As anyone with a lick of tech knowledge knows, ripping a DVD onto your hard drive is, well, frowned upon by the “Powers that be” in the motion picture industry. Realizing that, RealNetworks has launched a new solution called RealDVD, which lets users copy DVDs onto their hard drives without facing legal troubles. Even better, it only takes about 20 minutes to do so. Sounds great, right? There’s only one catch: it keeps the DRM.
After copying the DVD onto your hard drive, you can’t transfer the movie to a friend’s computer, so you’ll be stuck using your own. Much like iTunes, though, RealDVD lets you authorize five computers to play the movies on the hard drive.
RealNetworks is quick to point out that its RealDVD solution is 100 percent legal and you won’t have any copyright lawyers breathing down your neck once you copy your first movie to the hard drive.
RealDVD sounds ideal for those who want to use their computers as a media server, but with a relatively hefty price tag of $49.99 for your first license ($29.99 as an introductory offer) and $19.99 for the additional four licenses if you want to watch the films on five computers, not everyone will be as excited to rip their movie DVDs as they are about ripping their music CDs onto a computer.
Comments
What about if you encode it will they support playing it UPnP to the PS3 or XBOX 360?
Why pay for anything when DVD43 is free? It makes copying a DVD’s full contents to your hard drive a simple drag-n-drop (folder copy). All it does is remove the encryption during copy - the files remain the same. Then you can point your DVD player software at that folder for the same experience with chapters and extras. With an 8-at-a-time Netflix subscription you could fill a 1TB hard drive with 200 disc images in 3 months.
Transcode for iPod with Handbrake, Super, etc., also free. It eats hours of CPU to transcode one DVD to h.264 though. With 720p x264 mkv files transcoded from BluRay now appearing on BitTorrent, it’s a waste of time to bother with DVDs. For the same 5GB storage space you can have far superior picture quality.
Why pay for anything when DVD43 is free? It makes copying a DVD’s full contents to your hard drive a simple drag-n-drop (folder copy). All it does is remove the encryption during copy - the files remain the same. Then you can point your DVD player software at that folder for the same experience with chapters and extras. With an 8-at-a-time Netflix subscription you could fill a 1TB hard drive with 200 disc images in 3 months.
Transcode for iPod with Handbrake, Super, etc., also free. It eats hours of CPU to transcode one DVD to h.264 though. With 720p x264 mkv files transcoded from BluRay now appearing on BitTorrent, it’s a waste of time to bother with DVDs. For the same 5GB storage space you can have far superior picture quality.
I just can’t believe how short sighted the entertainment industry is. The last thing you want to do is penalise people who still pay for movies and music by restricting what medium they can keep it in.
I wonder how many people DRM has pushed towards low level personal piracy. As for this I would have to pass, I paid for the DVDs and that’s enough money out of me.
And they’re launching this today at DEMO! Not TC52.
Oh noes!
Seriously, it’s a bad idea. If the DRM is going to handicap where users can play the movie, it’s a waste of time. I’d rather just rip the movie that I’d legally purchased and transcode it to whatever format I want.
Jason, honey, if it’s such a bad idea, why do you guys write about it here? Its not a website and not a startup, ie not TechCrunch terroritory.
Better blogs, such as CNet and VentureBeat, mention that RealNetworks has found a legal loophole for this product. Of course, the TechCrunch “lawyer” doesn’t like legal when it gets to copyright. And what happens at DEMO must be bad, right?
Is that why you’re not mentioning the larger and better Kindle from Plastic Electronics in your article?
Let’s see.. “legal” via Real gives you limitations of how you use your own DVD. Have they not learned from Sony?
I guess they just ripped off http://www.slysoft.com/en/ They were one of the first to decrypt Blu-ray btw. CloneDVD is pretty straight forward, and Clone DVD mobile is awesome for your ipod…. as so i’ve heard since of course I would never “illegally” decrypt dvd’s
Still confused why if I buy a DVD, the movie studios make it so difficult and say it’s illegal for me to rip it to my ipod.
“There’s only one catch..”
Actually there’s two. You actually have to install software from ‘Real Networks’ on your computer. Shudder.
I don’t care what amazing thing Real goes on to invent. On principle I will *never* again install any of their crap on my computer.
If you don’t know why, then consider yourself lucky. I’m sure a fair number of TC readers know what I’m talking about.
Stay away.
Markus-
We are sorry you (and anyone else out there) have had a bad experience with Real’s products. We’ve REALLY worked on making the user experience a good one. We’ve learned what not to do. We wanted to make this simple and streamlined. The program is small (in size) and it works. It’s easy to use-anyone with a PC can do it.
With you all the way Markus. Real Player is the worst piece of splatterware I’ve ever encountered. Since they bought spyware network Gator they dead to me. I’ve thrown away all my downloaded .rm files rather than let Real near my PC again.
Lame idea on an outdated format.
Loose for support of DRM.
Yes, right like most readers at TechCrunch admire DRM.
But I have to admit, I like the UI of the application.
Not a bad idea, but I don’t buy into such ideas.
The price is a total rip-off. Does this do anything that DVD decrypter didn’t do as freeware years ago? And charging for each computer is a joke. Piracy or highway robbery? Take your choice.
Good intentions I’m sure, trying to provide a legal workaround to the paranoid entertainment industry. Not available in the UK it would seem although hunting round the US Real site also produced no results for this new service so perhaps they’re not so confident in it after all. Of course I could just be suffering from Real.com’s attack on my senses.
Hi Pascal,
The product will only be available in the USA. The product will be available by the end of the month. It hasn’t actually been released yet.
What is most exciting about this to me is not the RealDVD solution itself, but the new way of thinking about DVDs and DRM that it opens up. Now this solution exists, and the movie industry is supposedly happy with it, I hope it opens things up for other companies to do the same. Mostly, I’m excited by the thought that Apple could add something like this to iTunes, so that you could easily rip DVDs to play in iTunes, on your iPod, iPhone and Apple TV - that, for me, would be fantastic. Currently I find ripping DVDs for use in iTunes to be a real hassle, if it was as easy as ripping a CD in iTunes, I would be a very happy man. I couldn’t care less about it having DRM.
I’m personally surprised movie industry is happy with this though - as although the ripped file is DRMed, once you’ve ripped the DVD, what’s to stop you selling it on? or what’s to stop you ripping rented or borrowed DVDs?
The movie industry isn’t happy with this, I’m sure of it. But the alternative is BitTorrent. This is a stop-gap measure that they feel will keep people buying DVDs but let them have the digital distribution to portable players. Its digital distribution on their terms - terms that don’t make sense because it offers no value to the consumer.
So they can claim they support new business models but, in reality, they keep the old one alive for one more day.
Luke-
This product is for movies that you own. Copying rented movies is still illegal.
The files are not playable without the software on the computer, so passing the saved movies along won’t get you very far.
I think price tag of $49.99 is too much
costly affair..Isn’t worth paying
High price tag? You’re not kidding… there is so many free software that does the same thing - without the DRM.
Actually, this may not be legal and could be contested in court. According to the NY Times, they have no agreement in place with the DVD Copy Control Association.
RealDVD is fully licensed by the DVD-CCA.
As another commenter has said, “Real Networks” needs to be avoided. Just on principle I cannot touch real software. Internet has a long memory.
My media box has a 500GB hdd that formats to 477GB and a DVD movie would use about 5GB then I could fit about 95 movies on my media box, no thanks since I would need about 20 x 500GB hdd’s just to store my DVD movies and say another 50x 500GB hdd’s to store my TV serious collection.
Now that is one big server but they need MPEG4 instead of the dvd’s default MPEG2 which would save so much space.
Also be one hell off a time consuming affair and in the end wouldn’t be worth it.
Now if you where just starting your DVD collection and didn’t buy many then this would be allright.
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