Chapter 1

cumvention. On January 24, 16-year old Jon Johansen, the Norwegian
programmer who first distributed DeCSS, was questioned by local police
who raided his house and confiscated his computer equipment and cell
phone. Johansen says the actual cracking work was done by two anonymous
programmers, one German and one Dutch, who call themselves
Masters of Reverse Engineering (MoRE).
This all seems to be a losing battle, since the DeCSS source code is
available on a T-shirt and was made publicly available by the DVD CCA itself
in court records—oops! See Fire, Work With Me (www.brunching.com/
copyfire.html) for a facetious look at the broad issue.
How Do I Play DVD Video in HTML, PowerPoint,
Director, VB, and So On?
A variety of multimedia development/authoring programs can be extended
to play video from a DVD, either as titles and chapters from a DVD-Video
volume, or as MPEG-2 files. In Windows, this is usually done with ActiveX
controls. On the Mac, until DVD-Video support is added to QuickTime, the
options are limited. Newer versions of the Apple DVD Player can be controlled
with AppleScript.
DVD-Video and MPEG-2 video can be played back in an HTML page in
Microsoft Internet Explorer using many different ActiveX controls (see Table
4-3). Some ActiveX controls also work in PowerPoint, Visual Basic, and
other ActiveX hosts. Netscape Navigator is out of the game until it supports
ActiveX objects. Simple MPEG-2 playback can be done in PowerPoint
using the Insert Movie feature (which requires that a DirectShow-compatible
MPEG-2 decoder be installed). DVD and MPEG-2 playback can be integrated
into Macromedia Director using specialized Xtras.
Of course, if you simply treat DVD-ROM as a bigger, faster CD-ROM, you
can create projects using traditional tools (Director, Flash, Toolbook, Hyper-
Card, VB, HTML, and so on) and traditional media types (CinePak, Sorenson,
Indeo, Windows Media, and so on in QuickTime or AVI format) and
they’ll work just fine from DVD. You can even raise the data rate for bigger
or better quality video. But it usually won’t look as good as MPEG-2.
What Are .IFO, .VOB, and .AOB Files?
How Can I Play Them?
DVDs and Computers 135
The DVD-Video and DVD-Audio specifications (see “Who Invented DVD
and Who Owns It? Whom to contact for Specifications and Licensing?” in
Chapter 6) define how audio and video data are stored in specialized files.