Full Transcript:

Eric Grab: My name is Eric Grab, I am with DivX Incorporate.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Hi, tell us a little bit about DivX?

Eric Grab: Yes, DivX is a digital media company and we make technology that enables video communities and a video technology. Thing I’ve got, take this is the MP3 video, we have great technology around video. We have a great program called DivX certification that allows to put our technology into consumer electronics. There find all kinds of DVD players and cameras that can actually do DivX. We also have software on the PC, so you can get your video on the PC. Get it to some body’s consumer electronic devices and we can also go, what’s really interesting is we have an alpha content community site called Stage6.divix.com, which allows users to upload content and give feedback to the users and sort of form communities around the content.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Is Stage6.divix.com still in Alpha or did it go into Beta, I thought it is…

Eric Grab: Its still in Alpha right now. So, its still pretty new, but its very exciting, because we’ve seen what’s important is its has amazing quality compared to its mother sites that are out there, so we are looking at longer form content. We just interviewed the Pure Pwnage guys who would make a TV show about video games and its very fun, its episodic where you have 11 to 20 minutes long and very high quality. We have seen a lot of high quality content including up the 1080p HighDef on Stage6..divix.com

Benjamin Higginbotham: On Stage6.divix.com you have actually got a web plug, and that will playback 1080p?

Eric Grab: Yes, you can go right to the website to plugin downloads and you can be watching 1080 right there on the spot.

Benjamin Higginbotham: And then I can download that to my computer playback in my computer cross platform?

Eric Grab: Absolutely yes. We have cross platform, you can download the video. One of the nice things about DivX video is, if you see a DivX logo on something, it means its gonna work. Obviously HighDef is little bit different. You got to look for HighDef logo, but what’s really nice is you can take your content and download it from the internet to your PC and then move it on a disk or may be USB or may be in Wi-Fi across the network to device that is DivX branded and then your DivX content will play. So, you can have a Sony or Toshiba or all these different brand names consumer electronics and they actually will all play DivX if they have the DivX logo on them.

Benjamin Higginbotham: But we actually pretty 1337 audience. I mean most of them, if not all of them already know of DivX and if heard DivX and used DivX many times and downloaded DivX materials. We all kind of know what it is, just a codec, so where you are gonna go from here? What’s next? What you are gonna do that just like totally awesome?

Eric Grab: Well I mean obviously pushing the envelope in terms of okay, yeah, compression making little bit better. We know its kind of natural aggressions, but things like Stage6 where we would be able to share content, get content better. We will be able to get media in your house and have a better experience in navigating, get to it, those are the sort of things. There is always a way to make video better and more friendly. Getting stuff really to the TV is a major thing that DivX is been attempting to do for a very long time. Getting devices that directly can decode DivX and record in DivX cameras. If you go look and see we have some great cameras, that are able to record natively in DivX. You don’t have re-encode everything, straight from the camera right to your DivX playback device. So, those are the kinds of things that we are looking to do. I mean make a better media, experience a better media future for people who trying to share and move content around. Get content away from physical media distribution, where its locked to a disk, that’s no fun. You wanna be able to use all your great digital gadgets, right. You have your hard drives, you have your wireless, you have your USB keys, you wanna put your content on there and make it work and DivX is gonna make that possible.

Benjamin Higginbotham: So, how do you compare with or compete even with VC-1 and H.264, the codec are going into HD-DVD and Blue-Ray.

Eric Grab: Right, well its interesting codec are, there is really state of the art codec and they are all very-very close in quality. Now, you don’t see a 2xX quality increase, in fact everyone even the codec is excited when we get, you know couple of more percent. Back in the day on the 90’s, you would see vast improvements in codec technology, but that’s not happening anymore, everything is moving pretty optimized level, so lot of a secondary factors that make a difference. Its how efficient it is to encode, how efficient is to decode? So, devices that use may be like VC-1 or H.264 might be little bit more expensive, but you don’t get much more of quality. So, and things also decuple in Blue-Ray HD-DVD, those are disk formats, they are not content formats. With codec they use sort of doesn’t matter. We love to see great more storage on a disk that way instead of putting, 10 DivX movies, you give a 50 DivX movies on there. So, it enables us to use the digital technologies that are there. We are gonna make it, so the codec is a piece of the puzzle, but it is just a piece and it really is how to integrate into a certification program to make sure that, when you say something and you have seen, discuss it as a codec as I mean, it’s gonna play. DivX certification means its gonna play and that’s very-very important value proposition for us. So, we are trying to make it easy to go through the whole eco-system with content. Codec a piece of it, we are gonna be state of the arton codec, but that just not only piece.

Benjamin Higginbotham: So, the piece of the puzzle we talked about, so for is the codec itself the devices that will playback that codec seamlessly . What are the other pieces that make-up that puzzle?

Eric Grab: Well there is few things, that is obviously choosing their rates in audio formats all those kinds of things, some digital rights management making that, so you can buy and sell content. Make a sustainable ecosystem of content there. There is getting it to be inexpensive. getting to be connected, get it so we can go through networks, there is lot of difference of aspects to making it better, so I think what we are trying to do is really make it so main stream consumers can get this, as well as HD is still cutting edge. No lot of people are really true HD stuff, we’ve been pushing HD for a long time and we are gonna make sure that you can do HD for reasonable cost and still have amazing quality.

Benjamin Higginbotham: We always feel like the under dog a little bit, I mean we’ve got HD-DVD and Blue-Ray, which is got to hit main stream consumer, they as hitting them now, its kind of hitting more of the lead crowd right now, just a price point is too high.

Eric Grab: Yeah, sure.

Benjamin Higginbotham: But, that’s gonna drive down over the next few years, but you are not in those devices yet. Its not that I’ve seen, are you trying to get, are you going to the manufactures that make the electric car, like LG for example, that’s a combo device.

Eric Grab: Sure…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Hey-hey do DivX too.

Eric Grab: Yes, why not? I mean in DivX there is nothing to stop then to put DivX in any device that they want to and infact your CD devices that will do DivX, they have the DivX logo on them. Adding one of the important things that we’ve engineered from DivX is we make it. So, it is main stream price to get inside the technology, so we can put DivX inside of DVD players, mobile phones and portable media players and have it be reasonably cost and make it work. And like I said, the Blue-Ray and HD-DVD those are looking at physical media formats and they are doing some stuff, may be on demand, but look at MP3’s, I mean look at audio formats, look at high resolution audio formats, like super audio CD’s and other things. They really did go anywhere because, people are looking for true convenience to move digital things around right. So, here we go where it’s a physical media format or true digital format and we are focused on the true digital stuff. So, some of these wars and things that you know its really a sort of different problem, they are trying to solve there. They are looking at disk format problem or looking at a digital distribution problem and building video communities, I mean honestly, if somebody is really good they can get a camera, right now and make some amazing content themselves and that’s real power. What do you do with that content, you got to put it somewhere, so like for on Stage6, share it form a community, form a brand. Make your own brand and that’s where the technology is heading. Higher storage disk things, yeah that’s kind of cool, but that’s not really what’s cool.

Benjamin Higginbotham: So then we talk about distribution and we talk about distribution and we talk about, if distribution doesn’t have to a physical medium it can be anything?

Eric Grab: Sure.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I interpret that to be online, because that’s what we do, so that’s how I am gonna interpret it?

Eric Grab: Yeah.

Benjamin Higginbotham: We downloaded to your computer, but there is this gap between a computer and your television. There is no good transport on any codec, by on any means to get it from one to the other. Apple just announced, Apple TV today, Net Gear has got their products, but they are still not quite right, what’s gonna fill that gap, is that a DivX product or is that something else or is that a vendor, how do you fix that?

Eric Grab: Well that’s a good question. That is sort of the big rift in what’s happening. I think you are gonna see first they are gonna try to solve that problem, but I mean after fundamentally do a few things, they have to make that connection very easy. Know a nice user interface. We have seen some kind of funky user interfaces on these things, very complicated to use, and just not only looks very good, but as what I I think you are gonna look for product, quite people got to try to keep bridging that gap. DivX is already bridged the gap to a large degree because we can only get to the TV. We have in over 50 million devices today that can actually, bridge that gap then granted you may have to burn a CD which is still a drag, there are some devices today that you can, hey I can just go over the network and do it. We want to make that experience easier and easier to make that actually happen, so I think you are gonna see products all over the spectrum, trying to solve that problem and DivX is trying to make a better media in future and so you will see us in places like that, I am sure.