DivX began as a hack. Around 1998 a French programmer named Jérôme Rota pulled apart a Microsoft video codec and made it shrink whole movies small enough to pass around the internet. A San Diego company turned that trick into a business. By its 2006 filing, people had downloaded the DivX codec more than 180 million times. Consumer electronics makers paid to put a DivX Certified logo on their DVD players, and about 8.5 million certified devices shipped in a single quarter of 2005.

From Montpellier to San Diego

Jordan Greenhall recruited Rota in 2000, and the two built DivXNetworks in San Diego, renamed DivX in 2005. They rewrote the codec as their own software and gave it away to consumers. The money came from licensing. Chipmakers built DivX playback into their chips, and device makers paid a fee for each certified player they shipped. The bet was that a format fans already loved could become a standard that the electronics industry paid to support.

A Format Changes Hands

DivX priced its offering at $16 a share in September 2006 and listed on Nasdaq. Streaming soon pulled viewers away from downloaded files and discs. In 2010 Sonic Solutions bought DivX, and the next year Rovi bought Sonic. Rovi sold DivX in 2014 to Blackstone and Parallax Capital for $75 million. NeuLion bought it in 2015, and Fortress Investment Group took over key DivX assets in 2018. DivX still operates from San Diego.

Cover: Animal Locomotion, Plate 535, Eadweard Muybridge. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a grid of photographic frames of a moving hand (video, frame by frame).