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DivX finds legal employment
DivX, a technology long associated with online movie piracy, has taken another step toward becoming a format for legal downloads and video-on-demand services. Broadway Television Network, which produces and distributes digital recordings of Broadway musicals, has launched a video-on-demand service at BroadwayOnline.
DivX, a technology long associated with online movie piracy, has taken
another step toward becoming a format for legal downloads and
video-on-demand services. Broadway Television Network, which produces and
distributes digital recordings of Broadway musicals, has launched a
video-on-demand
service at BroadwayOnline.com
that uses the DivX video-compression technology. For $5.95, customers can
purchase 5-day rentals of productions such as "Jekyll and Hyde: The
Musical" and "Smokey Joe's Cafe." The rentals are available for $4.95 to
BroadwayOnline.com Club members for the same period, after which the files become inaccessible.
Content from the Broadway Television Network is also featured on DivX.com, a recently redesigned site from DivXNetworks. That company has a similar agreement with alternative film distributor Strand Releasing. The DivX technology allows a feature film to be transferred over a high-speed Internet connection in about 30 minutes, according to the company's Web site. --Julie Laing, Special to ZDNet News