DivX has released a preview of its upcoming v7.0 video playback software, which now includes support for high definition H.264 files, with an extension for most Windows media players, and the surround sound AAC audio format.
DivX is gearing up for a major release of its media player software and the new 7.0 Beta 1, released earlier today, provides a first glimpse what the software will be capable of.
As a key feature, the new DivX Player 7.0 Beta 1 supports H.264 high-definition video data wrapped into MKV files. H.264 is generally considered as important video compression standard that delivers a much better video quality, but requires much more CPU and GPU horsepower than previous formats. DivX previously released three beta versions of the H.264 decoder as part of its ???Remoulade??? project, but the DivX Player 7.0 Beta 1 is the first DivX player that actually contains this capability.
DivX said that the Beta software also includes the DivX H.264 Decoder filter and the DivX MKV Demux filter, which are DirectShow filters that extend playback support for MKV files with H.264 video streams to all other DirectShow-based media players.<./p>
In August of this year, DivX released a first alpha version of its H.264 encoder.
Another noteworthy feature is the integration of AAC audio. A format that comes with support for multichannel audio and studio-quality sample rates, which promise movie theater-like surround sound. While DivX said that it used MP3 as the standard audio format in all previous DivX media player versions, it said that AAC audio has ???fewer audible artifacts than MP3 at very low bitrates and requires less bitrate to achieve transparency.???
The DivX Player 7.0 Beta 1 can be downloaded here (registration required).
Source: TG Daily
