the net. And it actually was through Napster that DivX became really popular. But DivX quickly turned away from digital piracy.
“We were associated with that, to some degree, but we were very careful not to support piracy in any way. We wanted to show that we were trying to build a world where you could download high-quality premium content and if it was a good enough experience people would pay for the content instead of doing something illegal,” CEO Hell says.
That was 10 short years ago. Now Warner Brothers has a deal with DivX to license its movies to DivX-certified devices, and a similar service is to be launched with Sony Pictures. “They recognize and appreciate the support we’re giving to digital rights management. And that’s why we’re able to get deals done,” says Hell.
DivX, Inc. (NASDAQ:DIVX) got initial funds from Zone Ventures of Los Angeles, CA, and from Tim Draper and several other investors from the Draper Fisher Jurvetson venture capital family. In 2006 DivX raised over $108 million with their IPO, and the company now has over 300 employees. In 2008, the DivX web player was launched 1.4 billion times. There are more than 600 DivX-certified digital television models, more than 200 DivX-certified Blu-ray player models, and more than 30 DivX-certified mobile phone models.
DivX makes money licensing its technologies to the manufacturers of those consumer electronic devices. CEO Hell says they are the standard for high-quality file-based videos on the Internet and he even calls his company the “800-pound gorilla.”
Still, DivX is a better-known brand outside the U.S. “I think there are some countries that seem to be much more in touch with digital media consumers than we are here in United States, and there’s also different consumer behavior,” says Hell.
“We are not really competing with anybody but ourselves right now. It’s about ‘Do I want to have access to content, or not?’ There’s no competition, because there’s no alternative. Either you have access to three billion videos or you don’t. I don’t see any competitors in our current model. But obviously there would be a competitive risk, when we move into a more connected world, when more and more content becomes available.”
But then, that’s why they are not in the pirate business, but trying instead to anticipate the next step in the evolution of consumer media.