It’s a 32 year old format that makes pictures worse in order to save space. A lot changes in the tech works in 30 years. While there may be nothing inherently wrong with it, there’s far better image encoding algorithms these days that can store images in less space without reducing the quality as much.

It’s pretty simple to start at the fact you have a species that can read the thoughts of other people, even outside their species, and even inject thoughts into those other beings minds. So there must be something detectable that sentient species emit that can be detected and understood, and can also be pushed at them. Once that mechanism’s understood, a machine can be developed to apply that to language. Sato is really good at using that machine.

Of course “magic box” works too.