Software idea - DVD book reader

[Shubin]

I have an idea of a new kind of software. There are many
portable DVD players available on the market now. They
have relatively good screens and they can read DVD-R/RW.
Also everybody knows that DVD format is capable of many
things - there even a virtual machine built in.
So it is possible to make a piece of software that will embed any text into DVD format and will allow some
simple navigation on this text. There are LCD book readers
already existing, but they are about 2 times more
expensive than the regular portable DVD players.
I think that this idea is worth thinking about.

[Doobie]

I have an idea of a new kind of software. There are many
portable DVD players available on the market now. They
have relatively good screens and they can read DVD-R/RW.
Also everybody knows that DVD format is capable of many
things - there even a virtual machine built in.
So it is possible to make a piece of software that will embed any text into DVD format and will allow some
simple navigation on this text. There are LCD book readers
already existing, but they are about 2 times more
expensive than the regular portable DVD players.
I think that this idea is worth thinking about.

If that was a good idea, I'd already be on my way to the patent office and claiming the idea for myself. But, instead, I'm replying to you. What does that say?

Yes, DVD players can do what you suggest. In fact, all the ones on the market can already do it. Why can't you find DVD books. Probably lack of demand.

Any book, complete with pictures, can easily fit on a CD ROM. So, what's the point of using a DVD?

[BITS]

As far as embedding, you lost me there. You do understand a dvd use's bits right? Anyways, with flash memory devices getting bigger and bigger, that would be the way to go if you had such a extremely large book, on a dvd seek times might be nasty especially if it comes from a scratched disc. As far as patenting it, i think that would be a ebook medium for transportation and portability, so that patent is already taken (i think by adobe).

As far as players capable of doing that now, no not really. Unless you encode the text into mpeg2 or something, because most players on the market are only DVD-Video. Even if you did that, the players only support 16 (or 32?) subtitle streams. So 32 ebooks wouldn't even fill that dvd. And if you wanted to make the ebook itself without using the subtitles, then you are limited to 99 ebooks. Unless you intentionally encoded the ebook video at a much, much larger bitrate than needed, you would be wasting alot of space.

the comment about 99 ebooks above i think is incorrect...wouldn't it be 99^2?

[Mug Funky]

subtitles would be pretty ugly to read. however, if you made the book as flat menus you'd be able to do it. sub streams could be useful if you're into multilingual books.

but for menus to be nicely readible on a 720x576 or 720x480 screen you wouldn't be putting too many words per page. also, i wouldn't want to be stuck with the job of authoring such a DVD (or author-checking it). though there's the possiblilty of a tool that authors the flats for you using a directory full of numbered images and a template subpic for navigation (like a left and right pointing arrow at the bottom right of each flat picture).

additionally you could have 8 audio tracks in different languages, but that would mean giving up on flat menus and using low bitrate video. even if the video was structured as 1 high-rate i-frame followed by a GOP with all blocks encoded as "skip blocks", the video would still be a pretty high bitrate compared to flat pictures. it'd also be a problem timing the audio part with people's average reading speed.

all in all, i think e-books are a better idea. though portable DVD players that can also read regular e-books would be pretty cool.