Xbox 360 does get DivX support after all

It seems that this week's Xbox 360 Dashboard update will add DivX support to the console after all. After appearing unwilling to say whether DivX would be included or not, the beans were then well and truly spilled on the Xbox Team's development blog.

The confusion started on Friday. Microsoft issued a press release detailing all the new features its games machine will be receiving. But DivX was not mentioned, only that "enhanced video codec support" would "further expand the options when it comes to the Xbox 360 entertainment experience".

Xbox 360 gets DivX

We put in a call to Microsoft to clarify the issue and it said, "There are no announcements regarding DivX support at this stage". Funny then, that the Xbox Team's own blog has just written an Xbox Video Playback FAQ which clearly states that the next Dashboard update will provide the console with the ability to playback DivX-encoded video files.

The sixteenth question in the FAQ is, "Why don't some of my older versions of DivX files play?" The answer is: "Since we only support MPEG-4 compatible codec implementations, we will not be able to play video files older than DivX 5.0."

PS3 not far behind

So while Microsoft has made no official announcement, it seems that the Xbox 360 Fall Dashboard Update, due tomorrow, will indeed add DivX playback. DivX is the world's most prolific video format, due to its unique compression algorithms which enable good quality audio and video in comparatively small file sizes.

DivX CEO Kevin Hell said in a press statement in mid-November that DivX compatibility will also be added to the PS3 in an imminent firmware upgrade.