AlexGeek's Web Design and Development Blog

For those of you who take the option of streaming your favourite TV shows and movies online, DivX is probably the best choice for quality. Compared to the many flash streaming sites, DivX takes the rank of king of quality. Many flash streams can be very pixelated, not have a full screen mode. Despite its popularity, Megavideo is very flawed in that audio being out of sync to the video being a common problem which is especially annoying for action videos as you'll see an explosion then hear the sound 10 seconds later – not as thrilling. Furthermore Megavideo introduced a limit to how much footage you can watch before you have to either wait an hour to watch the rest of your show which conveniently stops at the point where you're about to find out who the killer is or purchase a membership option which defies the whole point of streaming to save money.

DivX on the other hand rarely has the trouble of tense-killing audio sync dilemma though it is far from perfect. Stage6 was a great site that provided the high-quality DivX videos you so cravingly desire but we became greedy and as the hosting costs for DivX are so pricey, Stage6 threw in the towel and left us dangling like a tit in the breeze. Nevertheless you can still find sites for DivX streaming such as fresh face, Ninjavideo which despite the annoyance of having to run a mini java app simultaneously it has a fairly wide range of video for popular TV shows and new movies.

There are other streaming sites for DivX videos but I have more often than not been unsuccessful in watching the latest episode of Prison Break on. There are many common problems for DivX streaming that prop up, all take up about 5 minutes of your life you will never get back and all end in the same result – no cake for you. By far the most annoying way to find out that you're what-happens-next thirst will not be quenched is to click on the play button and have the message “Connecting...” giving you the false impression that DivX just has some important calls to make and will be with you shortly. How betrayed you feel when it's been half hour, you've cleaned the oven twice, clipped your nails and finished off that book you've been meaning to read and you find out that DivX is still “connecting”. Seriously, would it be too hard for a timeout to be put in?
Some less teeth-clenching ways of finding out you'll be watching the out-of-sync-pixelated-100-pixel-wide-limited-to-30-minutes version of your movie is to have that gear-grinding ping and a popup window giving you advice to check you have internet, oh gee DivX thanks for that nugget of wisdom.

If you are one of the lottery winners and you've made it through to the buffering stage, don't be lulled into thinking that was it. Now there are many frivolous errors that a prone to annoy you a common one being that you are streaming, you expect to watch the video right now and not have to bother with the waiting for the download to finish part. Wrong. Due to DivX's high quality and there for large file size you are likely to be watching the ten minute “buffering 1%” screen for half hour. Even if you have a gigabit connection it can still take half your night to buffer because so many other people are trying to enjoy the DivX experience too, leaving the host's server in shreds, whining that all it does is give give give.

Still with us? You're on a little known site, streaming DivX faster than the speed of light, volume up, full screen, maybe setup your projector and made some popcorn. Shit, what's that? Firefox has crashed since you tried to pause it to boil the kettle. This problem is more common in the latest versions of DivX but still happens in ol' reliable versions too. I've received many stab-yourself-in-the-leg-with-a-fork situations where DivX will decide to just give up. Black screen, no response, no video. Another is, exit full screen and you've got yourself a browser crash almost instantaneously. Say what you want about megavideo but it doesn't make me lose all my precious tabs.
Another is, just a complete and utter stop of streaming. This can be more annoying as it will take you a while to realise something isn't right, you may think that the buffering is just taking a while but soon you will notice that 0% has been there a while. You can refresh the page and click play but it won't help. You'll have to go in to settings, delete the cache and start again from the beginning. Doesn't seem that bad, but when you consider you can't skip parts you've already watched until everything has downloaded – you may be quite peeved.

That about somes up DivX in a nutshell, there are some more minor annoyances that generally add to my aggravation but overall when I'm watching Heroes every week, I'm so fanatic about it that I can't bare to watch it on low resolution, hearing gunshots when people seem to be just talking. DivX provides high-quality videos but that's about all I can say for it. If you really love a movie or TV show, you may want to opt for DivX, if it's a rerun of friends... don't bother. 4/10.