DivX at IFA '08

DivX at IFA '08

Another year, another successful showing by the DivX team at the Internationale Funkaustellung. A crew of around 20 DivXians assembled from points far and wide, including San Diego, Aachen, Krakow, and even Seoul, Korea.

Laurel and her amazing local assistants set up the booth efficiently as always.

A smaller sized space than last year, but very tightly focused graphically on the core DivX message: high quality video experienced seamlessly across the PC, the living room, and on the go.

aka... "I swear I'm not looking at tentacle porn."
aka... "Look! I can change channels without looking!"

aka... "Mario Lopez uses DivX?"

Actually, though, our booth proved quite popular with both business and consumer visitors to the show. Whether that was because of the naked spokeswomen at the booth next door, I cannot say.
[photo deleted]

In general the show was quite crowded, particularly on Saturday and Sunday when it seemed like half of Berlin was there to ogle the latest gadgets. Just like last year the hottest items were flat TV's, this year touting 100 and even 200mhz screens

Highlighted at the show was DivX Connected, particularly the latest build of the server software, 1.4 beta. The new version allows for the transcoding of on-line Flash video and can access popular video sites like Hulu, YouTube, Break, DailyMotion, etc. These new plug-ins really make DivX Connected a perfect way to bring the exciting content of the internet to the living room.
Unfortunately, Hulu is blocked in Europe. D'oh!

DivX Connected and some new DivX Certified phones from LG and Samsung proved to be the most popular items on display, although we also got a lot of interest regarding the merger of DivX and local favorites, MainConcept.
The phones were shown playing DivX video out via cable on a TV screen. As models like the LG Secret and LG Omnia increase their storage capacity to 8GB and 16GB these multimedia gadgets begin to become portable video libraries.

Naturally, a trade show is not just an exercise in sales and marketing, but necessitates a good deal of team building. Of course, I personally did not engage in any of these types of revelries, but I rumor has it DivX employees, and some friendly DivX forum moderators, were spotted all over Berlin late into the evenings.
Members of DivX team gathering for a traditional German meal of... pizza.
Legendary DivX team members "Zog," "Gej," and "Dubya."
"Kamiwa" and "Seabass" discussing which DivX forum members to ban.

Events legends "Laurel" and "Guido" (MainConcept).

And just to prove that famous American tech bloggers are interested in more than just the latest flat screen TV technology, I caught up with Robert Scoble and Jodi Church-Wagner for a quick historical tour of Berlin.

Next big show for DivX will be CES in Las Vegas, January 2009. It's kind of like IFA, but for the sad lack of Schweinshaxen. See you there.