Is the OpenDivX™ codec the same as the DivX™ codec?
Yes and no. Yes, they are both versions of DivX compression technology. The OpenDivX codec was launched as an open-source project on Project Mayo in January 2001. Today, the project continues as a collaborative, educational development effort, focusing more on improving visual quality than optimizing performance. The latest generation of the DivX codec (version 4.x) was released in July 2001. The new DivX codec is technically completely different from OpenDivX, and is built from a different codebase. It has been optimized for greater performance and visual quality and has more features than OpenDivX. It’s important to note that the two codecs produce compatible formats, meaning content encoded with OpenDivX can be played back with DivX, and vice versa. The DivX codec will from now on be the version with the most new features and widest compatibility across platforms, so this is the version we recommend you use.