DivX CEO on Video, YouTube, iPod

Red Herring had the chance to sit down with the CEO of DivX to discuss the world of digital media. Its interesting to see his take on the big players in the industry including Google and Apple. If nothing else, you get a little history of DivX and how it all got started.

From the article:

Q: When did it become apparent you could make a real business out of DivX?

A:
The video content that is being created is video content that wants to
live on your TV. It looks best on your big-screen TV. So one can
predict with a high degree of precision that when a critical mass of
content is sitting out there on PC hard drives around the world that a
market will exist.

And
that market demand will cause entrepreneurial entities to meet that
market demand by taking DivX and putting it into devices so that it can
go into your living room. So our job as a company is to simply build
that market.

As
it turned out, in 2002 we got our first calls from consumer electronics
manufacturers. When we first called the chip guys, they said, “I don’t
know who the hell you are. Why would I want to do this?”

From
mid-2002 to 2004 we went on a complete rampage signing up all the chip
vendors and then all the major OEMs. And by the end of 2004, Sony
signed and they were the last of the major OEMs. We have all the major
OEMs signed and shipping at least one DivX certified.