DivX Gets Warner Bros. Content

DivX Inc. has reached a licensing agreement with Warner Bros. that will enable online retailers to offer Warner Bros. titles in the high-quality DivX® standard definition format in October 2008 and high definition format in September 2009 for playback on DivX Certified® consumer electronics devices. This follows earlier announcements from this year regarding licensed content from Sony Pictures Television and Sony Pictures Television International. According to DivX contacts, Sony and Warner accounted for 51 percent of the new theatrical releases of the "Big Six" studios in 2007 and all of their content, domestic and international, is available for online distributers in the DivX format.

DivX has been incredibly busy in 2008 with DivX Connected announcements as well. Recall that I posted earlier about DivX's theory that the PC can and should be performing the heavy lifting of media processing for connected consumer electronics products, and this has been implemented in products announced by D-Link; aimed at connected TVs and other devices with services from Revision3, CinemaNow, and Vuze; chipsets from Broadcom, Realtek, and Ubicom.

There are a myriad of solutions out there aimed at linking premium Internet video content to consumer electronics. Based on this year's work, I'd argue that tracking DivX's developments will be one barometer for how this market is going.