I’ve got a bunch of long-unviewed DVDs in their cases gathering dust underneath my TV, and I’d like to clear up space for new ones. I’m pretty sure I could fit several movies onto a relatively cheap hard drive, if I knew how. Is there a reliable (legal?) way to make such a transfer? And I guess a separate question is whether I’d still be able to watch the movies at DVD quality on my TV rather than my computer, after making such a transfer.
Also, if there is a way to do it, what are ethical and legal implications of donating the remaining discs to a library? I don’t plan to sell them.
Without transcoding (converting the data), you could make a sub-directory for each DVD and copy all files into that. See if your player can handle a playout from one dir before you do a lot of these, but VLC media player will.
You will have to use a decrypter like DVDFab to get around the copy protection if these are commercial disks.
Or you can convert each DVD to a MPG or other kind of file, but some of the extra features such as director’s commentaries are hard to code.
And that may be putting all your eggs in one basket. If your hard drive fails, you can lose everything.
I don’t know the answer to your second question, but if you donated them, who would know that you copied them first?
DVDshrink, DVDdecrypter, and DVDFab handle that. Convert the disc to ISO.
MagicISO should be able to mount an ISO so your computer’s DVDplayer software works.
If you’re considering a less technical possibility, I take all of my DVD’s out of their cases and store them in CD binders like this. The dimensions are about 6x12x12 inches and it holds over 500 discs.
k9copy will make faithful copies of DVDs to a file. If you don’t mind lossy compression, try Handbrake. Both are Free Software.
These answers depend on your ethical system and on your jurisdiction, respectively. In general, though, any copyright law which permits you to back up your DVDs would prohibit you from giving away the DVDs afterwards.
This is unlikely to work with many DVDs, which use various measures of copy prevention to defeat this. It is better to use specialized software that can identify and work around these restrictions.
Since you own the discs you have the right to make backup copies (or words to that effect) and the software already mentioned will easily rip the discs to your computer (except when it encounters a disc that it just won’t). However, the rub is how are you going to play the files on your computer and have them display on your TV? If your TV has a VGA input you can run a cable from your PC to the TV. But unless you have a dual-head video card you’re going to have to switch cables on the back of your PC each time. Plus VGA cables are obnoxiously thick and long ones are quite expensive. And the DVD controls (PLAY, PAUSE etc.) are only going to be accessible via your PC’s mouse & keyboard.
If you have a CAT5 network port on your TV it might be able to read the files on your computer, but I doubt it. Those are more for pay services like NetFlix or Amazon and, due to the DMCA, are likely to be deliberately incapable of reading ripped files off your harddisk.
If you have a TiVo box networked with your PC it can read ripped DVD files but only after converting them to regular MPEGs and even then it doesn’t always work.
My point is I can’t see any way that isn’t much, **much **more inconvenient and overly complicated than just making more room for your discs so you can just pop one into your DVD player.
It doesn’t matter whether you sell them for money or give them away, in either case if you don’t erase the digital copies you’re violating the DMCA.
Who said anything about ripping the files to a computer and playing them from there? The OP wants to rip them to a hard drive. Lots of TVs these days have USB ports for connecting hard drives and other storage media. Mine will play most video file formats, including raw DVD files (i.e., VIDEO_TS directories), just fine. It is, in fact, much more convenient than using the DVD player, since you don’t need to mess around with locating, inserting, and removing physical discs.
You can’t violate the DMCA if it doesn’t apply to you in the first place. Is “Zeelandia” in the US?
Most modern TVs also have ports that allow you to connect your PC and use the TV as a monitor. If the TV is full HD then it works just as well as a dedicated PC monitor.
It is then possible to mount the ISO rip of the DVD with software like Virtual Clone Drive (free) and play it from the PC with DVD Player software like PowerDVD, VLC (free / open source) or Windows Media Player.
This is how i watch movies these days. I also have a remote control for my PC that provides complete access from a comfortable viewing distance.
The only potential problem is that there may be a legal problem with ripping DVDs to your hard disk. It depends where you live I think. In fact, one of the ripping utilities mentioned in a previous reply was forced to stop publishing due the potential for copyright theft. But for some reason the authorities only went after that one and let the others continue to exist.