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Extracting Digital Video from LaserDiscs?
americanatavist asks: "I was wondering how feasible it would be to digitally copy LaserDisc movies to DVD. Clearly this would require the standard suite of tools to make a DVD. What method would yield the maximum level of quality? Is it worth the effort to find a means of extracting the digital information using an LD-ROM drive, or would the S-video from a regular LD player suffice?"
LaserDisks have always been analog video. Later versions of them added Digital Audio tracks (including a very few with DTS), but the video has remained analog.
If you've gone to enough trouble to buy LDs, you should be looking at the price of DVDs these days and realizing that its cheaper/easier just to replace your entire collection (or the ones you really want) with DVDs and then rip those losslessly onto your HD using a $20 DVD-ROM drive.
Ok, if you go into a barber shop to get a hair cut, then you take off out of there without paying, have you actually "stolen" anything? The barber shop isn't missing anything afterwards, and you dont have anything you didn't previously (actually, you leave with less than you went in with). But most people would call this "theft of service".
The same is true with IP theft. Except that in this case, there is a one to many relationship between privider and benefactor, where in the the case of the haircut there is only a one to one relationship. But it is still theft of service nonetheless.