*Bonus side fact* The spokesperson in the circuit city commercial that you keep playing is named Juan Conde and he was a local Richmond Virginia news anchor that me and my wife would loved watching because he would mess up at least once every broadcast.😂
@@JohnnyWednesdayya I used to see allot of pirated movies using divx encoding. I’m in Canada and I had no idea it was a media thing, I thought it was just an efficient way to download the compressed file like an mp3.
You're probably referring to Xvid. I was a supplier of DVD's to a scene group for a brief period when I worked at blockbuster around '04. Process was a total pain in the ass: Rip the dvd with dvd decryptor, rar it to split files, burn those files to at least a dozen cd-r's, bring that stack to the college library, copy them to their computer, use a portable version of flashfxp, upload them like five streams at a time, then minimize the programs to the task bar and leave, hoping they were uploaded and that whoever was in charge didnt either see the bandwidth on their end or find the programs running in the taskbar.
@@ocstrangeness there was allot of movies that required divx codecs when file sharing was big in the early 2000's. I specifically remember divx because it was hard to get them to play on Windows media player at the time.
I remember the Divx debacle like it was yesterday. The home theater audience was eager to have DVD succeed as it took a while to get all of the movie studios on board (Paramount for one was a hold out) and this Divx setup was seen as 1) lower quality as mentioned with 4x3 aspect ratio 2) privacy concerns with your phone dialing out your movie choices and as mentioned the price of the players was WAY more than the already pricey DVD players. Always seemed like a scammy attempt to get people to not "own" anything. Fast forward to today and it's even worse. Physical media for life!
Yep I remember as a kid growing up even I thought that was dumb and during that time I was already complaining about how quality of products was dropping and how companies want to give less for more and it’s funny that fast forward to today my thoughts were correct but even worse than I thought it would be, I buy new old stock of old products to keep my things still going since yeah physical is better and people see me as a hipster or something but in reality it’s just that i choose not to evolve with modern times for yeah I get it I can download movies on my phone but I still prefer to watch movies off my psp because I still have the disc I don’t need WiFi or the stupid license doesn’t expire like seriously I bought a movie but the license expired??? Were I have to rebuy it again? Like WHAT!?
@@Not_Always that’s not even true at all literally people are still buying DVD, I myself buy DVD you just simply cannot beat physical formats that you can own for life and will never disappear from your catalog.
@@Not_Always"Irrelevant as ever." So, you're just going to ignore how it was the number one physical video format for over a decade? DVDs are STILL being produced now. You act like it wasn't successful like LaserDisc or something. Of course, a higher resolution format would take over, since people want to take full advantage of the highest quality possible.
Once while in a Circuit City store in Denver I joined a group of people who agreed to watch a ten-minute video hyping the benefits of DIVX for the chance to win a $10 gift certificate. I won!
There was another short-term DVD rental alternative called Flexplay. Flexplay discs were red in color and were sold in vacuum-sealed packages. Once the sealed package was opened, the movie disc would oxidize in about 48 hours. After that, it would no longer work. Flexplay had benefits over DIVX in that it would play in most regular DVD players and did not need a phone line nor an account. But Flexplay discs like DIVX would quickly fill up landfills. Flexplay also had problems if the sealed package had been punctured before it was sold. Flexplay too was a failure.
Ah, I was *just* about to post that as a suggestion for a future video. I only ever got one of those things...amusingly at the local Circuit City, IIRC. Interestingly, it was a Mythbusters special...that oddly, was *different* than other releases of the same episode (I don't remember the details of the differences anymore, unfortunately). Granted, since it was a normal DVD other than the 'this media will self destruct' aspect, it fell prey to the bane of rental establishments everywhere, the DVD-ripper program.
I heard you could put them in the freezer when not in use and extend the lifetime of it. I wonder if some kind of chemical treatment or coating (but the right dimensions so as not to cause interface) could have preserved it.
@@ChristopherBass-k3b Nothing, except that I don't think DVD burners were very well established back then, if they existed at all as consumer devices. Hard disk drives were much, much smaller too.
Ha ha, DRM. That takes me back to the PS3 Xbox 360 days when Xbox One was announced...with DRM and it was IMMEDIATELY LAMBASTED by Gamer consumers. (But I remember the LAME Xbot fanboys pushing it like nice little slaves. "Get used to it", they all said. "It's the future", they all said like stupid loyal fanboys.) I remember how Microsoft lied and said they couldn't reverse DRM before the launch of the Xbox One because "It's built into the design of the console. You can't just switch it off like a light switch"... and then Sony responded like geniuses with their "This is how you share your games on PS4" video here on TH-cam...All the GAMERS support PS4 and boycott Xbox One simply because of that anti-consumer practice known as Digital Rights Management... and then Microsoft proved they were liars because they did indeed "Flip the switch" and suddenly Xbox One didn't have DRM anymore. Ohhh those days when I wasn't so concerned with politics and I was just some naive young college kid that would have voted for Kumala Harris like a compliant sheep for Hollywood and the media. All the idiots that blindly champion technology like that are not much different that political fanboys...especially the Democrat type that now say that men can get pregnant.)
@@Not_Always Just an Incel looking to troll and cause trouble. They RANDOMLY bring Trump into ANY video regardless of its Subject Matter. For some odd reason. Emphasis on "Trolls".
I worked at Circuit City when this came out. Everybody thought it was a little goofy, but Hollywood and Blockbuster video was a big deal back then. I think the most optimistic I ever was with a customer was "It's pretty neat to have if you're already upgrading to DVD." It seems silly now when we're so conscious about single-use plastics, whereas that was the intention, here.
It made me so mad I used all my saving to buy a DVD player when I was 15 then Divx came out like 2 years later I wonted to rent movies but was not gonna buy another DVD player at that time. But I remember all most all the movies were in Pan and scan so it didn't bother me too much because we watched everthing in Wide Screen back then so I was like I guess I can't use that
@@JunkerDC I was 15 years old in 1998. At the time, Blockbuster Video didn't carry DVD Rentals, Yet. The CEO at the time, John Antico said that "DVDs are a Niche Product. More People own VHS than DVD Players. Blockbuster just currently doesn't see much large profit potential in DVD Rentals at the moment, but we're proud to Announce that beginning January 1,1999, we will be carrying DVD Rentals. In the Meantime, sign up for our Blockbuster Club program and Gift and Credit Card and get up to 12 Free Rentals for up to 6 months!". This Statement pissed so many people off. Blockbuster Saw an 18% drop in Regular Subscribed Customers in 1998. Circuit City, Thompson,Symphonic/KMart and the MPAA all created the DIVX Venture. But Circuit City was in charge and had more stake in it. The Idea was that CC believed it could capture that 18% of Longtime Blockbuster Customers and that since Blockbuster was NOT carrying DVD rentals, More and more Disgruntled Loyal Customers would come to Circuit City and smaller Affiliates like Good Guys, and even the Large Frys to "Buy/Rent" Disposable DRM Riddled DIVX DVDs. At First, DIVX seemed like it had viability as it DID do very well by the time it started Test Marketing in the Summer of 1998, but the first sign of Trouble came when Frys Quickly Abandoned it after only 3 months. Holiday Sales were Not great, but since it was revealed that Blockbuster would charge an Expensive $7.50 Rental Fee for DVDs, Circuit City believed it still had potential, but in January of 1999, after dismal holiday returns, Thompson,Symphonic/KMart, Good Guys and everyone else bailed on DIVX leaving Circuit City to carry the entire NOW Money losing Venture. It turns out, MAJORITY of Blockbuster's Disgruntled Customers had migrated over to Hollywood Video who not only starting Renting DVD EARLY in November of 1997, but only charged $5 for 3 Day Rentals with just 99 Cents a day if not returned by the end of the 3 days. To Blockbuster Defectors, DIVX just seemed Shortsighted. Hollywood Video used a Special and Revolutionary "Online Rental Reserve" System. You could literally check the Library of Hollywood Video at Said Location on their Website and could "RESERVE" a New Release for FREE. This was Godsend for us. So the logic was simple: "Why go to Circuit City and pay $4 for a DIVX Disc that will only work for 2 days and requires a Long and Annoying Phone Line to activate? When I can Simply go to HollywoodVideo Dot com and Check an RESERVE a New Release, time when I go pick it up and only pay Five Dollars to rent it on DVD and just $1.50 on VHS for 3 days?"
How hard did management push you to sell it at your location? Or did they see it as it ended up as well? I bought a dvd in March of 98 at Montgomery Wards. I remember going to CC shortly after. The salesman told me dvd was gonna be replaced by divx and I kinda bought into it before doing my own investing. I was a bit worried, but not for long at all. It died that quickly. I went back after and saw the same Salman and asked, "what happened to Divx?". And very dramatically, he said, "It Died!!!" LOL. I think he knew it wasn't gonna win. To his credit, that was pretty funny. It made up for any worry that he put in my mind upon him giving me the grim news that I bought a soon to be obsolete format... yes, dvd hasn't lasted long at all...
The staus of the disc was monitored over the phone line 😲. What's even more shocking was that the internet was accessed through said phone lines at the time
It feels like there was like 5 different things called DIVX. This weird disc format, like a website I can only vaguely remember, some proprietary codec I didn't understand, a media player that felt like spyware? All these things have bleed together in my mind and I don't even know which parts are true or not.
@wabbit234 this is what I remember, when you'd torrent movies in the stone age they were often in some divx codex that needed a special media player or something.
I believe the DIVX codec movies would play when burned to a DVD as a data disk, on DIVX players. You could "backup" and fit a few formatted movies on one disk.
After Divx failed, another company took the abandoned Divx name for their fairly good video encoder. People would rip DVDs with the Divx encoder and put the name Divx in the file name.
im with you this is unknown. i remember those .dixv files i remember my first divx download was an called anime blood the last vampire. all divx files was good quality in those days
2:45 Another big part was that, by renting, people could try out games they were interested in, without the risk of buying it and not liking it. As you said, the internet was still young, so people couldn't exactly hop on TH-cam and watch some gameplay etc.
Pirating games back then was a nightmare anyways. I had a the best DSL connection you could get in 1999, my dad had a business line, and it took me 4 days to download Jedi Knight. A game that fit on a single CD. Renting a game from blockbuster was the best way to try out a game by far.
@@bipolarminddroppings depending on where you live i say "not possible" - 1 hour 52 minutes 50.83 seconds is how long it would take at full speed on a 768kbit/s DSL line in 1999 (i had that speed in two locations) - and 1999 cable modems already existed at 1.5-3mbit. 4 days sounds a lot like your dad told you he was letting you use DSL but you were really using networked 14.4 dialup - 4 days 7 hours 10 minutes 28.57 seconds
I bought a RCA DIVX player from CC in 1999, it was much cheaper than other DVD players since DIVX was already done. I used that player for DVDs for many years.
i had a RCA DIVX player, which had many glitches so i had to exchange it for another, as also happened to a good friend of mine. To CC and RCA Credit, They refunded all of our money for the player and owned Silver DIVX discs, when the program ended.
Even back then I knew Divx would fail. Thanks for making a video about it I had totally forgot about Divx. Now make a video about the downfall of HD DVD please
Worked at Cc during this time. It was a great place to work. I can tell you we all didn’t understand why CC was doing this, but we tried our best to sell it.
Yeah, I imagine that a high percentage of the 17000 registered accounts were CC employees, because there was a sweet employee discount on players around launch
I would add that back then, the pan and scan format was not the laughable thing it is today. I was working at a Video Update when DVD's became a thing and up until that point, almost every VHS release had been formatted to fit the 4:3 aspect ratios of the more common tube TV's of the time. It was pretty rare to see a widescreen adaptation of a movie before DVD's and even then early DVD's were either released in that 4:3 apect ratio or the fancypants disks would have 4:3 and widescreen versions, usually as a dual disk you'd flip to watch one version on either side.
I was a Teenager then. The People that could afford DVD Players at the time, were All in on 16:9 and WANTED Wide Screen. To them, DIVX was like going to the Discount Store to Rent a Perishable DVD with scaled back features. When people brought DVDs in the late 90s, you wanted to get what you paid for. People wanted their Money's Worth.
It wasn't the fact that it was cropped that people had problems with. The problem was with pan and scan. It was the worst of the three or four different methods of cropping/resizing a wide aspect ratio to fit television screens. There is at least one that is far better as it cuts off less of the original image than pan and scan. Pan and scan was pretty much taking a 4:3 box and centering it horizontally and vertically over a 16:9 image, cropping everything outside the 4:3 box. No resizing and no care for loss.
@@PhilLesh69 Yup. DIVX went for the gusto when it came to 4:3 Aspect Ratio, Full Screen and Pan and Scan. Also, DIVX used 420p Resolution instead of 480p like Standard DVDs did at the time. The Transfer Rate and Pixels on CRTs looked rather SHODDY on DIVX when compared to Standard DVD.
Man, I had almost forgotten about the double sided dvd, with different aspect ratios 😂 I'm still trying to understand why 16:9 became the standard, yet there is quite a lot of content these days that ends up being like 50% vertically, with massive black bars again. Have we stepped back in time? Are they trying to force yet another format on us? Or do they think we want to feel like we are vision impaired?
@@joshshoberg8598 I’ve been picking up some old 4:3, pan-and-scan DVDs from pawnshops lately…why, you might ask? Well, it’s not because I have old CRT TVs-it’s ‘cause, with a little cropping, they can fit on an Apple Watch, using an app like Videwatch 😂 The pan-and-scan won’t be perfect, but having that already “in the bag” will help it fit nicely on the Apple Watch methinks 😉
There's just something depressing about the fact that they tried to do the predatory and anti-consumer stuff that streaming services of today do. These guys essentially tried to bring forth a trend in an era too soon - a trend that is already prevalent among many services in the digital age.
It was one of those ideas that probably sounded better on paper than practice. Rentals that you don't have to return!? That just leads to a ton of waste product though. Even worse was the successor format that literally self destructed (unreadable at least) after you watched it X number of times).
It's insane how much privacy culture changed in just 20 years. Back then, everyone was concerned that data *could* be collected. Now all our data is collected, guaranteed, even by FB if you're not on FB, more extensively than Orwell ever imagined in his limited creativity, and we all have collectively done nothing about it, just let it happen.
Reminds me of when they made those DVDs that went black after 2 days after opening so a player couldn't read the disc. It was also an attempt at easy rentals.
I remember those too, usually found at grocery stores in my hometown. I never bought one, but was interested enough to look up how the discs worked! Was kinda wondering if he'd mention those...
Honestly, Netflix was the best solution for everyone. Rent a DVD and mail it back when you were done. NO late fees, no nothing. I still remember getting those red envelopes in the mail. Fun times.
I thought this as well. I think a big hindrance is that there's nothing to motivate people besides the novelty factor. If you do get the discs to read again, you've got an inferior 4:3, standard def DVD with no bonus features. The only reason for somebody to look into this is because it's there, not because they actually want what's on the discs. Still, I hope it happens some day.
They DID try and make DIVX a competitor to regular DVD. They were hoping it would be the standard at least for all the big movies. The Circuit City CEO even said in response to the possibility of regular DVDs being pushed out- “Early adopters do take some risk. It’s regrettable.” They gave it a REALLY hard sell in stores. They definitely played up the availability of Fox and Paramount titles before they started putting out anything on DVD, and Fox overpriced their DVDs to make the DIVX discs look more desirable.
I just watched your Circuit City video yesterday, and I saw the Divx training video pop up and I was like, "Hm, I wonder if Divx will ever be talked about?" and VOLIA here it is lol. Great timing!
I went to Circuit City in Late 98 to buy my first DVD player. The sales man there would only show me the DIVX players. I told him I am not interest in this and I just want a DVD player. I didn't like that I had to go to CC to buy the disc. Also at $4.50 to buy something I can watch once basically was more expensive than renting a DVD and I had no problem returning on time. I think I had to tell the salesman about 4 times in total that I wasn't interested. I did buy just the DVD player. Than not long after that they were discontinuing DIVX. Late 99 when I was putting together my home theater system I went back to CC and I asked them how were those DIVX's doing, knowing the disc were all gone by then. Anyway I found out afterwards the salesman at CC were offered real sizable commissions if they sold a DIVX player. I mean a lot, $450 bonus if they sell one versus $50 if they sold a DVD Player.
I find it funny people fret over the smaller purchases. Yet almost no one realizes or protests over you never really own say the largest purchase most people make in life…a house. You rent from the government in the form of property taxes.
I remember reading about DIVX when it came out and looking at it in the store. I also remember thinking, why would you even want to buy this? There's was no incentive to do so at all.
Got my First DVD Player in late 1999. When DIVX came out, Circuit City was aggressive in trying to get people invested in it. We actually quit going to CC for almost a year and went to Good Guys instead because throughout mid 1998, CC Reps would Not stop pestering us about buying a DIVX DVD Player and using DIVX.
literally NO incentive 😂 i think somebody at CC was partaking in a little of the ole Peruvian Marching Powder 🤣 “this is the best idea I’ve ever had!” lmfao
I love these videos that is why I’m subscribed I find circuit city and dead company videos in general so fascinating and it’s nice to see someone other than company man doing them.
@@joshuapasquale11I think I encountered his channel fairly early on, when there were only a few videos out and he had about five thousand subscribers. Have stayed since and enjoyed the broadening of scope.
The presenter in the Circuit City commercial at the start of this video is Juan Conde. He was a reporter with WRIC 8, an ABC affiliate out of Richmond, Virginia. I remember seeing him on the news as a teenager. He just recently retired after 22 years in the news business in 2021.
It almost sounds like circuit city was under "second generation" family management during the 1990s. Or the first generation had stepped aside and hired MBA types to run the business. Because they lost their forward momentum and focus and disintegrated into a whole bunch of side projects and offshoots all around the same time.
This is like peak 90s insanity. Describe this to someone today and it seems like a joke. "A special DVD player connected to your phone line that read certain discs that could only be watched a certain number of times and then it went kaput.". It felt like a The Producers gambit gone awry, like someone was desperately trying to get fired to collect unemployment but all their bad ideas got greenlit.
You should do a video about Flexplay. It was a similar product in terms of being a no-return movie "rental" on a temporary-use disc, but instead of relying on a special player and phone-based DRM, the disc was coated in chemicals that would make it unreadable after 2 days.
There actually is a "crack" that allows DIVX machines to play any DIVX disc that you can still find on the market if you want to do that for some reason. Also it's worth noting, to Circuit City's credit, anyone who paid for a "Silver" disc could ask for a refund for the conversion fee.
it was not the case that there was no connection between the divx codec and the divx format, though the connection is loose and philosophical the divx codec was for the first time able to compress a whole dvd to the size of a cd. the people who were involved in this effort like everyone halted divx. they found it funny to name a codec that would facilitate widespread privacy after a half-arsed quasi rental scheme.
Yep! IIRC, the original "DivX ;-)" codec was a cracked version of Microsoft's h.263 codec that allowed it to be used in any container format, not just .ASF. Then the original DIVX died, and to borrow a term from jwz, some brand necrophilia happened.
10:27 - There's something so warm and fuzzy-feeling about that image. I'd hate to return to an internet like that, but it was so wonderful at the time.
This reminds me of the "disposable DVDs" that had a brief time for sale. They'd start bright red and darken to be unreadable after 48 hours exposed to oxygen. So wasteful!
You obviously saw my comment on the other video about this. Glad you decided to cover it. I didn't claim it was why CC went under, I called it a debacle, as you have repeated here. Cool.
Enjoyed this very much. I can tell you though, I was there working in the video industry back in 97-98 when all this was going down, and originally it was meant to be a competitor to DVD, that is why Disney, Fox, & Paramount refused to release titles on DVD and were waiting for Divx because they didn't want you to own the title legally or illegally like on video tape. Everyone was comparing to the whole VHS Betamax war at that time. Divx wound up becoming an "enhancement" of DVD players only after having fallen so far behind the release of DVD and all the backlash it was facing in the industry.
Hey man I'm a newer viewer and I love the videos. I love the way you make the content that I don't understand easy and relatable to understand and the varied content it makes it a great. this is the channel i never knew i needed thanks keep up the great work keep on keeping on!!!!!!
I remember a sales associate telling me about DIVX one night, be he described it as a disc that broke down when exposed to air. I had a large collection of VHS and had been slowly swapping them out for DVDs when I seen DIVX. I was no way will I buy something that I can't rewatch a month from now and I need a new player? Turns out because of watching this video I learned the sales associate didn't know what he was talking about when it came to DIVX. I did learn the information of a disc that breaks down was real. Called Flexplay Technologie. The disc when opened would change colors after a few days making it unable to be read by the laser. Color change was red to black. The internet was weird in the begining when I look back. I came online in 97 with a webtv.
@@jasonkelley9072 you're getting it confused with the codec. Btw, to the op thanks for reminding me of Penny Arcade. Haven't gone to their website in probably 18 years after religiously reading their strips back in the day. I got alot of catching up to do.
Lol, I remember this, I worked at future shop at the time, my buddies in electronics hacked the modem activation code, made a modem black box. It was like vhs vs beta max battle in customer minds all over again. Dvd was better in all technical specs, and the software divx took over, Netflix copied the illegal download infrastructure of divx software decoder.
I randomly used DIVX as a digital format. I found I had a DIVX player and then could burn DIVX formated movies to a DVD as a data disk and the DIVX player would read them. You could fit a few movies on one disk. Sort of like MP3 format cd players reading mass amounts of mp3s. This was not a marketed feature I'm sure for reasons.
Its the reason why rental services like this closed down and didn't last long. When you can pickup used DVD, Blu-ray and UHD 4K titles at places like charity shows etc for really cheap. Which are yours to keep and play whenever you like, without any ridiculous restrictions like this.
I bought into this back then. I was looking for a DVD player at the time and they brought this up and figured why not as it was not any more expensive then a standard one when I got it with 3 movies. Never got to use those that discs since I was one of those that never set up an account as I didn't have a credit card at the time and that was something they never told when I bought it. Best part was this was only a few months before it all fell apart and I got sent a check as after it died so I ended up with a really good deal for the general DVD player at the time.
You're not the only one. I never heard of it either until I found a Circuit City training video about DIVX on TH-cam a few years ago. I never knew it existed until then.
@@GrnArrow092 I was 15. I remember it like it was yesterday. The Reaction I saw from people around me including friends and family? "A Crappy Full Aspect Ratio DVD that requires a Phone line to activate and ONLY works for a couple of days? Thanks. But No Thanks".
Eh, it wasnt that complicated. The most annoying bit was the phoneline and wifi wasnt a thing yet so it was necessary. With wifi it would be about as complicated as having a player that can play multiple types of discs, and also has an account to log into... so basically a DVD/blu-ray player with netflix app and those have sold well enough.
I don’t know if the creator of this video was around for the Circuit City DIVX stunt but as home theater enthusiast that was in my mid-20s it was anything but just another option. Basically CC tried to highjack the relatively new DVD format that in those early days still didn’t have a full head of steam. It could have failed. DVD hit test markets in late 1996-early 1997. Not every studio was committed to it yet. Those that were releasing titles still were not releasing their big high demand titles because you can’t have a million disc sales total when the install base is still in the few thousands. DVD was barely out of its test market phase when CC announced DIVX and when CC CEO, Richard Sharpe, was asked about DVD being so new and DIVX having an impact on lowering DVD’s success chances considering CC had been selling DVD players to customers for several months, Sharpe replied callously that you take chances with new formats. DIVX ticked a lot of us enthusiasts off. We are usually the ones that drive adoption of new tech. DIVX didn’t just have plans for ‘rental discs’ that a customer has sitting on their shelves. DIVX was promising some titles could be converted to DIVX Silver discs meaning you’d pay a larger fee to unlock it indefinitely but that title is tied to your account meaning one couldn’t lend it to someone else even if they had a DIVX player. Then DIVX also said they’d sell DIVX Gold discs that were higher priced but they’d be unlocked immediately but I believe they would be locked to an individual’s account. How is this much different than DVD? The backlash Circuit City got from enthusiasts was pretty severe. At the time some studios were releasing lesser desirable titles to DVD and the fear was that high demand titles would only be released on DIVX discs locked behind pay walls for limited viewing periods. At the time Disney hadn’t committed to releasing its Classic Animation titles to DVD but I believe they released Alice in Wonderland on DIVX rental. So the fear was real that high demand titles would be locked behind the pay walls. DIVX backers came in with the Bravado like they already beat DVD but it backfired. Enter TheDigitalBits which was a relatively new website tracking interest in the new DVD format and covered work studios were doing behind the scenes to bring us our favorite films on the new format. The Bits had covered some of DIVX’s working with the studios prior to it hitting the market. After it became apparent that DIVX was not a consumer friendly format but instead looking for a steady stream to a user’s credit card, the Bits editor Bill Hunt wrote an editorial regarding the threat DIVX posed against the new DVD format and they started the ‘OpenDVD’ campaign which argued for outright purchase of our discs and unlimited use. Backlash against DIVX among enthusiasts was pretty strong with many of us vowing not to shop there again. DIVX got a huge black eye in the consumer electronics media. They announced they were discontinuing it after about a year of introduction in 6/99 but would leave the servers going for several years (sometime in the early 00s). Not sure if they ever did DIVX Silver or Gold but even if you paid for an unlimited viewing license as of the shutdown date DIVX discs were useless. I didn’t buy anything at CC for a long time but when I did I made sure it was low enough price they weren’t making much on the sale. The last item I bought there was an AVR in 2008. If any other local retailer would have had the model I wanted. Would have bought elsewhere.
So glad single use DVDS didn’t become a thing. I can’t even imagine how much more waste we would have in landfills with tens of millions of movies people only cared to watch once.
@@AlanCassidy In reality, every American throwing away 20 discs per year would probably be 0.04% more trash. This was a bad idea for many reasons other than trash.
Appreciate the clarification at the start, clicked because I thought it was related to the codec. Still interesting, like when you mentioned the whole "DIVX silver" scheme and such, I thought "This reminds me of Flexplay"
It was a disaster format. During that time period, a huge billboard in San Francisco "Keep DVD an OPEN" format" was a bit of a big deal in those days. Did not touch it with a ten foot pole in those days and knew that it would bomb. Remember, if one purchased the full price DIVIX disk, it would work only on that machine. IF the machine died, you were screwed. That was the issue I had about locking the disk to the machine (if purchased outright). Playing a few times than tossing the disk was another matter. Eventually, this brought the beginning of Netflix by mail disk rental.
Of course they wanted viewing data. They could have loaded up each player with a million hashed strings representing a one time token, and then every disc would have one of those one time hashes embedded as a barcode or as data on the disc itself. They chose a monthly phone home process because that way they could dump a month's worth of viewing data every time each player phoned home. XM radio managed to handle satellite radio subscriptions and signal encryption/decryption on devices that could only receive signals from satellites but could not talk back to them, using hash codes and algorithms instead, around the same time.
@@PhilLesh69 this is how Pay TV in Europe worked as well, they’d send a special message to the smartcard to activate your channels, no communication from your receiver to them needed. There would have been a privacy outrage if it would need to call the provider to activate channels.
I lived in Seattle at the time. Federal Way to be exact. We went to Circuit City in August of 1998 when DIVX was first introduced. They tried like Hell to sell us on it. My Stepdad nearly cussed out one of the Senior Sales Advisors.
It’s interesting, I remember at the time hearing how the format worked was once you unsealed the disc, it would begin to degrade until it was unreadable after 48 hours. I don’t remember anything about phone lines and the ability to renew. I guess there was a lot of misinformation out there, even at the time.
I recently saw a DIVX compatible player at a Salvation army for like 20 dollars. But i also remember my local Circuit City pushed DIVX hard when it came out. They also pushed the SACD format for compact discs which also needed a special cd player. They were twice the price of regular CDs and had very limited selections of artists.
I think I might have had a DVD player that could play DIVX player but I did not know what that was beside it not being the divx codec. I know I got it at Future Shop and it was my first DVD player, it's likely I bought it when they were getting rid of them as it was cheaper than most players, I do not remember the price ($200 to $300 CAD mayber?) or the brand.
I remember shopping in CC and they were explaining divx to me. I was thinking no, if I'm going to buy a movie, I'll just buy a dvd. If I want to rent one, I will go rent it.
I think I actually have a Div-X capable player somewhere. Got it second-hand after 2001 so never used that feature. I should see if I can dig that out, just for the conversation piece.
I had one of these. We honestly only rented a couple of movies and for some reason kept the dvds. One of the movies was deep sea rising. Seemed like a good idea but just didn’t catch on
I feel like the anticipation of the PlayStation 2 and what Blockbuster & Hollywood Video would do with DVD rentals are contributing factors on why DIVX died
I liked the idea of DIVX. It was great for movie rentals. I was a believer. If it was a DVD or Blu Ray player that did not have this format then I was not buying the device. I was sad to know that the format failed.
I bought a DVD player in March 98 so i followed the whole DVD vs DIVX war. The big thing that gave DIVX a fighting chance at first was that Fox and Paramount would not originally sign on with DVD and only support DIVX. So alot of early DVD titles only had movies from Warner, Columbia, MGM and Disney. It put the whole format on hold from being mainstream as either side could not grow unless all studios were on board. Nobody i knew (mainstream people) bought into the DVD or DIVX format in 1998 for this reason. The bottom line was that Warner Brothers was backing DVD so they would never sign with DIVX. So movies like Goodfellas, Bladerunner, Unforgiven, The Fugitive, and other classics at that time would never be released on DIVX? It was a game of chicken. Then in May 1998, Fox and Paramount signed on with DVD and it essentially put DIVX on life support. With every studio supporting DVD, those mainstream people i knew started to buy DVD players and DIVX was dead by 1999.
I have an idea for a video for you. The failed streaming service Target Ticket. I worked at Target at the time and remember them promoting it but thought they would make no money since most of the movies they were renting cost less than $7 to purchase on DVD.
My first DVD player was Divx player from Circuit City... They gave a coupon when they discontinued it year or so later. I don't have any of these left, but I wish I did. That DVD player cost me about $400 and does years ago.
I remember a time when Netflix offered itself to blockbuster for sale and blockbuster laughed at them. The video rental industry had a lot of hubris behind it.
And now that the streaming giants have run out of new ideas, are facing declining margins (growth is slowing, but still profitable), the rental model is coming back. It’s WILD to see that many new-to-streaming movies have $30 price tags for 48hr (or so) rental periods.
@@cameron.t what are you talking about? The rental model of yore is not coming back. People are just not paying for a new streaming service that every single movie studio wants to put out. DVD and BluRay sales have collapsed 90% in not even 2 decades. RedBox declared bankruptcy. You are speaking complete nonsense.
I remember seeing an ad for Divx discs one time, and immediately wrote them off because the players were too expensive and I didn't mind just renting DVD's and bringing them back. Besides, a lot of people didn't like the idea of throwing away disposable discs into landfills.
I got so tired of calling home in the late 90s and getting the callwave answering machine when someone was on the internet. I can only imagine having this thing plugged in would add to the connection back then.
I wanna say it was ahead of its time, but it's so convoluted that I don't see much of the DNA of it existing now. Like it'd make more sense to charge people like netflix, charge them for the gold/silver for a small price and then each disc is at a smaller price but higher than 4.50 (no idea where they arrived at that number). That way customers don't feel like they're getting a raw deal and have to suffer through a lack of features of which these features were designed as selling points for the whole system.
It’s pretty impressive what consumers weren’t willing to put up with when new services were released back in the late 90’s/early 2000’s - only to evolve into our freemium subscription-based models of today that achieved the same result.
![เปิดคำทำนาย นอสตราดามุส - บาบา วานก้า ปี 2025 คนทั่วโลกต้องเจออะไรบ้าง? | แฉ 11 ธ.ค. 67 [2/3] |GMM25](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/xmTIKWJUMPM/mqdefault.jpg)
*Bonus side fact* The spokesperson in the circuit city commercial that you keep playing is named Juan Conde and he was a local Richmond Virginia news anchor that me and my wife would loved watching because he would mess up at least once every broadcast.😂
Hey it’s me Juan Conde. Glad you enjoyed my work.
@@youtubeletmeintoyoutube4580 🐂 💩
@@youtubeletmeintoyoutube4580nope
That was unexpected. Lol
You shouldn't laugh at someone miss speaking if you can barely scrape together a coherent sentence.
😝🤭😜🥴🥴😜😬😬☹️😹💤🌟😤😶🥱🧐😮💨
😵🔫
I forgot how badass the Circuit City logo was at the end of commercials 😂
Glad I'm not the only one who thinks that 👀
You know, for +25 years I thought DIVX and DIVX were the same thing. Thanks for the clarification.
I'm in the UK and never heard of Circuit City or CD masquerading as a 'DIVX'. I had lots of burnt CDs with DIVX on them though ;)
@@wasnr same
@@JohnnyWednesdayya I used to see allot of pirated movies using divx encoding. I’m in Canada and I had no idea it was a media thing, I thought it was just an efficient way to download the compressed file like an mp3.
You're probably referring to Xvid. I was a supplier of DVD's to a scene group for a brief period when I worked at blockbuster around '04. Process was a total pain in the ass: Rip the dvd with dvd decryptor, rar it to split files, burn those files to at least a dozen cd-r's, bring that stack to the college library, copy them to their computer, use a portable version of flashfxp, upload them like five streams at a time, then minimize the programs to the task bar and leave, hoping they were uploaded and that whoever was in charge didnt either see the bandwidth on their end or find the programs running in the taskbar.
@@ocstrangeness there was allot of movies that required divx codecs when file sharing was big in the early 2000's.
I specifically remember divx because it was hard to get them to play on Windows media player at the time.
I remember the Divx debacle like it was yesterday. The home theater audience was eager to have DVD succeed as it took a while to get all of the movie studios on board (Paramount for one was a hold out) and this Divx setup was seen as 1) lower quality as mentioned with 4x3 aspect ratio 2) privacy concerns with your phone dialing out your movie choices and as mentioned the price of the players was WAY more than the already pricey DVD players. Always seemed like a scammy attempt to get people to not "own" anything. Fast forward to today and it's even worse. Physical media for life!
This.
And not even 20 years later DVDs are as irrelevant as ever.
Yep I remember as a kid growing up even I thought that was dumb and during that time I was already complaining about how quality of products was dropping and how companies want to give less for more and it’s funny that fast forward to today my thoughts were correct but even worse than I thought it would be, I buy new old stock of old products to keep my things still going since yeah physical is better and people see me as a hipster or something but in reality it’s just that i choose not to evolve with modern times for yeah I get it I can download movies on my phone but I still prefer to watch movies off my psp because I still have the disc I don’t need WiFi or the stupid license doesn’t expire like seriously I bought a movie but the license expired??? Were I have to rebuy it again? Like WHAT!?
@@Not_Always that’s not even true at all literally people are still buying DVD, I myself buy DVD you just simply cannot beat physical formats that you can own for life and will never disappear from your catalog.
@@Not_Always"Irrelevant as ever." So, you're just going to ignore how it was the number one physical video format for over a decade? DVDs are STILL being produced now. You act like it wasn't successful like LaserDisc or something.
Of course, a higher resolution format would take over, since people want to take full advantage of the highest quality possible.
Once while in a Circuit City store in Denver I joined a group of people who agreed to watch a ten-minute video hyping the benefits of DIVX for the chance to win a $10 gift certificate. I won!
There was another short-term DVD rental alternative called Flexplay. Flexplay discs were red in color and were sold in vacuum-sealed packages. Once the sealed package was opened, the movie disc would oxidize in about 48 hours. After that, it would no longer work. Flexplay had benefits over DIVX in that it would play in most regular DVD players and did not need a phone line nor an account. But Flexplay discs like DIVX would quickly fill up landfills. Flexplay also had problems if the sealed package had been punctured before it was sold. Flexplay too was a failure.
Ah, I was *just* about to post that as a suggestion for a future video. I only ever got one of those things...amusingly at the local Circuit City, IIRC. Interestingly, it was a Mythbusters special...that oddly, was *different* than other releases of the same episode (I don't remember the details of the differences anymore, unfortunately). Granted, since it was a normal DVD other than the 'this media will self destruct' aspect, it fell prey to the bane of rental establishments everywhere, the DVD-ripper program.
I heard you could put them in the freezer when not in use and extend the lifetime of it.
I wonder if some kind of chemical treatment or coating (but the right dimensions so as not to cause interface) could have preserved it.
If the drive couldn't tell the difference, what was stopping people from copying the files and burning them to a new disc?
@@ChristopherBass-k3b Nothing! Though why use up a new disc when you can play straight from the file? :-)
@@ChristopherBass-k3b Nothing, except that I don't think DVD burners were very well established back then, if they existed at all as consumer devices. Hard disk drives were much, much smaller too.
DIVX sounds like DRM hell when you described how it works.
it was.
Ha ha, DRM. That takes me back to the PS3 Xbox 360 days when Xbox One was announced...with DRM and it was IMMEDIATELY LAMBASTED by Gamer consumers. (But I remember the LAME Xbot fanboys pushing it like nice little slaves. "Get used to it", they all said. "It's the future", they all said like stupid loyal fanboys.)
I remember how Microsoft lied and said they couldn't reverse DRM before the launch of the Xbox One because "It's built into the design of the console. You can't just switch it off like a light switch"...
and then Sony responded like geniuses with their "This is how you share your games on PS4" video here on TH-cam...All the GAMERS support PS4 and boycott Xbox One simply because of that anti-consumer practice known as Digital Rights Management...
and then Microsoft proved they were liars because they did indeed "Flip the switch" and suddenly Xbox One didn't have DRM anymore.
Ohhh those days when I wasn't so concerned with politics and I was just some naive young college kid that would have voted for Kumala Harris like a compliant sheep for Hollywood and the media. All the idiots that blindly champion technology like that are not much different that political fanboys...especially the Democrat type that now say that men can get pregnant.)
@@marcbittner It IS. 100% DRM.
@@dcpunisher4781 🤨🤨
@@Not_Always Just an Incel looking to troll and cause trouble. They RANDOMLY bring Trump into ANY video regardless of its Subject Matter. For some odd reason. Emphasis on "Trolls".
I worked at Circuit City when this came out. Everybody thought it was a little goofy, but Hollywood and Blockbuster video was a big deal back then. I think the most optimistic I ever was with a customer was "It's pretty neat to have if you're already upgrading to DVD." It seems silly now when we're so conscious about single-use plastics, whereas that was the intention, here.
It made me so mad I used all my saving to buy a DVD player when I was 15 then Divx came out like 2 years later I wonted to rent movies but was not gonna buy another DVD player at that time. But I remember all most all the movies were in Pan and scan so it didn't bother me too much because we watched everthing in Wide Screen back then so I was like I guess I can't use that
@@JunkerDC I was 15 years old in 1998. At the time, Blockbuster Video didn't carry DVD Rentals, Yet. The CEO at the time, John Antico said that "DVDs are a Niche Product. More People own VHS than DVD Players. Blockbuster just currently doesn't see much large profit potential in DVD Rentals at the moment, but we're proud to Announce that beginning January 1,1999, we will be carrying DVD Rentals. In the Meantime, sign up for our Blockbuster Club program and Gift and Credit Card and get up to 12 Free Rentals for up to 6 months!". This Statement pissed so many people off. Blockbuster Saw an 18% drop in Regular Subscribed Customers in 1998.
Circuit City, Thompson,Symphonic/KMart and the MPAA all created the DIVX Venture. But Circuit City was in charge and had more stake in it. The Idea was that CC believed it could capture that 18% of Longtime Blockbuster Customers and that since Blockbuster was NOT carrying DVD rentals, More and more Disgruntled Loyal Customers would come to Circuit City and smaller Affiliates like Good Guys, and even the Large Frys to "Buy/Rent" Disposable DRM Riddled DIVX DVDs. At First, DIVX seemed like it had viability as it DID do very well by the time it started Test Marketing in the Summer of 1998, but the first sign of Trouble came when Frys Quickly Abandoned it after only 3 months. Holiday Sales were Not great, but since it was revealed that Blockbuster would charge an Expensive $7.50 Rental Fee for DVDs, Circuit City believed it still had potential, but in January of 1999, after dismal holiday returns, Thompson,Symphonic/KMart, Good Guys and everyone else bailed on DIVX leaving Circuit City to carry the entire NOW Money losing Venture. It turns out, MAJORITY of Blockbuster's Disgruntled Customers had migrated over to Hollywood Video who not only starting Renting DVD EARLY in November of 1997, but only charged $5 for 3 Day Rentals with just 99 Cents a day if not returned by the end of the 3 days. To Blockbuster Defectors, DIVX just seemed Shortsighted. Hollywood Video used a Special and Revolutionary "Online Rental Reserve" System. You could literally check the Library of Hollywood Video at Said Location on their Website and could "RESERVE" a New Release for FREE. This was Godsend for us. So the logic was simple: "Why go to Circuit City and pay $4 for a DIVX Disc that will only work for 2 days and requires a Long and Annoying Phone Line to activate? When I can Simply go to HollywoodVideo Dot com and Check an RESERVE a New Release, time when I go pick it up and only pay Five Dollars to rent it on DVD and just $1.50 on VHS for 3 days?"
Back then every man woman and child received at least seven AOL sign-up CD-r discs per week in the mail.
People still cared about the environment then too. Single use plastics aren't a super modern concern.
How hard did management push you to sell it at your location? Or did they see it as it ended up as well?
I bought a dvd in March of 98 at Montgomery Wards. I remember going to CC shortly after. The salesman told me dvd was gonna be replaced by divx and I kinda bought into it before doing my own investing. I was a bit worried, but not for long at all. It died that quickly. I went back after and saw the same Salman and asked, "what happened to Divx?". And very dramatically, he said, "It Died!!!" LOL. I think he knew it wasn't gonna win. To his credit, that was pretty funny. It made up for any worry that he put in my mind upon him giving me the grim news that I bought a soon to be obsolete format... yes, dvd hasn't lasted long at all...
The staus of the disc was monitored over the phone line 😲. What's even more shocking was that the internet was accessed through said phone lines at the time
It feels like there was like 5 different things called DIVX.
This weird disc format, like a website I can only vaguely remember, some proprietary codec I didn't understand, a media player that felt like spyware? All these things have bleed together in my mind and I don't even know which parts are true or not.
@wabbit234 this is what I remember, when you'd torrent movies in the stone age they were often in some divx codex that needed a special media player or something.
I believe the DIVX codec movies would play when burned to a DVD as a data disk, on DIVX players. You could "backup" and fit a few formatted movies on one disk.
I'm 40, and I never knew Divx was a rental thing from Circuit City. I only knew it as a format in the bootlegging scene. Lol.
After Divx failed, another company took the abandoned Divx name for their fairly good video encoder. People would rip DVDs with the Divx encoder and put the name Divx in the file name.
im with you this is unknown. i remember those .dixv files i remember my first divx download was an called anime blood the last vampire. all divx files was good quality in those days
2:45 Another big part was that, by renting, people could try out games they were interested in, without the risk of buying it and not liking it. As you said, the internet was still young, so people couldn't exactly hop on TH-cam and watch some gameplay etc.
Pirating games back then was a nightmare anyways. I had a the best DSL connection you could get in 1999, my dad had a business line, and it took me 4 days to download Jedi Knight. A game that fit on a single CD.
Renting a game from blockbuster was the best way to try out a game by far.
@@bipolarminddroppings depending on where you live i say "not possible" - 1 hour 52 minutes 50.83 seconds is how long it would take at full speed on a 768kbit/s DSL line in 1999 (i had that speed in two locations) - and 1999 cable modems already existed at 1.5-3mbit.
4 days sounds a lot like your dad told you he was letting you use DSL but you were really using networked 14.4 dialup - 4 days 7 hours 10 minutes 28.57 seconds
I bought a RCA DIVX player from CC in 1999, it was much cheaper than other DVD players since DIVX was already done. I used that player for DVDs for many years.
I love how often he says DIVX in that opening commercial
What does he say?
Gotta make people remember the name
i had a RCA DIVX player, which had many glitches so i had to exchange it for another, as also happened to a good friend of mine. To CC and RCA Credit, They refunded all of our money for the player and owned Silver DIVX discs, when the program ended.
Even back then I knew Divx would fail. Thanks for making a video about it I had totally forgot about Divx. Now make a video about the downfall of HD DVD please
HD-DVD was 10X better than Blu-Ray.
The downfall of hd-dvdwas the porn industry, the same with the batamax-vhs argument. What ever format the porn industry uses it's becomes mainstream
@@rodnemeth6766 Actually, there were some Pornos that did make it to Beta.
Worked at Cc during this time. It was a great place to work. I can tell you we all didn’t understand why CC was doing this, but we tried our best to sell it.
Yeah, I imagine that a high percentage of the 17000 registered accounts were CC employees, because there was a sweet employee discount on players around launch
That format always struck me as being something the could only have been dreamed up by high-priced and clueless lawyers.
with a lot of cocaine involved lmao
@@poindextertunes "We found that there was no Demand for Wide Screen DVDs. Its just not there".
now i know why those clips of movies id watch on youtube as a kid said "DIVX" in the corner lol
"Where service is state of the art"
I would add that back then, the pan and scan format was not the laughable thing it is today. I was working at a Video Update when DVD's became a thing and up until that point, almost every VHS release had been formatted to fit the 4:3 aspect ratios of the more common tube TV's of the time. It was pretty rare to see a widescreen adaptation of a movie before DVD's and even then early DVD's were either released in that 4:3 apect ratio or the fancypants disks would have 4:3 and widescreen versions, usually as a dual disk you'd flip to watch one version on either side.
I was a Teenager then. The People that could afford DVD Players at the time, were All in on 16:9 and WANTED Wide Screen. To them, DIVX was like going to the Discount Store to Rent a Perishable DVD with scaled back features. When people brought DVDs in the late 90s, you wanted to get what you paid for. People wanted their Money's Worth.
It wasn't the fact that it was cropped that people had problems with. The problem was with pan and scan. It was the worst of the three or four different methods of cropping/resizing a wide aspect ratio to fit television screens. There is at least one that is far better as it cuts off less of the original image than pan and scan. Pan and scan was pretty much taking a 4:3 box and centering it horizontally and vertically over a 16:9 image, cropping everything outside the 4:3 box. No resizing and no care for loss.
@@PhilLesh69 Yup. DIVX went for the gusto when it came to 4:3 Aspect Ratio, Full Screen and Pan and Scan. Also, DIVX used 420p Resolution instead of 480p like Standard DVDs did at the time. The Transfer Rate and Pixels on CRTs looked rather SHODDY on DIVX when compared to Standard DVD.
Man, I had almost forgotten about the double sided dvd, with different aspect ratios 😂
I'm still trying to understand why 16:9 became the standard, yet there is quite a lot of content these days that ends up being like 50% vertically, with massive black bars again. Have we stepped back in time? Are they trying to force yet another format on us? Or do they think we want to feel like we are vision impaired?
@@joshshoberg8598 I’ve been picking up some old 4:3, pan-and-scan DVDs from pawnshops lately…why, you might ask? Well, it’s not because I have old CRT TVs-it’s ‘cause, with a little cropping, they can fit on an Apple Watch, using an app like Videwatch 😂 The pan-and-scan won’t be perfect, but having that already “in the bag” will help it fit nicely on the Apple Watch methinks 😉
There's just something depressing about the fact that they tried to do the predatory and anti-consumer stuff that streaming services of today do. These guys essentially tried to bring forth a trend in an era too soon - a trend that is already prevalent among many services in the digital age.
It was one of those ideas that probably sounded better on paper than practice. Rentals that you don't have to return!? That just leads to a ton of waste product though. Even worse was the successor format that literally self destructed (unreadable at least) after you watched it X number of times).
It's insane how much privacy culture changed in just 20 years. Back then, everyone was concerned that data *could* be collected. Now all our data is collected, guaranteed, even by FB if you're not on FB, more extensively than Orwell ever imagined in his limited creativity, and we all have collectively done nothing about it, just let it happen.
Reminds me of when they made those DVDs that went black after 2 days after opening so a player couldn't read the disc. It was also an attempt at easy rentals.
I remember those too, usually found at grocery stores in my hometown. I never bought one, but was interested enough to look up how the discs worked! Was kinda wondering if he'd mention those...
@@5torieTyme maybe he'll do a Video on those lol
Honestly, Netflix was the best solution for everyone. Rent a DVD and mail it back when you were done. NO late fees, no nothing. I still remember getting those red envelopes in the mail. Fun times.
Flex play
@@aaronlane8276 that's it! Lol
Did nobody ever hack these things? I feel like for all their encryption and disposable tech, there has to be a way to make those things work.
@@LotharTheFellhanded same! I looked this up a few years ago and couldn’t find anything on it, and I still own a few divx discs.
I thought this as well. I think a big hindrance is that there's nothing to motivate people besides the novelty factor. If you do get the discs to read again, you've got an inferior 4:3, standard def DVD with no bonus features. The only reason for somebody to look into this is because it's there, not because they actually want what's on the discs. Still, I hope it happens some day.
They DID try and make DIVX a competitor to regular DVD. They were hoping it would be the standard at least for all the big movies. The Circuit City CEO even said in response to the possibility of regular DVDs being pushed out- “Early adopters do take some risk. It’s regrettable.”
They gave it a REALLY hard sell in stores. They definitely played up the availability of Fox and Paramount titles before they started putting out anything on DVD, and Fox overpriced their DVDs to make the DIVX discs look more desirable.
I just watched your Circuit City video yesterday, and I saw the Divx training video pop up and I was like, "Hm, I wonder if Divx will ever be talked about?" and VOLIA here it is lol. Great timing!
"Volia."
Ah, yes, the phone line ... satellite boxes used to use that for charging for PPV content.
I went to Circuit City in Late 98 to buy my first DVD player. The sales man there would only show me the DIVX players. I told him I am not interest in this and I just want a DVD player. I didn't like that I had to go to CC to buy the disc. Also at $4.50 to buy something I can watch once basically was more expensive than renting a DVD and I had no problem returning on time. I think I had to tell the salesman about 4 times in total that I wasn't interested. I did buy just the DVD player. Than not long after that they were discontinuing DIVX. Late 99 when I was putting together my home theater system I went back to CC and I asked them how were those DIVX's doing, knowing the disc were all gone by then. Anyway I found out afterwards the salesman at CC were offered real sizable commissions if they sold a DIVX player. I mean a lot, $450 bonus if they sell one versus $50 if they sold a DVD Player.
The precursor to _"You will own nothing and be happy",_ yes? 🤔
I find it funny people fret over the smaller purchases. Yet almost no one realizes or protests over you never really own say the largest purchase most people make in life…a house. You rent from the government in the form of property taxes.
No, at least not anymore then standard renting. It’s just renting with a few poorly aged extra steps.
People don't realize video stores... work by you returning and since you were there.. you rented another movie... that is how they made money.
I remember reading about DIVX when it came out and looking at it in the store. I also remember thinking, why would you even want to buy this? There's was no incentive to do so at all.
Got my First DVD Player in late 1999. When DIVX came out, Circuit City was aggressive in trying to get people invested in it. We actually quit going to CC for almost a year and went to Good Guys instead because throughout mid 1998, CC Reps would Not stop pestering us about buying a DIVX DVD Player and using DIVX.
literally NO incentive 😂 i think somebody at CC was partaking in a little of the ole Peruvian Marching Powder 🤣
“this is the best idea I’ve ever had!” lmfao
@@poindextertunes IKR? "It's almost Impossible to believe that DIVX could go under!"
I'm so glad you covered this disaster. Insane. Actually commented on this on the fall of Circuit City format. This thing was a mess.
I love these videos that is why I’m subscribed I find circuit city and dead company videos in general so fascinating and it’s nice to see someone other than company man doing them.
I wound up on his channel because of the train content and just stayed
@@joshuapasquale11I think I encountered his channel fairly early on, when there were only a few videos out and he had about five thousand subscribers. Have stayed since and enjoyed the broadening of scope.
The presenter in the Circuit City commercial at the start of this video is Juan Conde. He was a reporter with WRIC 8, an ABC affiliate out of Richmond, Virginia. I remember seeing him on the news as a teenager. He just recently retired after 22 years in the news business in 2021.
Circuit City also started CarMax which ended up being profitable for CM but less focus on CC
What a weird company for CC to start.
It almost sounds like circuit city was under "second generation" family management during the 1990s. Or the first generation had stepped aside and hired MBA types to run the business. Because they lost their forward momentum and focus and disintegrated into a whole bunch of side projects and offshoots all around the same time.
@@Not_Always I find it ironic that Best Buy was their main competitor yet they use the same color scheme, blue and yellow
This is like peak 90s insanity. Describe this to someone today and it seems like a joke. "A special DVD player connected to your phone line that read certain discs that could only be watched a certain number of times and then it went kaput.". It felt like a The Producers gambit gone awry, like someone was desperately trying to get fired to collect unemployment but all their bad ideas got greenlit.
You should do a video about Flexplay. It was a similar product in terms of being a no-return movie "rental" on a temporary-use disc, but instead of relying on a special player and phone-based DRM, the disc was coated in chemicals that would make it unreadable after 2 days.
Came to your channel for the trains but loving the retail collapse videos as of late.
Oh and DIVX. What a failure that was!
There actually is a "crack" that allows DIVX machines to play any DIVX disc that you can still find on the market if you want to do that for some reason. Also it's worth noting, to Circuit City's credit, anyone who paid for a "Silver" disc could ask for a refund for the conversion fee.
Oh really, and how would we find out how to do that?
@@TheMediaHoarder- the internet?
@@TheMediaHoarderGoogle?
@@TheMediaHoarderwhy would you ever want to resurrect an impractical dead technology from two decades ago?
@@poindextertunesI mean 8 Tracks are starting to become a popular collector’s item.
it was not the case that there was no connection between the divx codec and the divx format, though the connection is loose and philosophical
the divx codec was for the first time able to compress a whole dvd to the size of a cd. the people who were involved in this effort like everyone halted divx. they found it funny to name a codec that would facilitate widespread privacy after a half-arsed quasi rental scheme.
Yep! IIRC, the original "DivX ;-)" codec was a cracked version of Microsoft's h.263 codec that allowed it to be used in any container format, not just .ASF.
Then the original DIVX died, and to borrow a term from jwz, some brand necrophilia happened.
10:27 - There's something so warm and fuzzy-feeling about that image. I'd hate to return to an internet like that, but it was so wonderful at the time.
I would hardly say it was wonderful, but it certainly kept my 10 year old ass busy
This reminds me of the "disposable DVDs" that had a brief time for sale. They'd start bright red and darken to be unreadable after 48 hours exposed to oxygen. So wasteful!
Yup. Flexplay.
@@Tornado1994 and DVD-D
@@wadmodderschalton5763 That's right. That was its late trade name.
You obviously saw my comment on the other video about this. Glad you decided to cover it. I didn't claim it was why CC went under, I called it a debacle, as you have repeated here. Cool.
I appreciate the petty cropping of their 4:3 footage to the common TH-cam 16:9 w/o the courtesy of letterboxing it.
Enjoyed this very much. I can tell you though, I was there working in the video industry back in 97-98 when all this was going down, and originally it was meant to be a competitor to DVD, that is why Disney, Fox, & Paramount refused to release titles on DVD and were waiting for Divx because they didn't want you to own the title legally or illegally like on video tape. Everyone was comparing to the whole VHS Betamax war at that time. Divx wound up becoming an "enhancement" of DVD players only after having fallen so far behind the release of DVD and all the backlash it was facing in the industry.
Hey man I'm a newer viewer and I love the videos. I love the way you make the content that I don't understand easy and relatable to understand and the varied content it makes it a great. this is the channel i never knew i needed thanks keep up the great work keep on keeping on!!!!!!
I remember a sales associate telling me about DIVX one night, be he described it as a disc that broke down when exposed to air. I had a large collection of VHS and had been slowly swapping them out for DVDs when I seen DIVX. I was no way will I buy something that I can't rewatch a month from now and I need a new player? Turns out because of watching this video I learned the sales associate didn't know what he was talking about when it came to DIVX. I did learn the information of a disc that breaks down was real. Called Flexplay Technologie. The disc when opened would change colors after a few days making it unable to be read by the laser. Color change was red to black. The internet was weird in the begining when I look back. I came online in 97 with a webtv.
but that does somewhat sound like Flexplay the dvd's would break down after being opened
DIVX lasted a million times longer as a joke character in the Penny Arcade web comics than it ever did in reality
I downloaded lots of divx back in the day.
There was a divx media player on the internet back in the day
@@jasonkelley9072 you're getting it confused with the codec. Btw, to the op thanks for reminding me of Penny Arcade. Haven't gone to their website in probably 18 years after religiously reading their strips back in the day. I got alot of catching up to do.
Lol, I remember this, I worked at future shop at the time, my buddies in electronics hacked the modem activation code, made a modem black box. It was like vhs vs beta max battle in customer minds all over again. Dvd was better in all technical specs, and the software divx took over, Netflix copied the illegal download infrastructure of divx software decoder.
Great video! I never heard of this before. Growing up before VHS watching the evolution has been fascinating.
I randomly used DIVX as a digital format. I found I had a DIVX player and then could burn DIVX formated movies to a DVD as a data disk and the DIVX player would read them. You could fit a few movies on one disk. Sort of like MP3 format cd players reading mass amounts of mp3s. This was not a marketed feature I'm sure for reasons.
Before Best Buy, there were Good Guys and Circuit City for all your electronic needs.
Its the reason why rental services like this closed down and didn't last long. When you can pickup used DVD, Blu-ray and UHD 4K titles at places like charity shows etc for really cheap. Which are yours to keep and play whenever you like, without any ridiculous restrictions like this.
Don’t forget about the great and powerful Laser Disk players….
I bought into this back then. I was looking for a DVD player at the time and they brought this up and figured why not as it was not any more expensive then a standard one when I got it with 3 movies. Never got to use those that discs since I was one of those that never set up an account as I didn't have a credit card at the time and that was something they never told when I bought it. Best part was this was only a few months before it all fell apart and I got sent a check as after it died so I ended up with a really good deal for the general DVD player at the time.
Watched all the way to the end because your mom liked it. Cracks me up every time 😁.
Holy crap, this is SSSOOOOO complicated!!
I was in my 20s when this came out, and I have ZERO memory of it!
My head's spinning.
You're not the only one. I never heard of it either until I found a Circuit City training video about DIVX on TH-cam a few years ago. I never knew it existed until then.
@@GrnArrow092 I was 15. I remember it like it was yesterday. The Reaction I saw from people around me including friends and family? "A Crappy Full Aspect Ratio DVD that requires a Phone line to activate and ONLY works for a couple of days? Thanks. But No Thanks".
I was younger than you when this came out, but I do remember it well. Just like Zip discs...RIP
@@Not_Always I'm a Xennial. I remember Zip Disks and Zip Drive as well.
Eh, it wasnt that complicated. The most annoying bit was the phoneline and wifi wasnt a thing yet so it was necessary. With wifi it would be about as complicated as having a player that can play multiple types of discs, and also has an account to log into... so basically a DVD/blu-ray player with netflix app and those have sold well enough.
I don’t know if the creator of this video was around for the Circuit City DIVX stunt but as home theater enthusiast that was in my mid-20s it was anything but just another option. Basically CC tried to highjack the relatively new DVD format that in those early days still didn’t have a full head of steam. It could have failed.
DVD hit test markets in late 1996-early 1997. Not every studio was committed to it yet. Those that were releasing titles still were not releasing their big high demand titles because you can’t have a million disc sales total when the install base is still in the few thousands. DVD was barely out of its test market phase when CC announced DIVX and when CC CEO, Richard Sharpe, was asked about DVD being so new and DIVX having an impact on lowering DVD’s success chances considering CC had been selling DVD players to customers for several months, Sharpe replied callously that you take chances with new formats.
DIVX ticked a lot of us enthusiasts off. We are usually the ones that drive adoption of new tech.
DIVX didn’t just have plans for ‘rental discs’ that a customer has sitting on their shelves. DIVX was promising some titles could be converted to DIVX Silver discs meaning you’d pay a larger fee to unlock it indefinitely but that title is tied to your account meaning one couldn’t lend it to someone else even if they had a DIVX player. Then DIVX also said they’d sell DIVX Gold discs that were higher priced but they’d be unlocked immediately but I believe they would be locked to an individual’s account. How is this much different than DVD? The backlash Circuit City got from enthusiasts was pretty severe. At the time some studios were releasing lesser desirable titles to DVD and the fear was that high demand titles would only be released on DIVX discs locked behind pay walls for limited viewing periods. At the time Disney hadn’t committed to releasing its Classic Animation titles to DVD but I believe they released Alice in Wonderland on DIVX rental. So the fear was real that high demand titles would be locked behind the pay walls.
DIVX backers came in with the Bravado like they already beat DVD but it backfired. Enter TheDigitalBits which was a relatively new website tracking interest in the new DVD format and covered work studios were doing behind the scenes to bring us our favorite films on the new format.
The Bits had covered some of DIVX’s working with the studios prior to it hitting the market. After it became apparent that DIVX was not a consumer friendly format but instead looking for a steady stream to a user’s credit card, the Bits editor Bill Hunt wrote an editorial regarding the threat DIVX posed against the new DVD format and they started the ‘OpenDVD’ campaign which argued for outright purchase of our discs and unlimited use.
Backlash against DIVX among enthusiasts was pretty strong with many of us vowing not to shop there again. DIVX got a huge black eye in the consumer electronics media. They announced they were discontinuing it after about a year of introduction in 6/99 but would leave the servers going for several years (sometime in the early 00s). Not sure if they ever did DIVX Silver or Gold but even if you paid for an unlimited viewing license as of the shutdown date DIVX discs were useless.
I didn’t buy anything at CC for a long time but when I did I made sure it was low enough price they weren’t making much on the sale. The last item I bought there was an AVR in 2008. If any other local retailer would have had the model I wanted. Would have bought elsewhere.
So glad single use DVDS didn’t become a thing. I can’t even imagine how much more waste we would have in landfills with tens of millions of movies people only cared to watch once.
@@AlanCassidy In reality, every American throwing away 20 discs per year would probably be 0.04% more trash. This was a bad idea for many reasons other than trash.
As opposed to all the discs thrown out because nobody watches dvds anymore or listens to CDs.
@@SVW1976 obv they were not sold as potential single use items from the moment of sale.
@@SVW1976 Nah, plenty of people still use and collect DVDs and CDs.
Doesn't seem like the public cared about AOL sending out physical discs to EVERYONE that were immediately trashed
Divx was just ahead of the game, now everything is pay to play 😢
Lol, not if you know where to look. Nothing has changed at all for me.
Facts! Lol@@Not_Always
1:17 That girl on the left wasn't even trying! And what the hell is mom doing?
Have you made a video on Hastings? You're getting me nostalgic with all of these old stores.
Great video Darkness. Your humor is hilarious.
Actually, CC promoted it as the alternative to DVD.
I remember buying the full disc and being sad that I couldn't use it after divx went away. That and mini discs taught me to be weary of new tech
Appreciate the clarification at the start, clicked because I thought it was related to the codec.
Still interesting, like when you mentioned the whole "DIVX silver" scheme and such, I thought "This reminds me of Flexplay"
It was a disaster format. During that time period, a huge billboard in San Francisco "Keep DVD an OPEN" format" was a bit of a big deal in those days. Did not touch it with a ten foot pole in those days and knew that it would bomb. Remember, if one purchased the full price DIVIX disk, it would work only on that machine. IF the machine died, you were screwed. That was the issue I had about locking the disk to the machine (if purchased outright). Playing a few times than tossing the disk was another matter. Eventually, this brought the beginning of Netflix by mail disk rental.
My local Circuit City building is now a discount suit shop. It's doing well.
Good vid, you need a better mic though:)
Of course they wanted viewing data. They could have loaded up each player with a million hashed strings representing a one time token, and then every disc would have one of those one time hashes embedded as a barcode or as data on the disc itself. They chose a monthly phone home process because that way they could dump a month's worth of viewing data every time each player phoned home.
XM radio managed to handle satellite radio subscriptions and signal encryption/decryption on devices that could only receive signals from satellites but could not talk back to them, using hash codes and algorithms instead, around the same time.
@@PhilLesh69 this is how Pay TV in Europe worked as well, they’d send a special message to the smartcard to activate your channels, no communication from your receiver to them needed. There would have been a privacy outrage if it would need to call the provider to activate channels.
Still remember going into a Circuit City south of Seattle and seeing DVDs for the first time. I remember the DIVX section too. Time sure does fly.
I lived in Seattle at the time. Federal Way to be exact. We went to Circuit City in August of 1998 when DIVX was first introduced. They tried like Hell to sell us on it. My Stepdad nearly cussed out one of the Senior Sales Advisors.
@Tornado1994 yup that's the one.
It’s interesting, I remember at the time hearing how the format worked was once you unsealed the disc, it would begin to degrade until it was unreadable after 48 hours. I don’t remember anything about phone lines and the ability to renew. I guess there was a lot of misinformation out there, even at the time.
That was a different format, 'Flexplay'.
I recently saw a DIVX compatible player at a Salvation army for like 20 dollars. But i also remember my local Circuit City pushed DIVX hard when it came out. They also pushed the SACD format for compact discs which also needed a special cd player. They were twice the price of regular CDs and had very limited selections of artists.
I think I might have had a DVD player that could play DIVX player but I did not know what that was beside it not being the divx codec. I know I got it at Future Shop and it was my first DVD player, it's likely I bought it when they were getting rid of them as it was cheaper than most players, I do not remember the price ($200 to $300 CAD mayber?) or the brand.
R.I.P. junk technology!!!
I remember shopping in CC and they were explaining divx to me. I was thinking no, if I'm going to buy a movie, I'll just buy a dvd. If I want to rent one, I will go rent it.
I think I actually have a Div-X capable player somewhere. Got it second-hand after 2001 so never used that feature. I should see if I can dig that out, just for the conversation piece.
terrible.... i think on demand digital cable came out shortly after this... making this completely obsolete.
directv also made u plug into the phone line for pay per view...
I had one of these. We honestly only rented a couple of movies and for some reason kept the dvds. One of the movies was deep sea rising. Seemed like a good idea but just didn’t catch on
I feel like the anticipation of the PlayStation 2 and what Blockbuster & Hollywood Video would do with DVD rentals are contributing factors on why DIVX died
This was the dumbest idea ever
Man, i bought my first boom box five CD slot radio from them!
I liked the idea of DIVX. It was great for movie rentals. I was a believer. If it was a DVD or Blu Ray player that did not have this format then I was not buying the device. I was sad to know that the format failed.
I bought a DVD player in March 98 so i followed the whole DVD vs DIVX war. The big thing that gave DIVX a fighting chance at first was that Fox and Paramount would not originally sign on with DVD and only support DIVX.
So alot of early DVD titles only had movies from Warner, Columbia, MGM and Disney. It put the whole format on hold from being mainstream as either side could not grow unless all studios were on board. Nobody i knew (mainstream people) bought into the DVD or DIVX format in 1998 for this reason.
The bottom line was that Warner Brothers was backing DVD so they would never sign with DIVX. So movies like Goodfellas, Bladerunner, Unforgiven, The Fugitive, and other classics at that time would never be released on DIVX? It was a game of chicken.
Then in May 1998, Fox and Paramount signed on with DVD and it essentially put DIVX on life support. With every studio supporting DVD, those mainstream people i knew started to buy DVD players and DIVX was dead by 1999.
They pushed it to early. The early adopters of dvd didn’t want them and pushed back hard. These took all the good stuff away
I have an idea for a video for you. The failed streaming service Target Ticket. I worked at Target at the time and remember them promoting it but thought they would make no money since most of the movies they were renting cost less than $7 to purchase on DVD.
My first DVD player was Divx player from Circuit City... They gave a coupon when they discontinued it year or so later. I don't have any of these left, but I wish I did. That DVD player cost me about $400 and does years ago.
I remember a time when Netflix offered itself to blockbuster for sale and blockbuster laughed at them. The video rental industry had a lot of hubris behind it.
And now that the streaming giants have run out of new ideas, are facing declining margins (growth is slowing, but still profitable), the rental model is coming back.
It’s WILD to see that many new-to-streaming movies have $30 price tags for 48hr (or so) rental periods.
and now my best friend is the CCO/CEO of Netflix--Ted Sarandos
@@cameron.t what are you talking about? The rental model of yore is not coming back. People are just not paying for a new streaming service that every single movie studio wants to put out. DVD and BluRay sales have collapsed 90% in not even 2 decades. RedBox declared bankruptcy. You are speaking complete nonsense.
@@cameron.tthats why I sail the high seas 🏴☠️
Netflix bypassed local stores, so obviously all of the Blockbuster stores would have opposed it. No hubris.
Great video, I never knew this even existed but I was 17 at the time, by any chance did you record your voice on a potato microphone from 10ft away?
I remember seeing an ad for Divx discs one time, and immediately wrote them off because the players were too expensive and I didn't mind just renting DVD's and bringing them back. Besides, a lot of people didn't like the idea of throwing away disposable discs into landfills.
Going to Blockbuster was part of the fun! you bring back your movie, you get another one, bring it back, get another one. It was the experience!
When I learned about DIVX, I though the idea sucked.
When I learned that DIVX died, I was amused and glad.
it's really had to put into words how much people despised divx.
I got so tired of calling home in the late 90s and getting the callwave answering machine when someone was on the internet. I can only imagine having this thing plugged in would add to the connection back then.
oh shit talk about a blast from the past. I haven't heard DIVX in 20 years.
I wanna say it was ahead of its time, but it's so convoluted that I don't see much of the DNA of it existing now. Like it'd make more sense to charge people like netflix, charge them for the gold/silver for a small price and then each disc is at a smaller price but higher than 4.50 (no idea where they arrived at that number). That way customers don't feel like they're getting a raw deal and have to suffer through a lack of features of which these features were designed as selling points for the whole system.
It’s pretty impressive what consumers weren’t willing to put up with when new services were released back in the late 90’s/early 2000’s - only to evolve into our freemium subscription-based models of today that achieved the same result.
That was me and the circuit City commercial. I think we shot that about 25 years ago.
1998.