Circuit City DIVX commercial #1

Taken from Circuit City's May 1999 instore DVD. (The guy in this is a weatherman in Miami, but became nationally known as "The DIVX Guy" from this commercial.) For those who don't remember, DIVX was a very short-lived pay-per-view DVD system where you could buy movies for $4.49, but only be able to play them for 48 hours from the time you first watch them on your machine. Afterwards, if you played them again, the player (through its built-in modem) would charge your credit card about $3.25 for another 48 hour period. DIVX died a deservedly quick death, being on the market only about 9 months.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• DVD
• player
• DIVX
• RCA
• Circuit
• City

[ultimateanim]

DivX Has now changed you can get it free,

[eyeh8cbs]

The video codec called DivX was named as a jab at this.

[eyeh8nbc]

Circuit City employees were ordered to give this a REALLY hard sell to anyone they talked to. There were a lot of flat-out lies such as telling customers the Star Wars movies (or any other mega-popular title that wasn't on DVD yet) would be available on it exclusively. They were threatened with being fired if they said anything negative about DIVX.

[devinpolk90]

@eyeh8nbc thats fucked up

[tdrewman]

Disney was one of the pushers of this technology. The felt it was more secure, they love ideal that the movies could not be shared (if you got the 4.99 movie and upgraded to the unlimited views) . I jumped for joy when this format failed. The movie studios have learned or still learning there is no secure format. They learn this lesson again when the security on Blu Ray was cracked.

[Draknfyre]

@layzergun

As already answered, that was a different product. These lasted for as long as the disc lasted, and could be played over and over again, except it would charge you $4 each time. You could "buy" the movie for $20, and it would give you unlimited views.

[eyeh8nbc]

@layzergun That would've been Flexplay, which made DVDs that came in air-tight plastic sleeves then intentionally became unplayable after 48 hours. They attempted those a few times but looks like they've finally given up as their website is no longer up. I have a few of their discs, which I copied to non-expiring discs!

[layzergun]

FUCK YES A DVD THAT DELETES ITSELF!

THE FUTURE IS HERE!

[josehartTV]

@Ibhenriksen dont be embarassed thats a good thing unlike most people you take care of your things

[OneEyeWonderWeasil]

ah circuit city, I worked for them back just before they liquidated. A real failure of a company.

They did SO many stupid things those last 10 years, this ranks right up with cutting appliances and axing commission (driving away all their top salesmen)

[eyeh8nbc]

I have 2 of these (both found at thrift stores)- I have the instore DIVX demo disc, but neither will play it- I also get error messages when I try any DIVX movie discs (I bought a few of those when they were being cleared out for a buck each after it died.) I'm thinking it gets confused after not being able to call the home computer.

A unique thing these can do is play audio CDs BACKWARDS! Sadly they won't read CD-Rs though.

[Ibhenriksen]

holy shit. i have this exact dvd player still

[BoredVAChick]

@eyeh8cbs Actually, the man in the commercial is Juan Conde. He's a radio DJ turned/news anchor at WRIC-TV Richmond, Virginia, the same town as Circuit City's former headquarters. There was a big stink about this commercial in the local press because it was still running for months after he took the TV news job.