DivX is one of the most commonly used codecs for video content on the computer today. It's very popular for use in making large video files from DVDs, something anyone that has created a media machine would be familiar with. Since media machines are not always the fastest available, efficiency is key with codecs. Last week, we saw the new 6.1 version of DivX released.
While claiming to be "14% to 80%" faster, definitely good for very hi-res files, what interested me more than speed boosts was support for HT and SMP, effectively giving it dual-core support. While this would mean threading, and you can't exactly thread single files, you can distribute load in other ways and apparently this new codec can. This might make extremely high-quality (such as HDTV content) content playable on midrange systems without suffering frameloss and without investing in newer video cards. Interesting stuff, and it is encouraging to see software begin to take advantage of multi-core systems.