That wouldn't work for such a mass market product made by many manufacturers, many of them cutting every corner that they can. Newer codecs often require a bit more power or memory to run so even if there was an upgrade path many players would be locked out of newer discs or disc makers would be forced to put two formas on the disc, one for better players and one for those capable of only the baseline, reducing the amount of space available for actual content.
DVD players, and consumer devices like them, are intended to be “black boxes” to the user, not something that they need to service by applying updates, and there wasn't the connectivity available back then that there is now for that to be done automatically – people would have had to bring something to the machine incurring a distribution cost. This couldn't be “just download and stick it on a USB drive” because many people didn't have much by way of Internet access at all at home, or often didn't even have a computer (or had one that wasn't recent enough to have the fancy new fangled USB thingies, and USB drives weren't the cheap throw-away trinkets they've since become). Remember: the standard was invented in 1995, first available to the public in 1996, and rose to significant adoption in the early 2000s.
You could include the update on the DVDs themselves, but that adds two problems. First there is security/stability: something could accidentally (or maliciously) brick the user device. Second is compatibility: they would have to constrain the hardware options considerably, rather than it being “anything that can run this codec” many more implementation details would need to be fixed in the standard. You also run into the earlier problem: there is a limit imposed by the lowest common denominator in hardware, either you have to dictate better hardware in the standard which makes things more expensive for the public (that would have massively slowed the early adoption) or you are only adding a little flexibility not enough for the process to be worthwhile.
And with codec. What code it is in? For what architecture or operating system? What is system constraints it has to operate in? Do you have some specification? Do you need to due something beyond it for new codec.
And from security viewpoint running some arbitrary code from disk sounds like questionable idea. Specially for say pc or console...
This. In those days any general-purpose CPU with enough grunt to do realtime software decoding of MPEG2 and hypothetical newer codecs would have needed a fan - which would have been a dealbreaker for a living-room appliance.
Joke aside, this question is close to the file format obsolescence problem in long term digital preservation: the longer the term, the closer to bootstrapping the answer is.
In the shorter term, detailed metadata, widely used containers and choice of codecs that have well-known open source implementations is a good start.
Consumer DVD players have (cheaper) ASICs for hardware-decoding of MPEG. The algorithm to decode is literally burned into the chip. It wouldn't have made economic sense for manufacturers to pay extra for general-purpose CPUs such as x86/ARM/MIPS to enable future scenarios of loading & executing arbitrary code from discs.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BD-J
Admittedly not for codecs at least.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/pentium-ii-release-d...
In other words, there was simply no way to ship affordable DVD players that would use a general purpose CPU for video decoding. It needed to be in hardware.
A good brand would buffer compute and memory capacity by a decent factor at time of sale in order to support future codecs needs...
You probably don't want that kind of capability since it ends up being used for nefarious purposes by the rights holders and media companies.
For example the keys on your BluRay player can be revoked just by playing a BluRay disc, as the drive first reads the code on the disc and executes the appropriate code to "update" your player according to the wishes of the DRM overlords. It's a very anti-consumer feature. Sony was also distributing their music CDs with rootkits to try to prevent piracy.
I think VHS and Laserdisc were better since they had little DRM and you could freely rewind and view whatever parts you want at your own discretion. The advent of tech also meant the advent of anti-user DRM that dictate how the (paying!) user must enjoy the content.
Thanks for mentioning this. The LibreDrive firmware is specifically designed to address this and other issues.
The problem is a physical media format absolutely cannot afford to gain a reputation for not playing.
You see, if stores accept returns for opened DVDs? People can buy a DVD movie, watch it, then return it for a refund.
But if stores don't accept returns for opened DVDs? If I paid two hours' wages for that DVD, it doesn't play, and they won't give me a refund? I'm going to be mad about being ripped off, and I'm going to complain a lot.
But why change a running system (and I have an external USB DVD device).
Keeping that data around and managing requests for it is a part of why older physicians are so keen to sell their practices to younger doctors here - they can pass on the duty of keeping up with storing the data that way.
People are very good as securing physical items. They are awful at securing files.
A dvd or maybe an SD card or USB stick is a much better approach.
I had to receive all of my vaccinations again over two sessions before attending public school.
Aren’t school vaccines registered with the state? Given how many parents cannot keep records, I am surprised the solution would be “get them again”.
Of course the real hard part is how do you mark a record as do not restore anymore. In a medical context this isn't much a problem, but in other cases it is an issue.
A pendrive would work almost as well but too many people likely would accidentally reformat them, add data and mix them up, claim they got a virus from them (which they maybe did, when their 8yo nephew clicked everything looking for big boobs online, not because of the doctor. But now the doctor has to prove the virus on the pendrive was added later? Just hand the patient a DVD really).
They would be different incompatible discs. That is: a different standard.
Relevant dead ends:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Definition_Versatile_Disc
It's looking like it's going to be harder and harder to find a physical DVD _player_, though. When the one you have breaks down, you may not be able to buy a replacement.
By the way, for me, the DVD standard was very strange. I think that the engineering industry works differently than IT/CS guys. They think of "a product" which consists of the medium AND the "protocol" i.e. file format in this case, and they are inseparable in their (engineers') heads.
When new codecs were created, the DVD could have been enhanced in terms of better quality, as normal DivX would allow maximally better quality on 4.7G (instead of 7GB available to DVD publisher). But when I am watching DVDs I find the low quality disturbing, and playing the interlaced movies (Futurama for example) without a decent player makes me nauseous.
I would even think of converting them and storing on my local cloud but without decent player (like Cyberlink which was removing the interlacing) this looks like crap... Also probably today some AI upscaling would be nice... but I think I am asking for too much...