The Demystified website is written and maintained by Jim Taylor. I created the DVD FAQ in 1996 and started the best-selling DVD Demystified book series in 1997. I later demystified Blu-ray Disc and the UltraViolet online content ecosystem. In 2025, I launched the Demystified website to cover new mystifying subjects. (More about me below.)
Question, comments, and suggestions are welcome. Email Jim.
I handcraft this website using responsive design in Visual Studio Code using only HTML, CSS, and a bit of JavaScript. This keeps it simple and quick-loading. (When I built my first website in 1994, HTML 1.0 was the only option. Things have changed a bit since then! For this website I tried frameworks such as Bootstrap, Tailwind, and Foundation, but decided pure CSS gave me better control, less overhead, and not much more complexity.) I believe HMTL and CSS has matured to the point where it's consistently supported across modern browers, so I don't use any browser-specific tricks, -webkit- or -moz- extensions, or other cruft. If this website doesn't render properly on your browser it might be my fault, but it more likely means you need a newer browser.
This website is hosted on Amazon Web Services S3 as a static website. This has proved to be about 10× cheaper than traditional hosting services.
Jim is a seasoned technology executive who has seen many media formats come and go, and has shaped a few of them. He has moved from disk packs and cassette data tapes to floppy disks, laserdiscs, CD-ROM, DVD, BD, UltraViolet, CFF, WAVE, and more, and through Bitnet, FTP, Gopher, Usenet, WWW, HTML, cloud services, blockchains, and AI, even succumbing to the atrocities of Facebook and Twitter (but then happily moving on to Bluesky).
Jim is the creator of the Demystified website and the author of DVD Demystified and Blu-ray Disc Demystified, the best-selling book series published by McGraw-Hill. Called a "minor tech legend" by E! Online, Jim created the acclaimed Internet DVD FAQ and served as Chairman of the Interactive Digital Media Association (IDMA, formerly the DVD Association). Jim was named a "Content Agenda Setter," one of DVD Report's "Most Influential DVD Executives," one of the "Pioneers of DVD" by One to One magazine, and received the DVD Pro Discus Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Industry.
Jim was most recently CTO and Head of Product Development for UltraViolet, the online entertainment ecosystem backed by Hollywood studios and serving over 30 million users with 350 million movies and TV shows in 13 countries. Before that, he was Chief Technologist and general manager of the Advanced Technology division of Sonic Solutions, and Technical Evangelist at Microsoft.
Jim has been helping people understand technology for a long time. Here's his article from 1996, three years after the World Wide Web became worldwide, using the analogy of roads, buses, mail trucks, magazine stands, and more to explain the underlying protocols for the Internet, web browsing, e-mail, FTP, Usenet, Gopher, and other now mostly obsolete functions.
Jim is available for consulting work. He has served as an expert witness and technical advisor to numerous law firms, and has advised companies such as Intel, Microsoft, HP, Warner Bros., NDS (Cisco/Synamedia), and Neustar.
Contact: jtfrog@usa.net
LinkedIn: Jim Taylor