Digital Home Thoughts: DivX's Stage 6 Shutting Down

"I’m Tom (aka Spinner), a Stage6 user and an employee of DivX, Inc., the company behind the service. I’m writing this message today to inform you that we plan to shut down Stage6 on February 28, 2008. Upload functionality has already been turned off, and you’ll be able to view and download videos until Thursday. I know this news will come as a shock and disappointment to many Stage6 users, and I’d like to take a few moments to explain the reasons behind our decision...So why are we shutting the service down? Well, the short answer is that the continued operation of Stage6 is a very expensive enterprise that requires an enormous amount of attention and resources that we are not in a position to continue to provide. There are a lot of other details involved, but at the end of the day it’s really as simple as that."

Any Stage 6 users here? Every time I install the DivX client I'd check out what Stage 6 had to offer, but I have to admit that I'd never go back - there just didn't seem to be much point. If I want to see movie trailers, I go to Apple's Quicktime site. If I want to see the greatest number of low-quality videos, I go to YouTube. I don't know that Stage 6 really had much of a chance given that you had to install the DivX browser plug-in just to see their videos...that's a barrier that wills top most users cold.