I recently bought a HP Pavillion dv 2037 Notebook, and as usual, I don’t know squat.
I would like buy DVD copying software - for the sole purpose of creating backup copies.
My Notebook plays DVDs. But how do I ask…
If it will copy DVDs and
2, If it has a dual-layer compatible DVD burner. The software I have in mind (DVD Cloner 4) says this is a nice feature to have.
I looked around, checked hardware info and so on, but to no avail.
Second—no—Third Question:
I put in a DVD just to see if it’d play one. Before it would do so, however, I got a message to the effect that to play the DVD, Quick Time has to change my region code. I hemmed and hawed and finally said ok, and it changed the code (I guess) and played the DVD.
Then I threw another DVD in just see what might happen and it played that one without incident. No Region Code changes required.
I guess things are okay - Regionally. Or are they? Might I get other Region Code change messages? Quick Time limits these changes to 5.
If it’ll play DVDs, it’ll copy them. Kind of. You need a piece of software like DVD Decrypter to copy them to your hard drive. If you have a DVD burner (you should find out if you do), get DVD Shrink to make a back up. This is getting into “sketchy-not-totally-legal” territory, so I’ll leave it at that.
You probably set yourself up for Region 1, which should work fine for most every DVD ever made, but you may happen across a DVD made for Europe, Japan, China, etc., that won’t work unless you change your region. If you’re watching only movies you buy from Wal-Mart or rent from Blockbuster, don’t worry about region settings.
I have no experience with DVD Cloner 4, so I can’t comment on it unfortunately. On my PC, I used DVD Shrink, which is free and worked beautifully. No, you won’t have to keep swapping DVDs… it rips the DVD to a temporary folder on your hard drive (so make sure you have plenty of free space), recompresses it (if necessary), then asks you to insert a blank DVD to burn to. I assume the software you linked to does the same thing or something similar.
Never heard of DVD Cloner 4, but I’ll second the recommendation for DVD Shrink 3.2. No, you won’t be swapping the discs in and out; all the files will be stored on your hard drive until you are ready to burn them to media. Do use good-quality name-brand media. The only problems I’ve ever had with DVD Shrink were on offbrand media of dubious quality. Note that if you stuff a full 9 GB dual-layer DVD onto a 4.5 GB single layer disk, there will be a reduction in image quality which may or may not be evident, depending upon your TV. If you have a 52" 1080i plasma TV, you’ll notice the difference. If you have a 10-year-old 19" CRT set, you won’t. If you don’t need all the menus and extras, I’d suggest using the Re-author feature of DVD Shrink to copy only the main title, which will only require a little, if any, compression.
Also, DVD Shrink does not have it’s own burning engine, so you’ll need to have Nero Burning Rom installed. If you don’t have Nero, but have some other burning software, you can use that instead, but DVD Shrink will not automatically launch it, like it will with Nero.
Where did you go to download it from? Some places let you download for “free”, but put you in a queue; if you want an immediate download, you are asked to pay a premium. However, there are many places to download it for free without such restrictions. Too late now, I guess.
Yeah, as long as you stay with the major brands you should be fine. Stay away from those offbrand disks, like Teon; they’re more likely to give you playback problems, particularly towards the end of a movie.
I’ll go against the grain, and say that on three different systems, using three different brands of drive, I’ve only once or twice managed to get Nero to burn a disk, and that was by going to the minimum data rate, even though both the drive, and (name brand) media were spec’d for much higher rates.
If you have trouble with Nero, I highly recommend SilentNight MicroBurner This is a 1.2 MB .exe application that requires no installation (it will fit, and can run from a floppy or USB thumb drive). The trial version is free, and will probably be all you need, but to support the author, the supported version is cheap. Microburner is one of my favorite examples of how good software needn’t be bloatware.
On your region code: HP has been known to use a brand of drive (I forget which) in the past that only allows the region code to be reset a few times.