Roughly 600 films from four major Hollywood studios will soon be available in DivX, a file format that's less restrictive on how consumers can use it.
Film Fresh, an online retailer that deals exclusively in DivX, will sell the films, according to the Los Angeles Times. The participating studios are Warner Bros., Sony Pictures, Paramount and Lionsgate, the latter two of which agreed to use DivX earlier this month (Sony and Warner signed on in October). FilmFresh will be the first retailer to offer Hollywood-produced DivX movies in the United States.
DivX has come a long way from being a rogue file format favored by pirates, but its digital rights management is still more lenient on usage than the CSS DRM preferred by movie studios. It's possible to burn DivX onto DVD from any burner, and to store DivX files on portable drives and memory cards for watching on other DivX-compatible devices.
The trade-off is that not every DVD player supports DivX, but the L.A. Times notes that compatibility is increasing, especially from makers of TVs and mobile devices.
For now, the files will be available for purchase only, costing between $10 and 16. Studios may be considering DivX rentals, but I think they're possibly worried about people burning to DVD for viewing after the rental period has passed. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw some additional DRM in place before DivX rentals are made possible.
Still, this is good news for fans of digital distribution. Obviously, the most consumer-friendly solution would be no DRM at all, but I'm not holding my breath for that. For many consumers, being able to carry their video files around or burn them to DVD will be good enough.
