RealDVD Lets You Take Your DVDs With You

[admin]

With the announcement of a new software program, RealDVD, Real Networks is providing the first mainstream means of legally transferring DVDs to a hard drive--with extras. The new $40 software is the first application to enable individuals to save DVDs on a PC hard drive without breaking copyright laws.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/150769/realdvd_lets_you_take_your_dvds_with_you.html

I suppose this software has the blessings of the MPAA? Read the full article, and it does sound a bit useless as it's locked to your particular hard-drive (even RAID mirror arrays which fail and gets a drive replaced, will mean you have to "re-rip" your entire collection). May be a solution for home theatre PCs, but would still rather have a standalone solution that can access this digital library.

[drfsupercenter]

What do you bet it's just a fancy DVD Decrypter that hides the stuff so you can't access it?

I've found that on those "digital copy" DVDs... I checked my Terminator 2 disc (that's not one of the ones that has a use-once code)... all they did was hide some WMVs of the movie under about 18 subfolders that has a public DRM license key. Copy them to your hard drive and problem solved.

[admin]

Reading more about RealDVD, it has these restrictions:

• Only playable through the RealDVD player (each computer will need it's own license as well, $40 for the first computer, $20 for each additional)
• "Ripped" DVDs will only be playable on the hard-disk it is ripped to, even if the other hard-disk is in the same computer (or if a drive in a RAID mirrored array is replaced, then the DVD becomes unplayable - copying to external hard-drives and then sharing that drive with additional computers would work (assuming you've purchased the additional licenses)

[jmet]

Its still a rip off in my opinion......I am not going to pay $60 a movie just so I can watch it on three computers.

I have my desktop hooked up via a HDMI cable to my TV and stream movies to it all the time from both laptops.

[admin]

The DVD Forum (ie. Toshiba) needs to make some kind of official system for doing this, IMO. Get specs done for a range of software, storage and playback devices that support disc-less playback. If you can get a standalone DVD player (with network connections, wired or wireless) to playback movies stored on a computer or external storage, then you have something that's slightly more useful.

[drfsupercenter]

If they ever come out with a free trial, or if I meet anyone with RealDVD, I'll do some snooping on it and see if I can't figure out just how the DRM works.

I still think it's an ordinary ripper that says it uses DRM to avoid lawsuits...

I wonder how it handles ARccOS... would Sony really give away the decryption secrets that easily?