[clue-tech] DVDs, Christmas, and morons

[David L. Willson]

Some time ago, I found that if I put a bunch of JPGs on a DVD, that just about any Video DVD player would be able to show them in a slideshow.  Are there video and audio codecs that work the same way?  OK, nevermind about the audio codec, I know: MP3 and WMA.  It galls me to have to use proprietary codecs, but I'll get over it.  What about video, though?  I made a 4GB USB stick with mixed media for my family and friends this year for Christmas, and I'd like to do something like it next year, but I want to make it tech-noob friendly, by making it possible to "just throw it in the DVD player" and enjoy most of the content, if not all of it, without ruining the cross-platform enjoyability of the computer-based experience.

Maybe I should be asking if there's a way to produce a Video DVD that works well in most DVD players and most computers, without using proprietary software or codecs?

If not, how close can I get?  This year, the disk contains a bunch of programs for Windows, that also exist for Linux, HTML or RTF (text) files, OGV's (Ogg Theora), OGA's (Ogg Vorbis), and JPG's.  I included the Windows DirectX codec installer for the media, so everything can be consumed by a Windows or Linux user, but not a complete moron with no understanding of either one.

My goal next year, is to make most of the content accessible, even to the family moron.  :-)

David L. Willson
Network Engineer
MCT, MCSE, Linux+
tel://720.333.LANS