: The original file was uploaded by scene groups to private, high-speed FTP servers (TopSites). From there, it trickled down to Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels, where users utilized XDCC bots to queue downloads.
: The file extension, standing for Audio Video Interleave, is a multimedia container format introduced by Microsoft. It acts like a digital box that holds both the compressed video stream (the Xvid-encoded footage) and the audio stream (often in AC3 or MP3 format) together in a single file. The AVI container was the standard for the scene, ensuring compatibility with almost all media players of the era, such as Windows Media Player and VLC Media Player.
: The video codec used to compress the movie. Xvid was an open-source, reverse-engineered clone of the proprietary DivX codec. It allowed a 4.7 GB DVD to be compressed into a fraction of its size while retaining impressive visual fidelity.
: The Audio Video Interleave container format developed by Microsoft. It wrapped the Xvid video stream and the MP3 or AC3 audio stream into a single playable file. The Cultural Convergence of 2003
However, Xvid was computationally expensive. To play , your computer needed a dedicated decoder like ffdshow or K-Lite Codec Pack . If you were lucky, you had a Pentium 4 with 512MB of RAM. If you weren't, the movie would look like a slideshow of green code—ironic, given the film's subject matter.