Couldn't you use Divx?

If one thing confounds me it's the propogation of obscure codecs that just simmer around the "elitist" level and never really make it mainstream. Like MKV for instance. In theory, it's a great codec system - I like it because fansubbers can do optional subtitles for foreign films I like to download (or optional language tracks for DVD that are ripped... but let's not get into that). And then there's the OGG lossless audio format - superior to MP3 in every way.

But let's face facts, people. Have you seen an Ogg-Vorbis player in anyone's car lately? I haven't.
Have you seen a set-top Makostra player in a living room? Me neither.
But I do have a clarion MP3 deck in my car and I do see DiVx players available (if I really wanted to buy one).

I don't know what would be better - a full-on adoption of superior codecs, or if they'd just disappear altogether. Because let's admit it: encoded properly, whether there's "loss" or not, you'd be hardpressed to notice if an MP3 wasn't perfect (on the other hand, you'd certainly also notice if an MP3 was badly encoded).

But one thing's for sure, I have a set of AVI files I have no idea what to do with. You don't need to know what the clips are of (and the MPAA has nothing do with these clips). The point is that it took at eternity for me to realize that these particular "AVI" files were actually WMV9 and that I had to download an individual codecpack from Microsoft's website in order to actually edit them. That is, I could play them in Windows Media Player, but nothing else on my system could open it until I downloaded some independent codec installer.

And then, still unsure what I could do with them, I ran them through a freeware encoder to turn them in MPG files - maybe I can author a DVD out of these, I dunno. But my life sure would've been simpler if the files started out as regular DiVX encodes - at least then I would've been able to run the whole thing into AVI2DVD.

End rant here.