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I played around with at least 6 different free applications [...] I can't even get the damn ripping part to work. [...] So I quit trying.

I tried finding free stuff too. Seriously, rarely works. Then a friend showed me products by Slysoft. You'll need to buy 2 of their products to get it to work. AnyDVD (the DVD decoder) and CloneDVD (the program that rips and burns). They both cost, if I remember, $30-$40, with free updates and apparently support HD discs (I've never tried it).

It's a super easy to use program and it's more than worth the price, IMHO. CloneDVD also rips to PSP, DS, and many other formats. I used it to put ST:DS9 episodes on my PSP to watch at the gym. The average time it takes to copy is ~20mins (up to an hour if you're using a DL-DVD) and that's while I'm usually MMOing, but then again, I have a nice rig. Usually it's ~15 to rip and ~5min to burn a copy. You can save your files to avoid future ~15min burns in the future.

I've never had a problem using this software. The only problem I've ever had was when I bought the El Cheapo DVD's: Dynex (BestBuy house brand). Yeah, an entire spindle for 50 that half wouldn't even work in the machine and the other half turned out to only work on the crappiest Wal-Mart DVD player, but nothing else.

CloneDVD also makes it pretty easy to remove language tracks, subtitles, special features, etc so you can increase compression quality (if you're compressing a DL-DVD to a normal DVD). I usually short for ~50% compression quality to get normal broadcast quality video. On rare occasions and on very dark images, you get noise and pixelation. But I'm very happy using it. I even watch it on my parents projection TV, and it still looks good. But, I'm not a quality nerd. I just want to watch the shows. I find it as good as watching regular DVD's and TV shows.

Man, I sound like an advertisement. I guess that's because after spending too much time and frustration trying to copy my DVD's over the years, and finally finding something that just 'worked', I was happy.

There's a 30-day free trial, so give it a shot. Like most things, I'm more than willing to buy it if it's a reasonable price. Probably why I stopped buying CD's and DVD's and just started using Blockbuster online to watch movies and buy only the music singles I like from online stores.

Cheers,
Fozzy

The only thing I disagree with is that it's trivial to copy DVDs. Even the least technically savvy person can put a music CD into their computer and press the Copy Disc button that's built in to the operating system now. DVDs are more difficult

Buy AnyDVD and that "Copy Disc button" works for every disc you put in the drive. Every tool that works with "non-copyprotected DVDs" works with every DVD when AnyDVD is running.

Yes, AnyDVD is a Windows program, but the majority of people who need the "Copy Disc button" are running Windows

The Digg "rebellion" was mostly a pointless masturbatory exercise in people making themselves feel like important ZOMG H4X0R REBELS, despite not having a clue what the hex string actually was or how to use it. It helped publicise the break which was no bad thing, but it was completely unnecessary to actually ensure circumvention, the hackers who needed to know it already did.

The overall system is somewhat more complicated with multiple keys etc so it's misleading to say "AACS is just AES", but AES encryption is the core of it yeah. For that reason it's extremely unlikely that it will ever be fundamentally broken in the cryptographic sense, but fortunately we don't actually need to do that to obtain fair-use access to the content.

You can already buy a relatively inexpensive point-and-click tool, AnyDVD HD, to automatically bypass AACS on HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray. The Doom9 hackers have established it works by using a database of known title-specific VUKs and almost certainly the known 09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63 56 88 c0 processing key (which Slysoft actually broke before they did, but for obvious reasons didn't release.) The latter has now been revoked, and there will no doubt be attempts to step up security in general (the VUKs have so far been obtained from memdumps of software players which didn't protect them very well at all), but it seems likely that the best AACS can do is to slow the hackers down somewhat.

A system like AACS in conjunction with hardware DRM to stop such memory inspection etc could be a nightmare to break, though. We're already seeing the start of this e.g. with HDCP. It's very unwise IMO to get complacent about DRM and assume that some hacker will always break it.

I did the same thing. However, my entry into the shady world of DVD ripping started with Shrek. After having to replace it twice (over a relatively long period of time) I decided that this enforced re-purchasing program was not for me. Now I use AnyDVD and DVD Decrypter and rip all my purchased movies.

I then used Beyond TV and Beyond Media (with the indispensable DVD Library plugin) to watch it all.

"The other day they released an updated version of AnyDVD which effortlessly bypasses Protect DVD-Video."
Nice try. I'll give you a cookie.

Too bad we will have to throw 39 extra dollars to be able to do something we've done for free until now.

How unbelievably simplistic it is to "hide" the ISO9660 filesystem behind a broken-on-purpose UDF layer... how long is it going to take the AnyDVD / DVDShrink folks to write in the 'bypass UDF' option ya think?

Of course the encryption is already broken. From the article:

SlySoft have a product called AnyDVD which works in the background to automatically remove the copy protection of a DVD movie as soon as it's inserted into the drive. The other day they released an updated version of AnyDVD which effortlessly bypasses Protect DVD-Video.

A better, but non-free, solution for Windows is AnyDVD. Transparently removes region code, prohibited user operations, bad sectors and TOCs, adverts/trailers, and supposedly does the same for CDDA protections.

I like AnyDVD, I use AnyDVD. But only because I must.

Is it just me, or does anyone else see something wrong with that product? It's nice because it gives me (allows me to use rather) the freedoms I enjoy under my Fair Use rights but I've got to pay for it. Ironically, the software has copy protection built in!

I don't see AnyDVD lasting for long, but for good reasons. It is similar to bootlegging - we've been forced to look to questionable business practices because the government has sided with the special interests and hasn't supported our rights. Frankly I think it is wrong, wrong, wrong. I can't get a copy of DVD Decrypter (legally, you know) but I can *buy* a copy of AnyDVD?

http://www.slysoft.com/en/why-is-your-software-not -available-in-stores-faq.90.20.html

It seems the only thing that creates cyber-criminals is cyber-laws.

So invest in a copy of AnyDVD (quick, before the RIAA sues them!). It acts a lot like the nefarious driver-level copy protection, except the opposite - it allows you to do more, rather than less. I know it works with other Sony discs, like Kung Fu Hustle.

From the Slysoft web site: http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvd.html

AnyDVD tackles Sony DRM Rootkit Virus!
If AnyDVD is installed and active on your PC, the new so-called "Sony DRM Rootkit Virus" has no access to your system and the affected audio CD appears unprotected regardless! Another good reason to get AnyDVD!

I actually got so fed up with my Shrek 2 DVD with its inability to skip the trailers that I investigated solutions a bit more.

Short of ripping it to my hard drive, there is a program called AnyDVD that removes these restrictions, among other things, on the fly. It works exactly as one would expect; choose your options and hide it in the system tray.

Note: It is Windows only and has a time limited demo.

checkout http://www.slysoft.com/en/ I have used them for a similar purpose. I uuse clonevd2 to rip and save them as an image, in this process you can adjust the quality ect. This paired with virtualclonedrive is sweet, I have all my dvd iso's on my fileserver and with virtualclonedrive installed on my pc i click on the image and it is just as it i put that disk into the the dvd drive.

You can use AnyDVD to install drivers for Windows to ignore the region code and remove any protection on the DVD.

You paying customers are getting screwed by the companies themselves. Even before it was as "rampant" as it is claimed to be today, they were building in copy-protection techniques, which made it harder for the paying customer to use their media their way. This is even truer now, with cds like "Break the Cycle" (classic example cd) unable to work on many players.

I highly reccomend a read of The hard-to-find truth about piracy, which includes excellent parts such as:

The leisure corporations are conducting, in fact, a war not against pirates, but on their own customers. For many years now, honest consumers paying full price for legitimate products have been saddled with crippled, inferior versions of what the pirate users get for free:

- Pirate users don't have to keep their precious PC game discs spinning endlessly and noisily in the drive (and being subjected to repeated handling) while they play the game.

- Pirate users don't have to sit through all those infuriatingly long, unskippable splash screens / trailers / adverts before they can watch the actual movie on their new DVD, while the poor saps who paid for it in a shop do.

- Pirate users don't get their brand-new music CD home only to find that it won't play in their computer because it's been made in a non-standard-compliant "anti-piracy" format which prevents legitimate users from legally listening to music they've paid for.

- Pirate users can use their game consoles to play games originating from any country, while legitimate purchasers of, say, a game from Japan will be unable to play it on their legitimate, but UK-bought, Playstation 2.

- Pirate users don't have to uninstall perfectly legal software applications from their PCs, or put up with the secret installation of damaging programs if they want to play their new games, unlike the unfortunate legitimate consumers.

And so on. But astoundingly, the entertainment business still doesn't think it's made life miserable enough for its honest, paying customers.

Found that nice link in NTK for Sept. 9, 2003. I'd say that as a customer, you're getting screwed over. I'm not saying don't buy what you want, please do, but I'm saying it should also be ok for you to download a "Pirated" version so that you get to use the media your way instead of theirs. No-CD Cracks should be fine, but companies are now making your $50 product useless for using them. Sad, I think.

If you have a laptop with a DVD drive, you can use the AnyDVD driver software to bypass that region encoding bullshit. Or, you can pick up a cheap Chinese or Taiwanese DVD player that will ignore region encoding(So I've heard.)

Battlefield is SafeDisc protected. Use CloneCD to create an image. Use a good reading drive with fast error skipping. Then mount that image in Daemon Tools. Daemon Tools works for all except the very latest copy protections. Mostly, the updated copy protections include a blacklist which usually gets overriden in the next D-Tools release.

If a game is SecuROM-protected, you have to use another approach, mainly using a different reading program that supports DPM.

Really, handling physical media like CD/DVD is so 2000. Today you stuff enough HD space into your file server and keep CD images to mount when needed.