Re: Warner Bros. expected to ship 1 million Blu-ray copies of The Dark Knight

Dude, I didn't say Divx wasn't for sale. I said I have never personally seen any discs. They were only for sale at certain stores--primarily Circuit City. HD DVD on the other hand, was carried by a wider array of retailers so there was a lot more confusion with the high definition war.

I have also never heard of Good Guys stores, either.

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[Post edited by hoodaguy on Nov 12, 2008 - CST 1:00 PM]

Back in the day, the only place I ever saw DIVX was in the small, convenience stores like 7-11 and Circle-K. I never saw them in any major retailers at the time. Then again, DIVX was dead before it hit the door running. If you want temporary, then it makes much more sense to just rent DVD. It was simply a terrible idea and fortunately died a quick death.

ah. it's all good reaggie. the only reason i got all up in arms in the first place is because i respect your views as well as the other 2 posters who implied that i was intoxicated. the truth is that i cannot and will not change who i am. i guess i just freak out a bit when you guys bring up the intoxication thing because the truth is that i DO drink too much. infact i should be posting this in the "sicko" thread. but i am trying to scale back, and i was being truthfull when i said that i don't post when i am really hammered. you are correct, it is just not a good idea.

falcon,
i was always carefull to censor myself with *** these. but if it still bothers, then i will just use words like dang, darn, damn, piss, ass, bitch and bastard. since these words seem acceptable on broadcast television for our kids to hear.

blade, I can almost hear the violin playing and you with your sad face... jk!

I mean, after all, you would assume that as time goes by and more people adopt blu-ray, they will end up shipping more units, specially for a box office champ like DK...

Blade it's all good. Personally I didn't find your posts offensive, in fact some were quite funny BUT they wanna keep this site "family friendly" so we all have to respect the rules.

I know I hold back a lot on comments or posting certain things because of the same rules otherwise I would get banned in a day. :p

Either ways, when are we getting the Batman Anthology on blu????

Hey everyone... over the last few years we've discussed Circuit City's proprietary Divx (Digital Video Express) PPV-DVD format before, and I posted a few details etc. So, here it is again...

- Divx (from Wikipedia)

Click the above to learn some more specifics. I remember it real well... CC started it around the Fall of 1998 (ended the following the summer), and if you went to their stores they were pushing you to buy either the Zenith or RCA Divx-equipped players (about $500). To use the system, you HAD TO PLUG a phone line into the machine (so it could talk with their network). Divx titles were only Full-screen (there was never a widescreen Divx release), and added NO BONUS FEATURES.

Studio support was limited to Fox, Paramount & Disney mainly, also Dreamworks. Both Sony and Warner completely opposed Divx (never supported it), as both were major proponents of seeing "open" DVD be the main standard. I can't remember about Universal, but I don't think they supported it either.

The discs retailed between $4.49 to $4.95, which provided a 48-hour viewing period. After this, every time you chose to watch the disc you had to pay another $3.25 (via credit-card - the data was recorded from the nightly "communication" your player did with the Divx network over the phone line).

Once Circuit City realized the costs were too prohibitive for decent profits (and without securing full industry support), the company announced on June 16, 1999 an immediate discontinuation of further players sales. However, the Divx discs in use by owners would continue to be "playable" (thru their network billing), for another 2 years, and so you could play/pay the discs (@ $3.25 a view) until the summer of 2001, when the whole thing was disbanded.

After the June 1999 announcement, I went to a local CC and they had marked down all of the discs to just 99 cents, so, as a "collector's item", I purchased two titles: Planet of the Apes (1968) and Alien 4, even though I knew I couldn't view the content without a Divx player. When you inserted the disc into a regular DVD player, the disc put up an on-screen message that you needed a Divx player to view the movie, and to call a 1-800 number for more info. I still have these two discs sitting on a shelf as a token item.

Owners had already been dumping the discs on ebay, etc, hoping to unload them.

-JOE- (Love Hendrix!)

ahh yes. i remember the divx fiasco as well. wow, thanks for the trip down memory lane. i ALSO bought a ton of these when they were marked down to .99 cents thinking that someday a player might come along that would read them. well, after years of waiting that never happened. i bought 1 copy of each movie they had which i believe cost me about $100 bucks for 100 titles or so, left them on the shelf and waited. after about 5 years and no player i sold them at a garage sale for .50 cents apiece. i kinda wish i would have held onto them now that i think about it.

Then in other words, it was hardly a format war considering they didn't even make the project last a whole year. Not to mention, I can't think of anyone I know that didn't think DIVX was just plain stupid.