymore. lol

The TV supports MPEG-4 and H.264 audio with AAC audio inside regular industry-standard .mp4 containers.

If your DivX/XviD files contain valid MPEG-4 video data, simply re-encoding the audio into AAC and then repackaging everything into a .mp4 file should be possible.

simply re-encoding and then repackaging... sure u, (maybe me) can do that with no problem, but is that "simple" for general users?

of course, if u admit appleTV is not for those ppl who watch divx/xvid movies while not really anything close to be able to transcoding movies, then I have no problem at all.

Just because the whole underground scene has settled on MPEG-4/MP3 data inside .avi containers doesn't mean it's a standard. I agree that it's widely used, enough to have mainstream brands DivX-compatible DVD players, but we also see lots of those DVD players with "WMA compatible" stickers and I don't anyone who uses WMA for storing his music.

standard? real standard? is there ever a standard for compressed videos? apple's supporting of H.264 does mean H.264 is standard, right? real standard? lol, which international organization made H.264 "real standard"?

Instead of being angry at Apple for only supporting real standards, be angry at the pirates for settling with .avi and even sometimes breaking the specs of the container they've chosen themselves.

I, for one, am happy that we finally got a mainstream box with H.264 support instead of the usual DivX crap.

I am not angry, im not the one who will surfer because they produce a product that can't meet ppl's need, nor am i the one who bought a brand product then find it useless. (sure many ppl will find it useful, Im not targeting those users, if u can tell.)

Main stream box with H.264? I really don't think appletv is mainstream yet, nor do I think H.264 is much better than divx/xvid, (sure the graphic quality is 15% better, but u need triple time to encode it)

 

[The General]

Well, I have the processor power and time to transcode all my Divx/Xvid stuff to work with the TV, but it looks like it would easier to just mod the TV and install the plugins and be done with it.

I don't want to open it, but if I have to, well, I guess that's part of being a pirate.

 

[balamw]

standard? real standard? is there ever a standard for compressed videos? apple's supporting of H.264 does mean H.264 is standard, right? real standard? lol, which international organization made H.264 "real standard"?

H.264, MPEG-4 Part 10, or AVC (for Advanced Video Coding), is a digital video codec standard that is noted for achieving very high data compression. It was written by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) together with the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) as the product of a collective partnership effort known as the Joint Video Team (JVT). The ITU-T H.264 standard and the ISO/IEC MPEG-4 Part 10 standard (formally, ISO/IEC 14496-10) are jointly maintained so that they have identical technical content. The final drafting work on the first version of the standard was completed in May 2003.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264

Essentially, the industry has made it a standard (almost 4 years old) which is part of the MPEG-4 family of standards.

http://www.iso.org
http://www.itu.org
http://www.iec.ch/

Oh yeah, and these guys

http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/

B