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She doesn't care about patent licensing, but just wants to watch a movie easily. ... My wife is fine with respecting copyright and paying for entertainment. She just expects that entertainment should not be the reward for solving a puzzle of compatibility.

OK, so seriously: since you ordered it from Amazon (but it wasn't in your physical possession yet), why not download it and watch from TPB in the meantime?

Or if that offends your sensibilities (since you didn't actually have the physical media and thus you haven't yet legally executed any shrink-wrap agreements), then put that copy up on the shelf and let someone else rip and encode it for you. THEY might not have a license to use or distribute, but YOU have a license to watch -- literally. Your wife wants convenience? That pirate copy will play on your Roku, Plex, HDMI, VGA, or even CGA. (You reallly want to look at that last link, it's funny.)

Going out on a limb here, you do need to purchase the show before watching it (which you've done.) But the actual device you watch the show on is immaterial, rather it be a 3" smart watch, a 11" tablet, or your brand new 19,720" TV

And if you feel you must watch your exact particular copy of bits, then visit: SlySoft which can generate a file that will (once again) play thru anything you have. Burning a new unprotected physical DVD and leaving the original untouched is what it's designed for, but I think more people (I know that *I* do) rip their copies and use the computer as a giant movie jukebox instead. The original DVDs stay in a box in the basement while the bits I actually use are getting dizzy spinning around on disks.

(And we won't even mention the evilness of this. It's a free NetFlix-like "publicly provided" movie source where the only thing missing (I think) is the legal license to distribute the source material to start with.)

... heard the best software is AnyDVD, which is Windows only. Haven't tried it.

AnyDVD is great. It'll handle anything you throw at it, and the team releases frequent updates to handle new discs. They sell a yearly subscription to a lifetime subscription, and usually have some kind of discount promotion going on. "All" it does though is remove the encryption; you'll need something else to manipulate the now in-the-clear files. (I suggest HandBrake to MKV. Omit the startup menu and forced-leading ads, too.)

Imgburn states there's some occasional interaction with AnyDVD and it's after-burn disc verification, but I've never, ever seen that.

Be aware that 8 years ago when I bought the software direct from the vendor, the CC was disabled afterwards because the purchase originated from an odd place to them. Now-a-days I'd imagine they forward the purchase info to the MPAA for their "future reference and action".

Then again, DVDFab was some of their competition, but recently they've been forcibly "disappeared".

Really, the easiest thing to do is to buy the DVD/BR and then find a rip. They're normally available in different sizes and resolution and then you don't even have to go to the bother of opening the case, never mind the time and energy for a re-encode.

Not that I'd know about any of this. I've got a friend that told me about all that. Yeah, that's right; a friend.

Actually, you don't need any of that. All you need is AnyDVD HD. I've been using it for a while, and I haven't had to worry about HDCP issues.

My migration, like many others', went the other way. As *NIX software became better and more compatible, I found myself booting Windows less and less often. Firefox made a huge difference, the Open/Star Office, then mplayer, soon I realized that I only had one or two reasons to boot windows any more. Wine has filled in all the remaining holes, it now works with every piece of Win software I still use (maybe 10 or 12 older programs), except one. I have exactly one reason to keep a Windows license, and it's a piece of software every company associated with Microsoft would love to kill : AnyDVD.

http://mymovies.dk/ installed on a windows home server serving up entire collection to any windows media center client http://slysoft.com/ AnyDVD HD for aiding the ripping You can skip the windows home server and put it on any old machine, but if you are going to use windows at home, it is the best backup/restore/server solution

It'd probably be cheaper and more practical for you to just get a copy of AnyDVD HD and play Blu-Rays to your heart's content.

One of the first programs I always load up on Windows systems is a free utility from SlySoft that mounts ISO files as a virtual drive - http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html

You do realize that you can just remove the protection, right? The encryption has been broken for quite some time now. AnyDVD HD

You're apparently not doing it right:

http://www.slysoft.com/en/

same thing happened several years back when a high-end company sought to market a DVD-jukebox for home use. It recorded the DVD the first time you played it onto a hard disk and afterwards, allowed you play it back without the DVD. The units were very expensive -- so not much chance of them proliferating and being used to mass-pirate media. Nevertheless, the MPAA sued them and won -- saying that the device circumvented the copy-protection on a DVD (which was bull, but the judge ruling on the case was either too stupid to realize this or was bought (or both)).

It's like companies, now, that offer software that allows you to copy or install a DVD, Blu-Ray, or Game Disc to your hard-disk so you can later play the content without playing disc-shuffle.

You still own the disc, but this is still considered illegal in the US due to corrupt courts and a corrupt legal system (purchased by the Corps). As long as you own the disc, you aren't doing anything ethically wrong, but the corrupt US legal system doesn't care about right/wrong anymore (hasn't for some time -- whoever has the gold makes the rules!). But the Corps would rather you pay again and again for each device. The entire ipod/iphony ilk are predicated on people being too stupid/too lazy to rip their own music to their pods because the software isn't convenient enough due to corrupt-US-law interference.

If that law wasn't in place, people could have their music one place -- likely on a home music system, quite possibly PC based for most people, that would have multiple attachments to distribute it to all the devices in their home.

I imagine the day I'll be able to buy a CD and rip it to my computer and have it automatically be copied to my car player and my phone -- automatically, so I can have my latest tunes anywhere. But right now, such a convenience would be a hard-hacked kludge. Thank-you, corrupt US-legal system!

I'm sure other countries will innovate such conveniences, but they won't allowed for sale in the US market -- but for better or worse, with the US's economy going down the tubes and most of its people having their total wealth measure in the bottom 10-20% of the market, the US market won't be considered that important.

... I can't easily rip a Blu-ray to my hard drive so I can watch it on the plane.

Umm, ever hear of AnyDVD HD?

Never heard of it - I checked Sourceforge, but can't find it. Can you send me the source tarball?

... I can't easily rip a Blu-ray to my hard drive so I can watch it on the plane.

Umm, ever hear of AnyDVD HD?

The stable release of AnyDVD HD (6.6.3.4) doesnt support Avatar, but the beta version does ( http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=40115 ). It took me longer to update the firmware on my bluray player than it took me to update AnyDVD HD. Though the actual ripping still takes about 4 hours...

... one less competitor for SlySoft. They must be partying on Antiqua.

This is exactly why I purchased my own copy of AnyDVD HD with a lifetime license (does not expire). Slysoft update's the ripping program at least once every two weeks, so you know many bugs are being worked out with ripping DVDs and BD disks.

I would highly suggest purchasing this program before it becomes illegal to do so. If not by Slysoft, by some other company.

http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html

So how is AnyDVD legal, while this RealDVD thing isn't?

This is exactly why I purchased my own copy of AnyDVD HD with a lifetime license (does not expire). Slysoft update's the ripping program at least once every two weeks, so you know many bugs are being worked out with ripping DVDs and BD disks.

I would highly suggest purchasing this program before it becomes illegal to do so. If not by Slysoft, by some other company.

http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html

While ISO loopback mounting really should be in the OS by now, there's the entirely free (with no adware/spyware/nagware) virtual clonedrive from slysoft, i.e. the guys that do anydvd and clonedvd. You just need the beta version from the forum for the moment for win 7 support.

The backup utility actually lets you select what files to backup again, rather than just "Pictures" or "Documents".

So it's back to the NT4/2000/XP version?

You can burn ISO files straight from Explorer.

Nice, or I can use CDRWIN.

It's easier to enable BitKeeper. BitKeeper is pretty crap - it needs about 1.5GB unencrypted space to hold the 'system' files - but the installer now creates this space by default, so it's easier to actually turn encryption on.

Truecrypt

It's easier to enable BitKeeper. BitKeeper is pretty crap - it needs about 1.5GB unencrypted space to hold the 'system' files - but the installer now creates this space by default, so it's easier to actually turn encryption on.

Seriuosly, why? 200MB is a wring size if you want to record to a CD (3*200MB and 50-100MB of wasted space) or DVD (22 files and 49MB of wasted spae) which would be the most common media people back up to. Is/was there any recordable media with a 200MB capacity?

Do I really need to pay $XX, or install some spyware-infested freeware crap, just to mount ISOs?

You can use Virtual CloneDrive from the makers of AnyDVD HD http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html

DVD has copy and region protection. The only reason I have a large DVD collection today, is because the copy protection was utterly destroyed early on, ensuring my fair use indefinitely, of the discs I own.
More modern protection schemes haven't been shredded to my satisfaction, so I won't be buying into them any time soon.

Actually, DVDs haven't been utterly destroyed. There's an alarming number of DVDs that are "unrippable" because of the wierd tricks people play on them. Just look at the release notes of AnyDVD - it contains many updates (at least every few weeks) usually to break through new DVD protections as they're discovered.

Disney DVDs tend to be the worst - they always have something that breaks DVD rippers.

The only good thing is that most DVDs you buy don't use these advanced techniques - probably because it costs a lot. The interesting thing is that most of the new protections are in other regions.

(I've purchased a few copies of AnyDVD - the frequency of updates and being practically the only DVD decryptor that's updated with all the latest protections constantly...).

Assuming you've got access to a Windows machine (which is sadly the only platform for which 'hardcore' dvd ripping tools are written for), you should be able to attack the disk with a combination of AnyDVD (installs a device driver that will remove all known protection) and vStrip.

A word of warning: vStrip is NOT an easy tool to use (there are guides all over the place though), but it's by far the most powerful DVD ripping software I have ever found.

I didn't have any luck with daemon tools under Windows 7 (32bit), but SlySoft Virtual Clonedrive (free, http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html ) works fine for me. On a more general note, Windows 7 is making it not a chore to leave my usual Linux/XFCE environment, so they must have done something right.

Or you could obtain AnyDVD.

You tell me
http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html

Even if that does work for movies, this article is about games. Video games have a distinct advantage over movies in the DRM department.

You tell me
http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html

On Windows, you can watch any movie with time-stretch using the ReClock driver.

Wow, thanks, I'll have to try windows one of these days! I hear that windows is pretty good but I've never used it.

On Windows, you can watch any movie with time-stretch using the ReClock driver. It works with a number of players. I use it with ZoomPlayer. ReClock is transparent--set it up once and it makes the player's cue/rev functions pitch neutral. Its main purpose is smooth playback across framerates (cine/PAL/NTSC) without pitch alteration, but time-stretch is a nice collateral.

AnyDVD and CloneDVD2 are my personal favorites for a ripper/burner.
(The AnyDVD ripper will also rip BlueRay and HD DVD's nicely (if you buy the HD Key for HD) and it can also rip directly to a non-DRM'd DVD or HDDVD/BlueRay image file) :)
http://www.slysoft.com/en/download.html
http://www.elby.ch/products/clone_dvd/index.html

No, it looks pretty much red to me: http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html

> With the DRM on DVD a defeated minion of darkness, and BluRay certain to go the same way

AnyDVD HD ( http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html ) will let you play fairly much any Blu-Ray disk, irrespective of HDMI requirements or region coding.

AnyDVD is pretty much the Windows solution to CSS.

Using it, every disc appears to not be encrypted, so programs that only work on non-CSS DVDs (Nero Recode, boring file copy software, etc.) work just fine.

I'm sure that Real would prefer to pretend that SlySoft doesn't exist.

Better luck next time...

I prefer use AnyDVD. It is based offshore and kept very current. :) http://www.slysoft.com/
AnyDVD can strip region Coding too... plus it rips HD-DVD and Blu-Ray HD content too (removing all CCS, Region coding, and other DRM like BD+, etc..)
You can burn back to a blank DVD (double or single layer DVDs, but DVD-R works best in most players) or to a blank Blu-Ray "BD-R" using the burner of your choice.
Standard set-top players should play the burned disks just fine in most modern DVD drives. (I use CloneDVD2 for this)...
I find taking one (or each type) of your burned disks to the store and trying it on the set-top DVD players *before* purchase (where DVD drive showrooms are available) makes pre-sales testing go smoother. Not all set-top DVD players are created equal nor are they all well-endowed by their creators...
A Blu-Ray burner is way too costly at this time, but I have ripped a few Blu-Rays with AnyDVD HD (same program, but you can pay for the more expensive HD ripping key if desired) and they sure look good playing from their DRM-Free and Region-Free images off my HDD (at 1920x1200).
Who says that HDCP (another hardware-based DRM schema) monitors are required to watch digital HDMI Blu-Ray content on my PC!
I am SURE that rips of disks that have no region coding and no CCS and BD+ or any other DRM would play on about any flavor of *nix that had a media player which can handle the format...
Blu-Ray "BD-R" burners need to come down in cost to a reasonable level and blank media needs to be under $1 per disk... then I'll just go to that. Business as usual.

(Of Course, I purchase ALL of the disks that I "rip" and copy for MY PERSONAL USE ONLY, Ahem..) You know, for my Non-Windows and Non-OSX boxes and for use in other devices that I own...
"Backup Copies". Also great for the typical destructive 2-18 year olds who want to "watch" a copy of my new movie and often return it scratched because apparently they used it as a slider to move furniture...
I Purchased AnyDVD and CloneDVD2 two years ago (and later the HD upgrade for the AnyDVD ripper) and they are still going strong with frequent and free updates and it has worked on hundreds of DVDs and a few Blu-Rays and several HD-DVD disks too ever since.
I NEVER pay Real Networks for anything...

SlySoft's AnyDVD and CloneDVD, used in conjunction, will allow you to back up DVDs and play them on any computer and any DVD player (at least, I've not had one NOT work yet on a device).

AnyDVD HD is claimed to circumvent BD+

just realized, you meant blu-ray support. if you want to watch blu-ray get http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html anydvdHD, now with blu-ray support, once you've removed the protections, VLC will decode the streams, just fine. yeah it means shelling out money, sorry but after the CSS problems few open source guys with the talent want to tackle blu-ray protection.

Well, you can buy an HD-DVD addon for the Xbox 360. Probably dirt-cheap now, and it'll work on a computer, also -- I use it on Linux, on my laptop (which has a broken optical drive).

I think that for a long time, DVD will be the new DVD. The studios are trying hard to make Blu-Ray look better -- Superbit is gone, and even standard DVDs seem almost deliberately worse in their encoding than they were a few years ago.

The strangest part was that your $99 HD-DVD player had persistent storage, networking, picture-in-picture support, and a script engine built-in, with decent menu animations. Base Blu-Ray players had none of these -- if they had the "script engine" (Java, actually), it'd be much slower (weird, huh?), and the PS3 had neither persistent storage nor network support (for HD-DVD) early on, when it was relevant to the format war.

It really seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with technical merit and everything to do with who was fellating which studio execs, and (possibly) the "extra protection" of the DRM. The same DRM which is so successful at stopping piracy so far.

Actually, that Slashdot announcement is somewhat misleading, as SlySoft only announced in December that they will crack BD+ "soon" - this has now happened. If you read the press release referenced in the article you will ntocie that they say they wanted to publish this already in December but waited for strategic reasons.

So, this is not a dupe! First the announcement (in December 2007) and now the feat.

As was posted earlier to /. regarding gaming, the studios et. al. should really focus on _customers_, not pirates because, duh, customers buy things. Some customers demand fair use rights by hook or crook (for example those that want for various reasons to have a lone htpc+speakers+monitor be your entire HT), and now that slysoft has provided for a fee, the _customer_ base for Fox. et. al. just expanded. The pirate base is probably unchanged by this, so really the studios should be celebrating, and the people that should really be cackeling incessantly are the ones that get the mandatory fee paid for providing the snake oil that is the useless AACS and BD+ "protections". From the slysoft AnyDVD HD forum: Xtrap1979 I can now make a collective order of all the Fox titles http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=14787&page=3

According to SlySoft,
HD DVD is much more consumer friendly (e.g., no region coding, AACS not mandatory).

it's a strong disincentive for me to start buying movies in HD, until the DVD format is phased out completely, or until it becomes possible and easy to rip movies from Blu-Ray and reauthor them minus the DRM.

We're well past that point, and have been for some time. AnyDVD HD(commercial) rips the DRM off any blu-ray disc I've ever thrown at it, and is updated very frequently with new keys. It can use either the built-in key, or it's database.

Or, if you're looking for encryption keys, feel free to Grab a List (spans a bunch of pages, but that's what search is for), and decrypt 'em yourself. Tools are in the same forum.

Not necessarily.

AnyDVD + Handbrake + VideoLAN

Not a bad recommendation. However, I'd go with AnyDVD + K-Lite Mega Codec Pack + MPlayer (included.) This will play encrypted DVDs, but also has the advantage of playing just about anything else included Quicktime and Real.

I've been disappointed with upscanned DVD's. Readers can't magically produce data (resolution) where it didn't exist. The upconverting only applies to the output signal. There is no comparison between watching native HD media (in 1920x1080) and watching 720x480 DVD's, the former just looks worlds better.

The next issue is storage space. A pure rip of the new formats yields anywhere from 20-45 GB on your hard drive. You can recompress w/ H.264 down to the size of a DVD5 or DVD9, but these tend to experience at least some color banding on gradients, especially with DVD5's. In any case, backups are still do-able with the current technology. The LG combo BR/HD reader has popped up for as little as $225. Still expensive for a reader, but this has been steadily coming down in price. You'll also need a good video card with full hardware H.264/HD support. Modern PCIe ATI cards are supposed to be the best, and I've had mixed results with a newer nVidia card.

With regards to DRM...in my lifetime, I cannot to think of a single example where any copy protection/DRM scheme has completely succeeded. I would bank on the trend continuing. AACS was supposed to be unbreakable. With its end-to-end hardware protection along with OS support, many believed that AACS would neither be broken nor circumvented. It didn't take long for this belief to be proven wrong.

Since this is Slashdot, I suppose that a lame disclaimer is in order. I have neither admitted to nor condoned any illegal activity on this public forum. Furthermore (for those who are really looking for a really stupid and pointless argument) there is no information presented here to indicate that myself or the parent resides in a country where US copyright policy applies.

SlySoft.

And I will add that a few of my studio-pressed and paid-for DVDs are beginning to show signs of deterioration. I'm not paying for another copy when I can recover the original disc's file, repair it in the process, and re-burn it (as I should be able to do under Fair Use) to a replacement disc.

Keep the peace(es).

... I need to buy Slysoft's ripping software: http://www.slysoft.com/. Y'all can take your premium DVDs and shove it. I'd rather pay someone more for tools to protect my property than pay less in extortion money.

Or more accurately, have something that can withstand the exposure. Odd that they speak of not insulting open source, but then do so later on in that thread.

Apparently that thread seems to have a certain lack of objection to DRM when it's in a "cracking service client".

The thing they cant do is accept any objection to it being anything else. To accept anything from Slysoft as a "crack" would be premature.

Or more accurately, have something that can withstand the exposure. Odd that they speak of not insulting open source, but then do so later on in that thread.

Apparently that thread seems to have a certain lack of objection to DRM when it's in a "cracking service client".

The thing they cant do is accept any objection to it being anything else. To accept anything from Slysoft as a "crack" would be premature.

There's a much better way of doing this. Game Jackal (from the people who make CloneCD) is way easier to use and doesn't require you to store entire cd/dvd images on your hard drive, nor have virtual drive letters, nor temporarily remove registry keys to hide it's existence from copy protection. It's dedicated purely to allowing you to start your legitimately purchased games without a disc.

or you can use this http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html