The news is all about Real's Real DVD crapware, but has anyone noticed Flip4Mac's Drive-in software that pretty much does the same thing? (Legally copy DVD images to your mac, without the illegal decryption.)

http://www.flip4mac.com/drivein.htm

Says it's Front Row Compatible... sort of. I'm wondering if anyone has tried it yet. I wonder if some of the tools used to mount other images could be adapted to work with this.

The main downside, as I see it, is you can't really edit unwanted content out of the disc to save space (and remove annoying content), since it's not really decrypted.

Edit: Oops, ok, there is one thread that mentions it, but still...

I agree with you that it would be nice to be able to save to HD without any fuss any legally bought DVD, but DriveIn suffers from 2 drawbacks :
- it does not work at all with RPC1 firmware drives
- it is cumbersome to use with FrontRow.

MacTheRipper is free, works with RPC1 drives, and saves Video_TS which FrontRow recognizes directly : a hard to beat proposition...

Just because Flip4Mac says it's legal doesn't make it so. In fact, the courts haven't weighed-in on the matter. The case Kaleidescape won was contractual -- the courts didn't feel that the license agreement KScape signed with the DVD CCA precluded them from storing copies of DVDs on a hard drive. The courts did not say DVD owners have a Fair Use right to store copies of DVDs they own on hard drives. In fact, the court was careful not to say this. Flip4Mac most certainly has not signed an agreement with the DVD CCA. And, the DVD CCA is appealing the KScape verdict.

At CEDIA last week, a number of manufacturers released DVD servers because they had to in order to try to keep pace with other manufacturers, including Apple and MS. There's definitely a market for this kind of thing, although it's shrinking as legal download services pop-up left and right. If you look at the approaches these companies took, they're all over the board. Some provide the their own software to rip the movies, others load third-party software that rips the movies (and claim that somehow this puts the blame on the third-party software provider rather than the manufacturer) and others, like Crestron, only provide a means for aggregating content that's already on the home network, without providing the means to put it there.

As an integrator, I feel most comfortable with Crestron and KScape. With the other solutions, we could be sued out of existence, even if our clients rip only movies they own.

For an exhaustive look at this topic, see the excellent articles (http://www.cepro.com/article/is_your_dvd_server_legal_manufacturers_say_yes/) Julie Jacobsen has put together.

This is super app to image my dvd's in hard drive but, those dvd images Do Not get along with Front Row.
You are correct about the precious hard drive space but we do not have the option of not copying the trailers and all that crap the I do not care have in my computer.

The news is all about Real's Real DVD crapware, but has anyone noticed Flip4Mac's Drive-in software that pretty much does the same thing? (Legally copy DVD images to your mac, without the illegal decryption.)

Just because Flip4Mac says it's legal doesn't make it so.

Going along with that, just because the studios claim something like Mac the Ripper or Handbrake is illegal doesn't make it so. Archiving copyrighted content for personal use is a consumer's right in the U.S. and many other countries, and casually propagating the position that one engages in an illegal activity when ripping a DVD (such as Kalani's parenthetical statement) does a disservice groups like the EFF who are fighting hard to maintain and protect consumer's rights.

Real DVD and Drive-in are examples of why corporations want you to remain ignorant of your rights: so they can charge you over and over again to access content you've already purchased. Please don't support these companies by buying this type of software.

I hope this doesn't devolve into what is and is not legal, especially since most of us don't have a legal background. I'm gonna stick up for Kalani just a bit here for a second:

casually propagating the position that one engages in an illegal activity when ripping a DVD (such as Kalani's parenthetical statement) does a disservice groups like the EFF who are fighting hard to maintain and protect consumer's rights.

The problem with this stance, mdr25, is that Congress had a chance to include the very exception you're casually propagating--that archiving copyrighted content for personal use is a consumer's right in the U.S.--when it passed the the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) but explicitly chose not to do so. It had ample opportunity to add this as an exemption later, and again chose not to do so.

So, like most things in life, there's gonna be genuine disagreement when it comes to propagating any point of view.

It seems to me that what we have at the moment is murky: according to the DMCA it's illegal to break the CSS copy-protection mechanism employed by most commercial DVD movies, and, while the fair-use advocates say that this policy contradicts tenets of U.S. copyright law, the conflict is still largely untested in the courts and unresolved either way. The DMCA seems to say that you can't make a backup or archive copy of your commercial dvd to watch on your computer, even for personal use, IF you have to bypass the copy-protection to do so--even if it's relatively easy to break said copy-protection. (And it is trivial to break the copy protection on 99.9% of commercial dvds out there with MactheRipper.) On the flip side, I haven't read of a single person being prosecuted for ripping the dvds they own at home so they can watch them on their laptops, aTVs and iPods, so we don't really know how far fair use might extend.

That might seem like I'm waffling, but personally, I think Drive-in is a terrible product, that no one should buy it, and that those selling it are disingenuous. However, Kalani is correct in pointing out that Drive-in, on paper, offers something that is distinct and different from other ripping software like MactheRipper and Handbrake--MTR and HB defeat the copy-protection, Drive-in not only "supposedly" retains it but adds its own DRM wrapper . However, since there's nothing about Drive-in which prevents a user from "imaging" rented dvds from Netflix or Blockbuster to their hard drives, I can't imagine the legal teams for the studios having too difficult a time going after them IF they choose to.

So maybe it's best if we don't take too strong a stance on terms like "legal" or "illegal" and perhaps agree that there is a lot that's still untested, despite claims to the contrary coming from the various vantage points. Let's hope the legal ground that could be made more clear between an individual's fair use rights and the DMCA is clarified at some point.

So, like most things in life, there's gonna be genuine disagreement when it comes to propagating any point of view.
Absolutely. The purpose of my post was to simply challenge the forgone conclusion that MtR and Handbrake are illegal. I just hate to see people accept that position at face value, which is why I felt compelled to post. Your post spells out nicely how it is a murky legal area, and in the interest of keeping the thread on track I'll shut up about it now. :)

well, that wasn't my intent, to get you to shut up, I mean:) and at least for the moment I think it's good that there are untested aspects involved in this, because that means we can still talk about it, and help others make their own decisions about what to do, and how to go about doing it...we don't disagree on the big picture, either, the one thing I took away from the articles that dbfreq linked to is that the high end manufacturers are in a much tougher position than we, as mere Mac-using home theater hobbyists, are. Untested waters and lack of precedent can't be too much of a consolation for them.

well, that wasn't my intent, to get you to shut up, I mean:) and at least for the moment I think it's good that there are untested aspects involved in this, because that means we can still talk about it, and help others make their own decisions about what to do, and how to go about doing it...we don't disagree on the big picture, either, the one thing I took away from the articles that dbfreq linked to is that the high end manufacturers are in a much tougher position than we, as mere Mac-using home theater hobbyists, are. Untested waters and lack of precedent can't be too much of a consolation for them.

true-
giving kaleidescape a 'temporary' leg-up on most others... I wonder how much of this Apple is covering - the issue of managed copy must be coming up with the studio negotiations (recent SD copies with the HD shows; DVDs with iPod versions, etc.). I would be surprised if there wasn't some sort of over arching strategy being discussed. I even heard the MPAA acknowledging that they will have to adopt a managed copy strategy at some point, if only to prevent complete loss of control....

Apple missing from this expansive group however...
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN1234778920080913?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNewslhttp://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN1234778920080913?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews&pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0


ken

Just because Flip4Mac says it's legal doesn't make it so.

Real DVD and Drive-in are examples of why corporations want you to remain ignorant of your rights: so they can charge you over and over again to access content you've already purchased. Please don't support these companies by buying this type of software.

Didn't take long for the legal wrangling over RealDVD to begin:

http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid={D7E91132-15F2-4103-B484-E49A424E97D8}&siteid=nbsh

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/30/realnetworks-files-suit-against-hollywood-over-realdvd/

Wonder if the MPAA even has Telestream on its radar yet.

Yup. I'm not sure whether to boo or cheer, of course...

More:
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/18634/

http://www.newsweek.com/id/161636/page/1

Predictably, sales of RealDVD have been halted temporarily:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081005-judge-temporarily-halts-sale-of-realdvd-in-wake-of-lawsuit.html

Can't help but wonder how many rubes have bought a Drive-in license so far...

Yup. And the article is correct... the lawsuit is pretty laughable considering hardly anyone actually uses RealDVD, compared the multitude of other options that don't even bother to pay lip service to the DMCA.

OTOH, if this lawsuit closes down Real, I wonder how many people will be crying? (other than the stockholders and employees, I suppose)

Came across another new ripper for Leopard called "RipIt" while reading over at the ripdifferent forums:

http://www.ripdifferent.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=9388

http://ripitapp.com/

$18.99 with a free trial.

And RealDVD and Drive-in get brief mentions in a real newspaper:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/ptech/stories/DN-p2macdvdreview_10bus.ART.State.Edition1.4afbe15.html

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/ptech/stories/DN-p2pcdvdreview_10bus.ART.State.Edition1.4afebc8.html

Came across another new ripper for Leopard called "RipIt" while reading over at the ripdifferent forums:

http://www.ripdifferent.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=9388

http://ripitapp.com/

$18.99 with a free trial.
Does it keep the original VIDEO_TS folder/format or is it a transcoder like Handbrake? How well does it deal with various copy protection tricks that choke 2.x versions of MTR?

Apparently, it rips the entire disk and keeps the VIDEO_TS folder intact. It creates a file, with the VIDEO_TS inside. So, it's not an encoder like Handbrake, and it isn't as full-featured or as customizable as MTR.

How well does it deal with various copy protection tricks that choke 2.x versions of MTR?

The consensus over there seems to be RipIt is simpler to use, easier to obtain, and handles the current protection schemes fairly well. I haven't used a 2.x version of MTR in years, so I have no idea what chokes it these days. There have been only a handful of discs that the current (paid) version of MTR hasn't been able to rip, though, i.e. Reservation Road, Leatherheads, etc. There is an OS X solution for those, using Fairmount and DTOX.

I guess I should have phrased the question as does it rip as well with problem discs as MTR 3.x and if I understand your answer -- probably yes.

For those not using MTRs advanced features, software that does the straight rip just as well would certainly be preferable as MTR's developers do not treat their paying customers well.

I tried RipIt out. Works fine. Two problems:
1) It is slower than MTR (3.x)
2) It doesn't preserve the original DVD/VIDEO_TS format, instead creating a DVD Player Media Document. That's fine for the DVD Player, but doesn't get recognized as playable by DVDPedia. You can extract the VIDEO_TS folder by right clicking it.

I would get it, simply because I don't want to deal with the MTR people again, so this APP can be a safety net for anything that chokes MTR.

The DMCA flies in the face of fair use/safe harbor. It's like telling the public, "it's legal for you to sleep in this park that your tax dollars paid for, but we're going to build a fence around it and it's illegal for you to circumvent the fence."

I wish someone had the cajones to actually challenge the DMCA in court. All the way to the supreme court if necessary.

The DMCA flies in the face of fair use/safe harbor. It's like telling the public, "it's legal for you to sleep in this park that your tax dollars paid for, but we're going to build a fence around it and it's illegal for you to circumvent the fence."

I wish someone had the cajones to actually challenge the DMCA in court. All the way to the supreme court if necessary.
I think that a better exercise in democracy would be to get Congress to repeal the DMCA. Write your rep. and senators. Tell them that the DMCA (against) along with Net Neutrality (for) are very important to you and will determine your vote in the next election. Will it work? Who knows, but until now congress has been faced with a determined pro DMCA lobby throwing lots of money at them and relative silence from the voters at large.