Well, between the company we do most of our work for going up on the auction block and our beloved Cafe La Fortuna shutting down, we’ve been reeling from shock after shock in the last few days. Now we find out that Stage6, DIVx’s video site is 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.
Yes, it seems hosting videos is an expensive business for which there is no real profit model. Hello, YouTube!
Now why does this interest us? Well, you see DIVx produced and Stage6 hosted all the videos we did at the last two San Diegos, including great moments with Evelyn DuBocq, Tom Spurgeon, Gerard Butler, Scott McCloud, Rosario Dawson and the Turds. We’re attempting to download and archive the videos, although we don’t have much time — Thursday! YIKES! Hopefully we will find a new place to host them. I mean, it’s not like you don’t have enough San Diego videos floating around out there. We just like watching our state of coherence deteriorate over the five-day period, and the commensurate increase in the big dark circles under our eyes.
Check out Blip.TV. They have much better quality than YouTube, are easy to deal with and will actually respond to an email sent to them. They don’t have the upload size limits that YouTube has and allow downloads…you can even have them set up a RSS for podcasting.
We’ve used them for our show since last year, but earlier this year we moved our archive over and they are our main host now. And like I said, very easy to deal with.
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