DVD.js to play DVD in a browser

[Edo]

Hi forum. In the past few years, I've been working on and off on https://github.com/gmarty/DVD.js.

It's a solution to play DVD on modern browsers. It solves a personal use case that is reading my DVD discs on my laptop or mobile when I'm away from home, without using the need to have the discs or even a player.

My guess is that it could also benefit users with a good DVD collection who are not satisfied by the current VOD offer (Netflix...) and want to get the full DVD experience (including multiangles, languages, menu, bonus...).

The project is far from being complete but can already play some basic DVD discs. I'd like to resume my work on it but before doing that I'd like to get an idea of people's interest.

If such a solution existed, would you use it? Would you contribute to it? Would you interact with other people using it? Essentially I want to get an idea of how much traction it can gain.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

I wonder: How does DVD.js access the DVD drive from within the browser sandbox when even local file access is pretty much unsupported, let alone ASPI/SPTI passtrough?

(Or is this just for "streaming" and you have to rip the disc beforehand and put it on a server?)

[manolito]

What is the advantage of this approach compared to just copying the VIDEO_TS folder or a whole ISO file of the DVDs to your mobile device and use a software player for playback? Or do you think that the player software is too bulky? (I don't think so, I use TinyPlayer where the whole folder is just 220 KB). If you feed a DVD ISO to a DirectShow based player it will not play the menus correctly, but if you need this you can use VirtualCloneDrive or similar.


Cheers
manolito

[vivan]

> Watching video in browser
No. Why would I want that when I have proper player on my PC and usable player on my Android device?
Languages and chapters are supported everywhere, and I doubt anyone really cares about menus and stuff.

Originally Posted by LoRd_MuldeR

(Or is this just for "streaming" and you have to rip the disc beforehand and put it on a server?)

Yes, and Github link explains everything. It's a server + a converter that converts video to webm and menu to js/css/images.

[Nevilne]

sometimes reality is stranger than node.js anecdotes

[StainlessS]

JFYI, windows from W98 till XP had an exe called DVDPlay.exe (dont know about Win versions after XP), so long as you had an MPEG2
decoder, and no specific DVD player, DVDPlay would pop up on inserting DVD disk. Very very basic, but it worked.

EDIT: In system32.

[Edo]

Originally Posted by manolito

What is the advantage of this approach compared to just copying the VIDEO_TS folder or a whole ISO file of the DVDs to your mobile device and use a software player for playback? Or do you think that the player software is too bulky? (I don't think so, I use TinyPlayer where the whole folder is just 220 KB). If you feed a DVD ISO to a DirectShow based player it will not play the menus correctly, but if you need this you can use VirtualCloneDrive or similar.

The main advantage is you can stream your DVD from a self hosted server without the need to have a local ISO. That means you can switch devices and resume playback from a mobile to a tablet for example.

Also using the web allows it to be played on pretty much any mobile and desktop OS with no install and no specific plugins or permissions.

[Ghitulescu]

I think it's a good idea to have such a player. Assuming it's honestly written (no ads, no hidden ads, no calls-home, no statistics, no reports of dubious genres watched etc )