Why Panasonic’s Divx Compatible Blu-Ray Player maybe the new key to PIRACY?
Panasonic has Launched DMP-BD30EG/EE a DivX compatible Blu-Ray player. It is the first of its kind standalone Blu-Ray player which supports DivX. Playstation 3 users already had the option to play DivX on there Blu-Ray players. This is a very big step by Panasonic but is it a new door for Piracy??
First some Jargon Buster 
DivX Codec is popular due to its ability to compress lengthy video segments into small sizes while maintaining relatively high visual quality. The DivX codec uses lossy MPEG-4 Part 2 compression, also known as MPEG-4 ASP, where quality is balanced against file size for utility. It is one of several codecs commonly associated with “ripping”, whereby audio and video multimedia are transferred to a hard disk and transcoded.
So this codec is very popular for ripping movies and is specifically used by pirates to share movies as the sizes are small.
Analysis why it might a key to piracy:
- A DivX coded movie can be anywhere between 700mb - 1.4GB depending upon how much compression is done.
- A Blu-Ray disc can store 50gb of data on single media.
- Blu -Ray has become the HD media of future.
- Assuming a movie is 1.4 GB a Blu-Ray disc can store 35 movies
- If 700mb is used the its 73 movies in a single disc
- Blu-Ray media prices are coming done so are the Blu-Ray drive prices and they will reduce more with increasing demand.
- These disks will sell like wild fire in the grey markets already full with pirated DVDs.
All the above reasons could well make the players successful but also increase Piracy by leaps and bounds. I fear the loses due to piracy to the industries are not going to come down at all.
What do you think about the issue? 
Leave a comment!!
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I agree that it will lead to piracy but not in the way that you suggest.
A blu-ray player that plays DivX would be good for piracy of HD movies as you could compress an HD movie onto a standard DVD and play it back on a player with true HD support.
It won’t really impact the current piracy of DVDs (which have file sizes of 700Mb to 1.4Gb) as writable Blu-ray discs are far too expensive per MB for casual burning.
In the meantime however, if this drive doesn’t support HD DivX files then it is only really suitable for people with HD kit at home who want to download low resolution files and buy HD Blu-ray discs… doesn’t sound like a likely combination to me!
I think that it will essentially fit the niche in the HD market that normal DivX players fill in the DVD market.
Hi Kelly
First of all thanx for the comment.
I do agree that it will also increase the Piracy of HD movies for sure and seems i overlooked that fact
But still i hold my decision that it will also increase NON-HD piracy, like it was for DVD’s were very highly priced but the prices will come down as competition will get more. And HD content and movies and even TVs are not readily available or they cost more… Am not talking abt USA or other super powers am talking abt countries in ASIA and other not so developed countries like India where i reside and piracy is very high there. There if someone gets this player and then he can pirate more movies both HD and non HD.
Btw in my city there are specialised markets for pirated stuff Nehru Place, Palika Bazaar are few names and there u can get pirated stugg for as low as Rs20-50 or Less than a $1 or till $1
Very good article. Thanks for the good information!.
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Red-laser DVD players started playing MP3 files years ago. People can put about 1100 songs on a DVD-R. Did that cause a significant surge of audio piracy?
Blu-ray players already support highly compressed H.264 video that allows you to put dozens of Standard-Def titles on any Blu-ray player. Why does adding DivX support make any difference?
Many devices record video in DivX format. For example, Casio cameras, Pentax cameras, and LG phones. Some people probably care about compatibility with other DivX Certified devices more than DVD piracy.