[clue-tech] DVDs, Christmas, and morons

[Sean LeBlanc]

On 12-25 15:09, David L. Willson wrote:
> 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.  :-)

Dunno about SVCD and VCD ease of use on computers, but I've found most of my
DVD players I've owned over the years supported both, although for a while
there, Sony was (baffingly) supporting VCD and SVCD according to the specs,
but NOT CD-R, so one of my players didn't play my SVCDs.

Sure, since it's CD, you are limited to how much you can put on there, but
depending on how much content and copies you are making, you can save a few
bucks using CD vs. DVD.

-- 
Sean LeBlanc:seanleblanc at comcast.net
http://sean-leblanc.blogspot.com
Death is only a state of mind.
Only it doesn't leave you much time to think about anything else.