When we played the created file with Nero ShowTime we were actually very surprised with the produced quality. When you think of the fact that the original DVD movie was over 7GB in size and the created .MP4 file is less than 700MB you would expect the movie quality to be very poor. This was not the case! Below we've taken some screenshots in which you can see that the picture is of very decent quality. The quality was not as good as the original DVD but as said, when you compress a movie to 10% of its original size you're bound to sacrifice some quality.

When you are an experienced video encoder and you know what all the settings mean in both the DivX and the XViD coded you will be able to produce excellent quality encoded movies, probably better quality than when using the default settings like we did. However keeping in mind the average user, the default settings should give a user a decent quality movie. Because of the quality of its output and its speed, Nero Digital could become a major competitor to DivX and XViD. Besides that, Nero Digital has a lot of standard options that, for now, are only possible with the other codecs using third party software.

We asked DivX Networks for a reaction on our test results and if the company was planning to tweak its standard settings. The company told us it could not comment on our results but was awaiting our article with big interest.

Nero Digital will also be available for Consumer Electronics (CE) which means that CE manufacturers are able to license Nero Digital to use it in their products. An example of this could be a DVD player that plays Nero Digital content, just like a DivX Certified device. More information about Nero Digital can be found on http://www.nerodigital.com. Please discuss Nero Digital in our Nero Recode Forum. We are very interested in your testresults when using standard and non-standard settings.