Philips DVP-642 farce!

Almost all of my DiVX encodes take advantage of GMC and QPEL. I was really enthusiastic about receiving my DVP-642 but completely missed it's major drawback...no support for the aforementioned. Ouch! To validate my own theories I used three different encodes of a single 700mb CD version of Jesus Christ Superstar (2001) with an aspect ratio of 1.88, as an acid test. The first encode took advantage of both GMC and QPEL, the second, adhered to the DiVX Certified Home Theatre, and the third, a GMC and QPEL devoid custom encode at a lower resolution but still compatable with the hardware. The latter two were vastly inferior to the encode with GMC and QPEL enabled. It subjectively looked more like DiVX 3.11 than 5.x. The hardware is being returned to Outpost.com tomorrow. Very disappointing. *end of diatribe* Now for the question: Doom9 states in the Gordion Knot Guide that as of December 2003, DiVX hardware will support QPEL and GMC. What hardware is now on the street that supports GMC and QPEL and what vendors carry it? With thanks! Disneyland Fantasmic! aka: Gary Chambers

The supported features all depend on the used chipset. There are only a very limited number of different chipsets for playing mpeg4. The one you are looking for would be a player with a mediatek 1389 decoder chip, as these support GMC and QPel with DivX. You can find more information about limitations and players in the MTK 1389 information Thread. There are other Chips like the ones from Zoran (which is the newest atm), ESS and Sigma. ESS and Sigma don`t support GMC and Qpel, with their current models, don`t know about the Zoran. cheers, monty

@SeeMoreDigital: If one generates 1-pass quantizer 2 encodes and don't care about size, would 2-pass encoding offer some added benefit? I always "archive" my own movies using 1-pass q2 encodes (no crop, no resize, AR flags set to match DVD) but I use in addition to default XviD settings also QPEL, GMC, AQ, and VHQ4. My hope is that one day a player (standalone) will show up that can play these movies with proper aspect ratio and close to a DVD experience.

For more information on what you can expect in a DivX Certified device, check

Yes, it is good that some go above and beyond ;)

What hardware players (models) actually support GMC and QPEL? Pointers to a list would be great. Also, I have received satisfactory results encoding using a variable bitrate with adaptive consecutive turned on as well as Psychovisual fast.

Most people expected those feature not to be suported. 

Its not like it was a secret that the first couple hardware players were probably not going to support those feautures. Hardware device profies have been a part of the DivX configuration utility for some time. There was adequate warning that certified devices were not going to be required to support those features. IMHO at 1490 MB (1/3 DVD+RW) a 2 hour, Home Theater Profile compliant, DivX 5.2 with 6 Ch AC3 sound looks (and of course sounds) just as good as a DVD on my 27" Sony CRT TV & 5.1 Home Theater System. (Maybe if I had a 60" DLP TV I might notice a difference) Yes its far from a perfect product, but thats just the price you have to pay if you want to be an early adopter. In a year or two I will probably be able to spend another $50 and upgrade to a player that handles more than 90% of my content. But right now I am simply amazed at what I am getting for $70!