dvdxml

If you've ever used a cddb/freedb enabled program with your music CDs, you probably appreciate the convience of just putting in a disc and having all it's attributes right at your fingertips. Artist, Title, list of songs, etc. Ever wish you had that same advantage for DVDs? Ever wanted to just pop a disc in and have the player display it's title, as well as telling you what audio streams are available to choose from (perhaps even setting your reciever to the right setup), what aspect ratio to set your projector for, and that the first stream is all trailers and you probably want to start with the second if you want to jump straight to the movie...?

Well, We're looking to create the framework for a network of servers that can provide just that sort of information to your player. DVDs are a bit more complex than CDs, but we feel that XML provides a good basis for describing the attributes of DVDs.

Phase one:

Create a DTD for describing DVDs in XML.

This is where we are now. If you'd like to contribute to creating this DTD, please contact us at info@dvdxml.org. What's most sorely needed right now is a unique disc identifier that is easy to read/calculate by software from the unencrypted parts of any dvd.

Phase two:

Create a reference implementation of a server that can store these XML documents, and respond to requests for disc info, as well as talk to other servers for records that may not be available in it's own repository.

Phase three:

Create some basic stopgap client tools for use until the system is widely incorporated in players and other end-user software.

Phase four:

Convince everyone to use the system and to contribute missing records.