I currently don't have a DVD recorder, so I can't write DVDs. Some days ago while at the supermarket I saw a Philips DVD player (for home entertainment) with DIVX codec support. As it is a bit old, I guess it has DIVX codec 5.1 installed. Supposing codec will be updated, would I be able to update it in the player too if I bought it ?

You didn't mention the model number,but I just got a JVC NP10S DVD player that plays DivX a week or so ago.I have over 150 movies on DVD and cdrs and I tested them all for a few minutes each the other day,and there ended up being 13 that it couldn't play.6 ended up being mpegs..duh..lol..the rest came up with a QPel codec error.I took those and re-encoded them and reburned them and they work fine.As far as future versions of Divx go,I would imagine there would be firmware updates in the future as DivX evolves...but I don't know for sure.The philips site doesn't seem to have a lot of firmware support for thier DVD players.

Maybe someone can point me in the right direction for a site with JVC DVD player firmware listed....otherwise,I fully recommend getting one of these DivX players...so much better than watching movies on the computer.I just recently took a loan out and got a 60" Philips projection TV and a decent surround system,and got the JVC player to go with it.I'm really impressed with how a 700 meg AVI looks blown up that large...really nice.