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Is AnyDVD actually necessary for copying DVD's?

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4wd:
And while we're speaking of doing naughty things with copyrighted material, I see Give Away Of The Day has a DVD copying program up for grabs  today :P

Innuendo:
There is a simpler (and probably cheaper) solution these day - just buy an extra DVD writer and set each to different regions!-Carol Haynes (April 30, 2009, 07:47 PM)
--- End quote ---

In case anyone doesn't know, nobody needs to do this in most cases. For most DVD readers and DVD writers it is possible to replace the factory hard-coded region firmware (known as RPC2) with region-free firmware (known as RPC1).

A good source for RPC1 firmwares is http://www.rpc1.org. Personally, I never buy a drive unless an RPC1 firmware is available for it.

EDIT: And to answer the original poster, you absolutely do not need AnyDVD to copy commercial DVDs, but it makes one's life so much easier to use it instead of competing solutions. However, I am really not a fan of their new pricing structures.

Midnight Rambler:
AnyDVD, like DVD Shrink, cracks DVD encryption.  DVD Shrink goes one step further in that it also "shrinks" DVD files down (from around 8.5GB to around 4.5GB) so one can burn the resultant .iso file onto one DVD with burner software like CopyToDVD or ImgBurn.

AnyDVD files ripped are usually around 8.5GB so are too large for one DVD. 

DVD Shrink has not been updated since 8/04 and fails to backup most recent titles. You can load AnyDVD and DVD Shrink will work again. Also try DVD43.

I use DVD Shrink along with CopyToDVD often.  On the very few newer DVDs that DVD Shrink can't decrypt, I use AnyDVD to decrypt DVD content, and then use DVD Shrink to "shrink" the file into a 4.5GB .iso file and then burn that .iso onto a DVD+R disk via CopyToDVD.

All three programs are well-written so coasters are rare.

Josh:
Personally, while I do use DVD Shrink, I no longer attribute any bugs encountered when using it to a possible bug in a newer application. Reason being, it has been 5 years since DVD Shrink has been updated. Plus, from my experience, I do notice a big quality loss when ripping dvd's using DVD Shrink. On my 46 inch samsung TV, the quality of the picture is degraded into a very blocky format. This is not the case for all movies, but a good majority which are designed on a DVD9 Disc (Dual Layer) will have this issue despite what I choose for the compression ratio.

DVD Shrink was good in it's day and I do wish someone would make a new version or application similar to it, but I no longer blame other applications for bugs which appear when using DVD Shrink.

MilesAhead:
DVD Rebuilder also has ReJig, which is pretty fast.  I haven't done any test comparisons but just going by eye it feels to me like if your main move can be shrunk with shirnk and the compression is given as 85% or higher, it may look ok when played.  With ReJig I think you can go a bit lower.. maybe 70% or so, and get about the same quality.  DVD RB still goes through the same procedure of breaking the movie down into small sections, and putting them back together after the video is processed, even with ReJig as the encoder.

Of course if you have a film that's not watch once throw away then it may be worth using HC on best quality profile.  Most of what I've seen comes out looking very good.  If the disparity between the original size and the output is too high, you can notice a bit of a washed out look.  Like a photo that's been over air brushed.  But if the compression % is reasonable I've had DVDs that were tough to tell which was the shrinked or the shrinkee with Rebuilder.  I'm told you can get some really nice results if you mess around with the lumen settings in HC.  I'm not into it that heavy so I use the boilerplate "best" profile 2 pass.

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