"...I think DIVX is a fine technology, I just dont know how my hardware would deal with that as compared to DVD movies. Thanks for the explanation on avis..."
I'm glad the clarification on AVI format helped. It wasn't too long ago that I too, hated the AVI format - until I learned about DIVX...
From a hardware point of view, I don't see any reason why the Mac shoudln't be able to let you play DIVX movies. I've got a "poor college student" lappy with Celeron 650 and embedded Intel video plays them perfectly at 100%, although they are a bit choppy if I try to scale to full-screen.
My gripe about Macs has mainly been about their OS's (MacOS & OSX), and not the hardware. In my opinion it really isn't a matter of whether or not the hardware inside of a Mac is capable of "handling" the video format - I'm sure any modern Mac has plenty of power to spare.
The question, is whether or not the codecs have been though enough revisions to make them well optimized for the platform. Does enough "demand" exist on the Mac platform to make this 'underground' video codec a worthwhile development? In my opinion, the answer is no. I just don't think there are enough people on the Mac platform pushing the envelope in this area.
I would guess that in the next year or two, a company will come along and wave a check with alot of zeros in front of the people working on the DIVX codec. We'll then see it rolled-into the familiar Quicktime and Windows Media Player packages, and within consumer DVD players, just like the MP3 format can be found in Discmans and boomboxes today. When Apple finally picks it up, and bundles it with Quicktime, I'll hear about this "revolutionary" new video technology that Macs have, and why it runs so much better than the PC, and how it uses such a tiny amount of hard disk space....