AmbitionAtWork

I just have a quick question. When someone hooks up a tv to their computer, is it possible to design a program that prevents the DVD or VCR player from working, or recording whatever is on the TV? If no, is it possible to design a program that wont allow the TV to be connected to the computer? And if it can be done, can it be done in Java? Thanks

lectricpharaoh

I'm not sure what you're asking here, as there are two things that come to mind.

First is that the user is using a TV-out jack on the computer to use a TV as a (possibly secondary) monitor, and you want to prevent them running it through a VCR or DVR and recording the output. As far as I know, you cannot do this. However, if they are using DVD-player software on their computer, most modern machines will add information to the signal if the source is copy-protected (as most commercial DVDs are). This signal will be respected by compliant recording devices, which will either refuse to record, record a scrambled version of the content, or somehow limit the recordings made (such as refusing to make copies, limiting them to being viewed only on the DVR they were made on). This is often a legal requirement for manufacturers of hardware in many countries.

Thus, if your concern is that someone will use a TV-out enabled PC to bypass DVD copy protection, this is not an issue. While it's possible to do in theory, this would require either the same techniques used to defeat the protection in VCR/DVD to VCR/DVR setups, or cracking of the protection before playing the disc (ie, DVD Decrypter, etc). In other words, don't worry about it, as either way, it's completely out of your hands.

On the other hand, if you're talking about TV-in, and want to prevent the user from recording content from a VCR or DVD source, I'm not sure if such implementations are required, or even common. Thus, you may find this to be extremely hard, if not impossible. Also, as the code involved is likely to make extensive use of native APIs, it's unlikely you'll be able to do it in Java. Well, I suppose you could make heavy use of JNI, but some might call that cheating, and it defeats the point of using Java in the first place.

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