DiVX killed off the Stage6 video sharing community back in February. And ever since then, new sites have been trying to pick up the torch. Stage6 used the popular DiVX codec and a DiVX Web player which allowed users to watch high definition videos at a time when most web video was YouTube quality. But the company decided the web service wasn't worth the price of bandwidth.

Last night one of the most talked-about DiVX clones, Vreel launched in public beta. And then the site went down after it was hit by a rush of traffic and several apparent attacks on the site. Durign the few minutes that Vreel was publicly available, the site looked pretty good. It features a fair number of videos, makes use of the DiVX web player, and allows you to watch high quality videos in full screen.

One of the things that really sets Vreel apart from other sites like YouTube is support for videos of any length. What that means is that while you won't find too many videos that are clearly labeled Lost episode 1, you can find plenty of full-length TV shows and movies if you look around. That means that once Vreel recovers from its traffic and hacker problems it may still face legal challenges.

But if you're tired of waiting for Vreel to get its act together, you should know that this is hardly the only site hoping to replace Stage6 in you hearts and minds. Others include Stage Next, Stagevu (which is currently down for maintenance), and SetVid. The video selection at these three sites is somewhat limited. But at least they're up and running (most of the time), which is more than Vreel can say at the moment.