« Ah there much better | Main | Fixing a Notebook PC with Screwdrivers and Cotton Swabs »
Legit DVD Ripping Would Be So Damn Cool
This week I read Engadget's review of the Creative Zen Portable Media Center based on Microsoft's Portable Media Center platform. It mentioned a very interesting program that would expand the capability of the hardware and ad a new value to it. The Dutch software company makes a program called DVD to Pocket PC.
One of the biggest problems with the entire concept of the Portable Media Center is how to get video content for it. They planed on users to get a Window Media Center PC and move the recored TV shows to the handheld hard drive based player but there is no way to decode, rip and encode video from a DVD to a format that the Portable Media Center could read using the Microsoft software. The DVD to Pocket PC software is designed to simply rip a DVD and encode it into a much smaller video file using the Microsoft Window Media Player 9 technology all the while providing a simple easy to use interface all with no messy DRM restrictions. I know that there was a whole plethora of open source DVD ripping projects out there using the DeCSS tools but they then required you to run these huge uncompressed video files through a video compressor. What this software does well is it puts all the tools that you need to rip a DVD and compress it down to a portable video file with a press of a button. The quality is good but not close to DVD quality. However it would look great on a Pocket PC PDA on a large memory card and would kick much ass on a Portable Media Center or a Notebook PC. Heck even Tablet PCs that lack a built in DVD-Rom could use software like this. I would love the ability to rip a bunch of DVDs to my notebook PC's hard drive so I would not have to have the actual DVD with me to watch the video program that I already own. It could even be DRM encoded via the Windows Media DRM technologies that Microsoft has spent millions to build. I have no interest in ripping and file trading huge video files but it would be damn cool to have DVD video content be as portable an readily available as a MP3.
The problem is that the MPAA will sue anyone who takes advantage of Decrypting a DVD and re purposing the video data in a commercial product. This simply sucks and it is a perfect example of how short sighted laws like the DMCA are stopping future digital video players.
The ability to rip a CD and convert it to MP3 is protected via our fair use rights even though it was threatened by short sighted RIAA monopoly lawsuits. The right for me to copy a vinyl record to a cassette tape to use in my 1980s Walkman is covered under fair use. So why would the MPAA never warm up to letting customers rip there DVD video content to other formats via mainstream software. Their reluctance to allow legit DVD ripping technologies is moronic because of the large amounts of open source or gray market software packages out there. I think that the particular package is protected via a loophole in local Dutch law but I am no international law expert. DVD ripping technology is out there and there is no putting the genie back in the bottle now. If the MPAA were more interested in new technological possibilities of playback of content via fair use it would open new incentive to buy content on DVDs. I buy CDs only to rip them to MP3 and if they realized that the possibility of people buying DVDs to play on alternative digital media players could sell more copies of the damn DVDs. I don't think it would encourage rampant piracy because the tools used by professional pirates are already out there.
Take the Playstation Portable for example. It has a USB port and the ability to load music off a CD onto Sony MemorySticks so you can use it as a portable MP3 music player. How cool would it be if you could rip and transfer your DVD based video content to a high capacity MemoryStick. It could be content protected to only play back on that particular PSP unit so there would be no video piracy and I bet they would have to work overtime to make enough high capacity MemorySticks to meet the demand. Here is to hoping that Sony has the foresight to do that.
I can take screen captures and record audio clips off of a DVD using common place legit software so why not letting me rip a video clip off a DVD?
There is a demo version of DVD to Pocket PC that restricts the amount of video clips you can rip and encode to only five minutes long but it is long enough to realize how much ass it would kick. I think the more you enable the consumer to use their digital content via fair use it would create even more healthy market opportunities for digital media. The possibilities of using ripped DVD based content is just ripe and people are going to use them regardless if the monopolies are ready or not. Just think about it
Now I am going watch a DVD of the violent Japanese movie Ichi the Killer.
Jake at December 2, 2004 
Rants
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.8bitjoystick.com/cgi-bin/mtype/mt-tb.cgi/733
Comments
I 'evaluated' the creative Zen a couple of weeks back, and am pretty convinced that it has a bit of an identity crisis. I understand that the concept is to create something like an Ipod, but that works with TV shows and videos, but in practice, it doesn't seem very practical.
First of all, despite the claims, you -can- transcode divx straight to the device, using media player 10.
I found the framerate while watching tv programs recorded on my media center to be ghastly, pausing and hitching every so often.
Additionally, the time to transcode recorded TV (DVR-MS Medium Quality) from the media center to the device is insane! Actually, doing any transcoding takes forever with this thing. On a dual 3.2Ghz xeon system with 4 gigs of ram, it took over 2 hours to transcode an hour program! Incidentally, after transcoding, if you decide to hook it up to a TV set as I did on 'anime night', the TV quality is far from DVD or even broadcast TV quality.
I think the biggest issue, though, is what niche this device really aims to fill. After I had the device in my hands, I realized that I could carry around a subnotebook only slightly larger (like the sony TR3), which would directly play DVD's, DivX's, and be a fully functional PC as well.
Posted by: Nick at December 14, 2004 2:02 PM
As for the MPAA, well the thing is we live in a very scary time for folks who create entertainment content. It's become nearly accepted for people to pirate videos and games over things like Bittorrent and Gnutella-2, and there is no real practical way for such organizations to enforce their intellectual property rights in the face of tens of millions of pirates. There really aren't any solutions here yet, but until there are (and there may never be) you can bet the MPAA will desperately grasp at whatever means it can to keep as much of it's content off the net as possible.
Posted by: Nick at December 14, 2004 2:07 PM
