When I first read about the Apple TV, I was pumped. I whipped out my credit card and was ready to buy one. But I never buy anything without doing a little research first. So I had a look at the specs.

What?! No divx?! No xvid?! Huh? I could overlook the puny hard drive, but to not be able to play the de facto standard of video encoding is inexcusable.

Over the last five years, I have archived dozens of movies and hundreds of hours of my own home video to the ubiquitous video compression standard known as divx. This is the mp3 of the video world, and the fact that Apple TV does not recognize it is an absolute deal breaker.

I'm sorry, I'm just not prepared to sit down and re-encode all of my legally acquired video into another less compatible standard--and pay Apple for the privilege.

Apple, you made a big mistake.

CB