Can You Get Flash Without Adobe? Meet DivX Plus Web Player

Features
By Andrew Ku
published

DivX Plus Web Player is the first alternative to Adobe's Flash Player. It promises better performance, battery life, and video quality, all in one shot. If Flash content brings your computer to its knees, read on to find out if DivX is the answer.

DivX Plus Web Player: Not A Catch-All Solution

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Supported Web sites
YouTube.com Vimeo.com DailyMotion.com TheOnion.com Revision3.com Break.com Funny or DieMetaCafe.com Facebook.com Gamereactor.eu FoxNews.com ESPN CNTV Xiyou

It’s important to point out that DivX isn't offering a catch-all solution. It doesn't work as a comprehensive Flash Player replacement. So far, the list of supported Web sites is limited in scope. YouTube is the only major site that supports it. Keep in mind that video is the only type of Flash content that DivX accepts; there is no support for Flash-based animation or games.

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HTML5 Video Tag
Supported Video ContainerSupported Video CodecSupported Audio Codec
DivXMPEG-4 ASPMP3, AC3
AVIMPEG-4 ASPMP3, AC3
MKVH.264, MPEG-4 ASPAAC, MP4, AC3
MP4H.264, MPEG-4 ASPMP3, AC3
MOVH.264, MPEG-4 ASPMP3, AC3

DivX loves talking about HTML5 support, but we want to clarify a few points. HTML5 is just a Web element that marks a video for identification. For the moment, it’s technically blind with respect to file formats and codecs. So the HTML5 standard isn't really set in stone, and this is the cause of another debate. Fortunately, HTML5 and Flash video have something in common. The most pervasive codec for both standards continues to be H.264, so that's the one in which we're most interested.

Test Hardware

We tested DivX's plug-in with three systems. Intel's single-core Atom N450 remains the most prolific CPU in the netbook space, so it's a good one for testing the limitations of not having a hardware acceleration engine; it only supports MPEG-2 decoding, and relies on limited CPU horsepower for decoding H.264. AMD's E-350 offers something better than Atom, with the added benefit of H.264 hardware acceleration. Meanwhile, our Sandy Bridge-based system offers a glimpse into DivX on a more robust system.

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Test Hardware
ProcessorsIntel Atom N450 (Single-Core, 1.66 GHz)AMD E-350 APU (Dual-Core, 1.6 GHz)Intel Core i5-2500K, (Quad-Core, 3.3 GHz)
MemoryHynix 1 GB DDR2-800Kingston Hyper-X 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR3-1600
Motherboard-ASRock E350M1Asus P8P67 Deluxe
GraphicsIntel GMA 3150Broadcom Crystal HD (disabled)AMD Radeon HD 6310Intel HD Graphics 3000
NotebookDell Inspiron Mini 1012--
Power Supply-Seasonic 760 W, 80 PLUS
Adobe Flash Player10.2.153.1
DivX Plus Web PlayerDivX Plus Web Player 2.4
Operating SystemWindows 7 StarterWindows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bitWindows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit
Graphics Driver8.14.10.2230Catalyst 11.38.15.10.2342
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Benchmark and Settings
Flash Video Playback, Custom Tom's Hardware Benchmark
Web sitesYouTube: All Resolutions, Windowed and Full screen video tested
BrowsersIE8 32-bit: 8.0.7600.1685Firefox: 3.6.15
Adobe Flash Player SettingsHardware Acceleration Enabled
Windows SettingsAero enabled (disabled on Dell Mini 1012)

We played all Flash videos within the browser, only after the entire video was fully buffered. We also disabled wireless networking during playback. Furthermore, all CPU usage and FPS values were generated from complete video playback.

Andrew Ku
19 Comments Comment from the forums
  • henydiah
    one of challenges of adobe flash player, i hope this can support my mobile
    Reply
  • The Halo Don
    Useful! I'll take it!
    Reply
  • Does not work in chrome
    Reply
  • so according to the title, divx can do the same funcionality as a whole, regarding flash plugin?

    can it be programmable, you can make animations, games, applications with divx player?


    or does the text admit that flash is only about video? so adobe is pushing a whole software just to play video on browsers?


    to the dear writer of this report, please understand that tom´s hardware is a long standing website, and it conquered the credibility of millions of people around the world, so be more carefull next time you wanna write a sensationalist title to bring people to your text.


    flash does a lot more than playing video. and there´s no such thing as "flash video"... video is VIDEO, no matter played by flash, html5, "bleep-blam-bloom technology", whatever else.

    and the day you have so many calculations and big chunks of scenery, characters, audio, and server liasons, you´ll have an impact in the system, no matter if its flash, html5, or anyother app.

    magic doesnt happen out of flash. data weights anyway it comes, and theres no guarantee that producers are the best for their jobs, by working with optimizations in many levels of production.

    simply theres no guarantee at all, so expect a heavy ugly bad optimized html5 applications in the future, that will impact on browser´s performance anytime sooner or later.
    Reply
  • Soul_keeper
    I'm not impressed
    adobe may suck, but divx isn't much better as far as openness goes.

    Star Trek on cbs is an absolute annoyance to watch ...
    My gnash plugin don't work there
    Reply
  • dark_lord69
    mayankleoboy1i wont use IE8 instead of FF to save any amount of battery.Why not use IE9? Toms found it to be one of the fastest browsers...
    Yes, IE 8 is slow...
    Reply
  • gm0n3y
    While its great to have an alternative to flash, without support for the latest browsers (IE9, FF4, and most importantly for me Chrome) its not going to spread very far.
    Reply
  • ph0b0s123
    Wow, what a puff piece. About that software came out over 6 months ago. Even the graph which is supposed to show how much better this software is for playing flash shows that CPU utilisation is the same if not worse than without. The article did also not mention that most have binned this version of divx player and gone back to older versions due to the amount of crashes the software causes in browsers. Cannot believe 6 pages was spent on this.

    And while I am complaining, cause normally I love the site, it's very annoying that comments I leave on the UK site don't appear on the US site, and visa versa. Can understand when a site is in a completely different language but Brits and Yanks can talk to each other yer know.
    Reply
  • computertech82
    It's an article i already know about, but i've found divx CRASHES by ie8 browswer. While an OLDER version, doesn't.
    Only if they fix the program to run stable, will i use it. I don't need something that doesn't work most of the time.
    Reply
  • People still use Internet Explorer?

    mayakleoboy & ph0b0s123: +1 and +1
    Reply