It all started with a hacked version of Microsofts ASF, called "Div-X 3.11a ;-)" (WITH the smiley).
It spread like wildfire...
The hacker behind it saw the success of the hacked codec, realized that there was a market for something like this and created the "official DivX project", assembling a team and worked, at the same time, at an open and a closed source version of it. The closed-source team was releasing the changes to the code quite frequently, and was taking code and ideas from the open-source version. At some time, when the codec was mature enough, they decided to terminate the open-source version.
After that, different groups were created. Some tried the comercial, others the open-source way, hoping to create an alternative. The most... er... stubborn ones, assembled under the Xvid flag (hence the name, poking fun at DivX) and created a codec that isn't (or at least, wasn't - see bellow) just a viable alternative to DivX, but in many ways better than it.
Both of them are based on MPEG4, so they are not only similar, but 95% compatible. Compatibility is an issue only when using "non-standard-features" they each have - but, if I'm not mistaken, XviD tries to be 100% compatible with the MPEG4 standard. They are not, though, the only MPEG4 codecs.
It all comes down to MPEG4. We have MPEG4 in PSP, so, we have some-kind-of-DivX on it. There IS, as far as I remember, an XviD player for PSP, and the quality is almost exactly the same as DivX.
...and here comes the "see bellow" that I told you earlier...
XviD isn't developed as agressively as before, since the release of the first H264 compatible codecs. H264 is an extension (but better think of it as a tottally different codec) to the MPEG4 standard of encoding. It manages to squeeze a heck of a lot of better quality in smaller sizes than ALL of the MPEG4-based codecs (DivX included). It needs, though, a lot of processing power. But, if I'm not mistaken... PSP has H264 acceleration, doesn't it? We have H264 encoders for PSP, don't we? So, dear friends, the choice is really simple!
...now, the only thing that remains for me, is to find how the heck to play H264 encoded vids through Devhooks emulated 2.71 firmware (since H.264 support was added to PSP after the 2.01 firmware - before that, it only had MPEG4 support).
Best regards
Ducklord
P.S.: Pardon my use of the English language and possible spelling or gramar mistakes, since it's not my native language. And, ofcourse, I sould point out that I'm not in any way affiliated with any company, programmers, groups or other people in the "codec business", Sony or even know how to code. I just used Divx a loooong time (since the first, hacked version).
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