If you've recently purchased a DVD player or are looking to purchase one you'll notice that some DVD players say they support something called DivX or XviD. If you're reading this article then you are probably wondering what that means. Look no further, this article will answers all your questions....well maybe not all but at least give you some clue as to what's going on. One thing to think about though is that DivX or XviD are like the MP3's of video.

What's The Point?

We've all watched a video on our computer but you probably don't realize what is actually going on. High quality videos take up a lot of space, just like high quality music. The easiest way to get around this problem is to compress the video. For music, the most popular compression method is known to us as MP3. What this does is take a normally large music file and compress it to make it small enough for easy transfer but still sound excellent.

The same principle applies to video, but in this case the most popular compression methods are DivX and XviD. Both will take what would normally be a large video file and compress it to make transferring easier but still maintain a high quality picture.

DivX vs XviD

They are both different and independent so you can use either one but since DivX is actually a corporation it is most likely that you'll see this much more often on DVD players than XviD. Personally I have had fewer problems with XviD.

So Why Do I Need This?

If you download videos off the internet that have been encoded in the DivX format then you can burn them to a DVD and play them in your DVD player. Since your DVD player is DivX or XviD compatible it will be able to decode the video and play it on your TV. It works in the same way as playing MP3s on your DVD player, which has become almost standard nowadays.