DivX Plus Web Player: How It Works
The HiQ browser plug-in is the component of the DivX Plus Web Player that enables playback of Flash-encoded video. Together, they claim to offer improved performance, battery life, and quality thanks to what the company considers a more robust video engine.
However, many Web sites still require you to have Flash installed for HiQ to function properly. For that reason, DivX isn't necessarily providing a Flash substitute. It's more like a companion and alternative rolled into to. Whenever you visit a Flash-enabled Web site supported by DivX, you see a separate playback bar, as in the image above.
On its forum, DivX writes, "Think of HiQ as coming in and swapping out Flash video for DivX." However, this isn't completely accurate. We used a custom server script to detect the content requested by the browser. We found that DivX uses the same video session ID to request the same Flash file as Adobe's Flash Player. So, it's actually better to think about this as two separate video players like Windows Media Player and VLC. DivX is simply playing the same video file on a different video player.
Requested by Adobe Flash Player: http://v24.lscache3.c.youtube.com/videoplayback?sparams=id%2Cexpire%2Cip%2Cipbits%2Citag%2Cratebypass%2Coc%3AU0hPRldRVV9FSkNOOV9PS1lD&fexp=904410&itag=22&ipbits=0&signature=C67EFAEFD84F4B43029D4C053DCD958BE12C93C2.A5B74AA09069EDE6A4C53087BBEF6E4A4739C472&sver=3&ratebypass=yes&expire=1301767200&key=yt1&ip=0.0.0.0&id=d6ec8ce3f6bdb7aa&begin=4673
Requested by DivX HiQ: http://v24.lscache3.c.youtube.com:80/videoplayback?sparams=id%2Cexpire%2Cip%2Cipbits%2Citag%2Cratebypass%2Coc%3AU0hPRldRVV9FSkNOOV9PS1lD&fexp=904410&itag=22&ipbits=0&signature=C67EFAEFD84F4B43029D4C053DCD958BE12C93C2.A5B74AA09069EDE6A4C53087BBEF6E4A4739C472&sver=3&ratebypass=yes&expire=1301767200&key=yt1&ip=0.0.0.0&id=d6ec8ce3f6bdb7aa
Currently, there’s no way to load directly into the DivX player. You must first load the content into Adobe's Flash Player before DivX HiQ can detect it. That's why the DivX browser bar appears after Adobe's Flash Player is loaded.