Product: DVD Player
DVD-ROM Compatible Set Top DVD Player   (0)  [vote for, against]
All the DVD-ROM goodness on your set top player.

Quite a few DVD movies feature DVD-ROM accessable content. Ranging from just single weblinks to actual informative content such as script to screen comparisons, storyboards and in one DVD's case, a replication of an "Iraqi assmap", these add varying degrees to added value to DVD movies.

Unfortunately many of us don't have DVD-ROMs. Or even a computer.

Sure, you could say to just buy a DVD-ROM, however for various reasons this can't be done, or bothered.

So how about replacing the DVD internal programming with a Windows based equivalent that not only will replicate various DVD functions, but on optional boot-up allows you to access DVD-ROM features.

Of course some features can't be access this way at all (e.g. weblinks, applications), but for most this will provide some extra entertainment.
-- mrkillboy, Jun 28 2001

While this does sound like a good idea, I don't much fancy having to reboot my tv every time I want to change the channel. Microsoft on my computer is bad enough.
-- megalodon, Jun 28 2001


This is more or less the much-ballyhooed Set Top Box which was going to bring about the Digital Convergence. I'm not convinced it's actually a good idea; although the electronics in a DVD player are similar to those in a general-purpose computer, the mode of use is entirely different.

This would be an almost perfect use of Java, though: embeddable, architecture-independent, etc., etc.. Unfortunately we're more likely to get some sort of XBox-WebTV monstrosity...
-- wiml, Jun 28 2001



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