Hardware News

Start-up brings PC movies to TV

John Lui CNet Asia

Published: 13 Nov 2002 11:00 GMT

The explosion in the popularity of Internet file-sharing has led to thousands of PC users enjoying downloaded movies. So far, most have had to watch them on a PC, which has the software necessary to decode the files.

But from January next year, such movies can be watched in the living room, with the release of a DVD player that can also play movies encoded in one of the most popular computer formats, DivX. Movies encoded in the DivX format are small enough to download, without sacrificing too much image quality.

The device, dubbed Maestro DVX-1201, will operate like a standard home entertainment DVD player, except that it can also play computer file formats such as DivX and MPEG-4 for movies, MP3 and WMA (Windows Media Audio) for music and JPEG for images.

It will be the first product from start-up Neuston, a Singapore-based firm, and will be among the first DivX/MPEG-4-compatible players available anywhere. It is expected to be launched in January for under $350, said its marketing director Ambrose Tham.

He said the idea for the product came when their studies showed a strong consumer demand for a living-room MPEG-4 and DivX player. The combination of Internet use, broadband penetration and high-quality home cinema systems in North America, Europe and parts of Asia will drive demand for such a player, he believed.

"A player that can support these formats would mean that users can use their home theatre systems to watch DivX movies," Tham said.

A typical user might use a PC to burn a DivX movie onto a CD, then use the Maestro DVX-1201 to play it back on a TV.

DivX software has been downloaded 70 million times worldwide, according to its creators DivXNetworks. A variant of industry-standard MPEG-4 compression technology, DivX is especially popular with file-trading fans who controversially share movies, music and software on the Internet.

However, Tham asserts that Neuston is not so much motivated by the current popularity of file sharing, but the potential of DivX and MPEG-4 as a distribution format of choice among legitimate content providers.

"DivX has qualities comparable to DVDs and is slowly becoming a mainstream video format...because of its high compression and superior quality," he said.

Earlier this year, KiSS Technology, a Scandinavian manufacturer of DVD products, announced that it would be selling the KiSS DP-450, a DVD player that also has DivX, MPEG-4 and MP3 support, among others.

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