Glossary

Divx - A video format use in AVI files. You may or may not have the codec necessary to play this type of file, so you may need to download special software to play them.

Download - The ability to take a file from a website and copy it onto your computer's hard drive. This way the file can be viewed from your computer without having to visit the website it came from.

DRM - Stands for "Digital Right Management". Owners of video content can now modify their WMV movie files so that they check for a username and password whenever the file is played. That means, even if you have downloaded the file to your hard drive, when you double click it to play it, it checks to see if you have an active username and password before it will play. This forces you to keep an active membership to the site to be able to continue viewing that movie.

MPEG - Another very popular video format that has been around a long time. This format can be played on a variety of video players, including MediaPlayer, as it has been around for many years.

Resolution - Refers to the bit rate of a video - or how high quality. Low resolution videos will not look as good as high resolution ones. But low resolution videos usually have smaller file sizes than high resolution ones, so they will download faster.

I refer to video resolutions in k/sec, which refers to how much data per second is used in the videos. A video that will look good at 1/4 screen is usually about 300k/sec. They start to look pretty good at full screen when the resolution gets over 1000k/sec. Super clear and crisp full screen videos usually require 1500-2000k/sec.

WMV - Stands for Windows Media Video. This is a video format created by Microsoft that plays on its Windows Media Player. It is actually an excellent video format, with good video quality at low bit rates, and has become very popular, especially at adult websites. Anyone with Windows Media Player can play this type of file.