Smallest CSS DVD Decoder By Charles M Hannum Achieves High Performance

Coder Charles M Hannum has created the smallest program capable of decoding a Content Scrambling System (CSS) DVD file, beating last week's seven-line Perl shell script 442 bytes to 472 (excluding newline bytes). Hannum's C program, called efdtt, is no slouch, . . . Coder Charles M Hannum has created the smallest program capable of decoding a Content Scrambling System (CSS) DVD file, beating last week's seven-line Perl shell script 442 bytes to 472 (excluding newline bytes). Hannum's C program, called efdtt, is no slouch, either. The programmer claims it can "descramble in excess of 21.5MBps" - faster than the DVD spec. allows for. The speed comes "without even particularly trying to optimise the I/O. This makes it pretty insignificant compared to the rest of the decoding process" = in other words, it's quick enough not to impede the MPEG 2 decode operation which turns the data into a moving image.

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