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I went to visit my old time favorite Stage6 site from DivX, which most of you readers of my blog are familiar with, by now, and was stunned to learn that they are closing.

I am saddened by this news, and will have to revise some of my high quality Watch videos back to their inferior YouTube equivalents.

So what went wrong? As Simply stated on their front page announcement, the service was costing them tons of money and resources, which they couldn’t continue to afford. Yes, companies pay arm and a leg for Upstream traffic, which is completely unfair, if you ask me.

But what is the big difference between them and YouTube? How come YouTube is still around? Well, none, actually. YouTube was also quickly running out of cash, when big wealthy suitor in the likes of Google decided to bail them out, even offered them money, no less. Life is funny like that. Yep, I am sure Google is still sinking a lot of money into YouTube daily, as they haven’t figured out effective ways of monetizing it still. But, the big difference is that Google can afford it, while DivX Inc can’t.

Now would be a good time to start the debate again about who owns your data and your videos. Those precious movies of your grandson’s bar-mitzva that was uploaded there, and you could watch it at least twice a day — are now about to become history forever. Hope You Have Backup! But if not, rush over to Stage6 and download videos before Feb 28 shutdown.

UPDATE: TechCrunch has more details on this fiasco, but You Read It Here First, folks!

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Little known fact (or maybe it’s famous fact?) about me is that I am a video technophile. I love to capture/convert/archive videos in all their form. Whether it is first time my child walked, or my favorite Music Video, and so forth.

Aren’t you upset with pathetic quality of YouTube? The dismal video size and the awful compression artifacts in there are not driving you insane? In this day and age the technology has come far enough where we should expect more from our Internet video!

Yes, there is a better way! Enter Stage6 from Divx. Just about everyone has heard about this video compression technology by now. There is a whole range of consumer devices today that can play Divx video, and the format continues to gain acceptance. And, Stage6 lets you easily upload and share your own videos, with family and friends, either directly or through their high quality Windows utility that will encode and upload your video to Stage6 for you. In my opinion Stage6 and Divx offer highest streaming quality available on the web today, though competing technologies are coming, in Microsoft’s Silverlight and with H.264 support in future Adobe Flash.

Today’s music video is from Linkin Park, one of my favorite bands. I am not sure why this particular clip hasn’t gained wider popularity here in the USA, but it sure is very popular on charts around the World. Perhaps the implications of reflecting on What You Have Done is something many people feel uncomfortable with. For me, however, watching this music video makes it even more of a time "not wasted".

Remember, the quality of this wide-screen Linkin Park video is so high, I couldn’t even fit it into this blog! Instead, click through to Stage6, install the little player plug-in, and enjoy video in all it’s glory! Make sure to click the little ‘maximize’  button on the lower right of video, to watch full screen. Happy Friday!

UPDATE: Looks like some "entrepreneurs" already using Stage6 to host wealth of high quality no cost movies, cartoons and what not. Of course, just like YouTube, they claim Safe Harbor. Enjoy it while it lasts, folks: Joox.net (Thanks for the tip, Russell)

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