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Warner Bros: New Program To Digitize Your DVDs
shoutingloudly writes "Warner Brothers has just announced a new 'Disc-to-Digital' program to convert your DVDs into digital files that you can play on your internet-connected computers. As the helpful Public Knowledge graphics demonstrate, all you have to do is find a participating store, drive there, pay again for your movie, wait while it's ripped for you, drive home, and hope it works. This will surely have tech-savvy movie fans saying, 'Brilliant! I've been looking for an excuse to uninstall this free, 1-step DVD ripper that I can use in the comfort of my own home. This is much better than DMCA reform.'"
In exchange for paying a bit more you might get a higher resolution copy (DRM encumbered and stored in "the cloud"). The launch process is absurdly cumbersome, but: "Later on, Internet retailers like Amazon.com will email customers to offer digital copies of DVDs they previously bought. Eventually, consumers will be able to put DVDs into PCs or certain Blu-ray players that will upload a copy, similar to the way people turn music CDs into MP3 files." Will the video distributors ever offer DRM-free files that you own? The music industry doesn't seem to be any worse off than they were when they insisted upon DRM.
I didn't see Handbrake on that page of search results from Freecode so I thought I'd offer this up as well. Fairly simple interface, runs flawlessly on Windows 7 and Ubuntu for me. Open source and easy way to get DVDs into m4v format. Plus there are preset resolutions for things like iPhones, iPods and I found the resolution for a PSP. So basically I spend my flights with circumaural Sennheisers and Futurama or MST3K playing on my PSP -- the worse part about that setup being that Sony's memory card cost me a ton. So far it's ripped the blu-rays I've put in just fine as well.
Rip them to m4v and host them with PS3 Media Server and then they're good to play over your network to your PS3 or XBox 360 (and probably any other UPnP compliant device).
Do I feel guilty that I have shelled out $35+ for each of the 22 sets of MST3K and each season of Futurama and then violated copyright to move said shows onto any device capable of playing video? Not one fucking bit. Go ahead and do your little song and dance, I've got my shit figured out (thank you open source!).
My work here is dung.
don't forget handbrake and ripbotx264
The summary is misleading (as usual). There is no ripping and copying of each DVD, that would be stupid.
From what I have read about it they just verify that you own the DVD, mark the inner ring with some stamp so that you can't just give it to your friend to take back to the store, and then charge you a couple of dollars for each to add the movies to a digital rights locker (Ultraviolet, or whatever). After that you can stream it on any computer/device/tablet/whatever that supports it.
Better deal than buying a whole new streaming version, I guess, but given how they always make the distinction of "ownership" vs. "right to watch" you'd think you already paid for the right to watch it and should get this service for *free*. I guess *if* the streaming service actually stays around it will cover their lifetime streaming costs, etc, for the movie (though I think = $0.50 would cover that, given most people don't end up watching most movies they buy more than once).