Abstract: The present invention has a technical objective of providing a distinctive display format for machine-readable dot patterns which does not harm the aesthetics of images displayed on a display device. The dot pattern is made machine readable by providing the periphery of dots with a contrast control region and/or an anti-aliasing region which are distinguishable from the surrounding image. Thus enabled is the embedding of the two-dimensional codes which cannot be recognized by audiences yet machine readable on video or images on the screen of a display device. An audience can easily acquire information defined by the dot patterns using a digital camera, a video camera, a portable telephone camera, a web camera, or the like to image the screen of the display device or to capture the screen as data.