I have heard arguments on this board about how avi. files are better than any other, and wmv are not to be trusted. I, however, have a problem with the avi. format. You may have noticed that you cannot preview the avi. files. This is due to the fact that the codecs needed to play the files are the very last thing that downloads. Say the program you are downloading looks like, if printed out "011010100111010101..........10101110101", the last few digits would be the codecs. It is possible that there are some avi. players that have the needed codecs built in, but so far every version that I have downloaded cannot play the avi. file until it gets those last few digits downloaded. I could have 99.9999999% of the file downloaded with just one more digit to go and if I do not get that then the file is useless. wmv, on the other hand, does not need any codecs that I know of and you can play even a fragment without needing the whole program downloaded.

It is not just the problem of having to wait until an avi. file is fully downloaded to know if it was the one I wanted in the first place, but that sometimes the person who created the video file in the first place has added his "tag" to the video. That last 5% of the file that could take up to another hour to download, or longer if the source logs off. But if I was downloading a wmv. and saw that all that was left was the tag then I could just move the file as is to a save folder and have what I wanted. [ I am talking about music videos here. the rarest videos usualy download at 1-4 kb's. Someone downloading a movie, which could take days, could spend hours just downloading the ending credits ]

And there is the possibility of trolls who misslable files as long sought after videos/movies, only to kill any download that makes it to 99% and block that person from downloading again. Something I suspect on many unfinnished avi. files I have that cut off between 95 and 99 %, source never to be connected with again.

And then there is DivX. Most avi. files are DivX, even if not labled so. Most DviX files need an additional codecs which is downloaded from an outside source once the video file is being played. This allows anyone to cancel the codecs, leaving you with a file that only plays audio.