DIGITAL DIGEST - http://www.digital-digest.com
DIGITAL DIGEST | LIVE UPDATE Issue 28 Supplement
Your "whenever I have time to write one" newsletter
Monday, 18th May, 2002

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SUPPLEMENT :

1. WinDVD 4 Review

2. DivX 5.0.2

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1. WinDVD 4 Review

I have just finished the review for WinDVD 4, and the new version
seems to be the best one yet!!

The review goes through all the new features in WinDVD 4, and there
are quite a few.

You can read the full review here :

http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/software/players/windvd.html


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2. DivX 5.0.2

News just in as I was typing the previous news story, DivX 5.0.2 has
been released.

DivX 5.0.1 introduced a lot of bugs, most notably the dark/light band
of video on the right hand side of the video, and also a performance
decrease of about 7% compared to 5.0.

There are also a host of new features, and I've listed the most
interesting ones here :

* Added a "Smooth Playback" option. Turning this off will allow B-
frame encoded content to playback with lower CPU usage. However,
enabling this option will introduce a 1 frame delay in the decoder
(because of buffering), which may cause the last frame of the video
to not be displayed.

* Added a "YUV Extended" mode option. When selected, the codec will
attempt to use YV12 mode to decode the video. This is the fastest way
to decode DivX content, but the drawback is that
brightness/contrast/saturation controls cannot be used in this mode
and are disabled.

* Added an "Overlay Extended" mode. Selecting this will cause the
filter to try to display video using the hardware overlay instead of
the software overlay. The hardware overlay is much faster, but may
not be supported on some video cards. When this mode is enabled,
DirectShow-based player applications will be unable to open more than
one window at a time.

* Added a "Film Effect" option. This is a warming filter that when
enabled will add film noise to the decoded picture. This may increase
the perceived visual quality of the picture, especially if you are
used to watching film. It's a personal preference, however, so use it
if you want.

You can download DivX 5.0.2 here :

http://www.divx-digest.com/software/divxcodec5.html

You can read a full list of what's new here :

http://www.divx.com/divx/divxpro_win_versions.php


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