ESS Technology today announced that DivXNetworks has certified ESS's Vibratto family of DVD decoder chips, making ESS the first official DivX Certified(TM) Partner to pass the stringent certification requirements needed to gain DivX Home Theater Certification status. ESS Technology has developed the Vibratto line of high quality, single chip and chipset solutions that allow manufacturers to satisfy growing consumer demand for cutting-edge multimedia technology. DivX certified reference platforms based on ESS's Vibratto family of DVD chipset solutions are the latest additions to the rich feature-set already available on the Vibratto-based DVD reference platforms. DivX video, which offers DVD-quality video at seven to 10 times greater compression rates than MPEG-2, is the world's most popular MPEG-4 compatible video compression technology, with over 85 million users worldwide. A wide range of DivX Certified consumer electronics devices, from portable video players to DVD players and set-top boxes, are scheduled to be introduced in the second half of 2003.

DivX Certification includes a full DivX software development kit to help third parties make their existing solutions compatible with DivX technology, or to help them create new solutions from scratch. The DivX Certified Partner Program was created to enable the development of official DivX-enabled consumer electronics products to meet the global demand for high-quality DivX convergence devices.