Best Computer set up for VHS to DVD

[GBRulz]

mray, careful about posting threads making game copies available. Sounds like you are already familiar with the laws though, so I'm sure you will choose your words carefully! You certainly don't want to see anyone getting slapped with a lawsuit or even drawing attention to PR that someone is making game copies available. BTW, let me know when you have the SB tape done...LOL

[Harlan Huckleby]

DVD Shrink is not really applicable, it doesn't work with most video formats. Despite its name, the main job DVD Shrink does is decrypt DVDs. It also can take the highly-compressed DVD files and compress them even further (but I always thought this was a dubious thing to do, seeing that blank media is so cheap.)

Ziggy's problem is she is too cheap and/or lazy to get a new computer and/or hard drive. "Poor" is not an excuse - there are a lot of lawns that need to be mowed in her neighborhood. This is an issue that can't be solved with technical advice, it requires some character stiffening.

[Scott Campbell]

DVD Shrink is not really applicable, it doesn't work with most video formats. Despite its name, the main job DVD Shrink does is decrypt DVDs. It also can take the highly-compressed DVD files and compress them even further (but I always thought this was a dubious thing to do, seeing that blank media is so cheap.)

There are other reasons for DVD shrink. I've got a media server in my home theater set up with about 150 movies spread out over 3 500 gig hard drives. They're all full, and I'm out of hard drive bays. If I had used DVD Shrink up front, I could probably fit another 50 movies or so into the same hard drive space. Besides compression, you can also author them by taking out previews, foreign languages and other unecessary "features" stored on the DVD.

[Harlan Huckleby]

how did you get the movies onto the hard disk without DVD Shrink?

[Scott Campbell]

Curretly - RipIt4Me paired with DVD Decrypter. I haven't yet run into a movie that this setup couldn't decrypt.

I've found http://www.doom9.org/ pretty helpful.

[Harlan Huckleby]

DVD video is already very compressed, so when DVD Shrink does more compression, it can noticeably lower the video quality, expecially when viewed on a big screen. Its a little ironic, what with the growing interest in high definition DVD to go backwards to less than standard DVD quality.

Also, I imagine the media server is for convienence. But if you have to tediously compress DVDs, doesn't it defeat the purpose somewhat?

[Scott Campbell]

DVD video is already very compressed, so when DVD Shrink does more compression, it can noticeably lower the video quality, expecially when viewed on a big screen. Its a little ironic, what with the growing interest in high definition DVD to go backwards to less than standard DVD quality.

Also, I imagine the media server is for convienence. But if you have to tediously compress DVDs, doesn't it defeat the purpose somewhat?

Maybe. I'm not sure there ever was a valid purpose, other than to prove to myself that I could do it.

[mraynrand]

mray, careful about posting threads making game copies available. Sounds like you are already familiar with the laws though, so I'm sure you will choose your words carefully! You certainly don't want to see anyone getting slapped with a lawsuit or even drawing attention to PR that someone is making game copies available. BTW, let me know when you have the SB tape done...LOL

I'm not too worried about this. I used to get a guy to send me game tapes. He only charged for the price of the tapes and the shipping - essentially he was lending me his game tape - he even advertised in Packer report. The key was that he wasn't rebroadcasting or making any money off it. I would follow the same rules as he did.

I have to admit, I'm a bit concerned about SC, etc. using those DVD decoders and possibly getting busted. I see no problem with it so long as it's just for at home, but the DVD guys might see it differently. Anyone know whether they've tried to shut down the distribution of that software? Have they had any success doing so? Are they chasing after people who use it?

SC, are you using a RAID utility and SATA drives? I have but one 750gb SATA drive and was considering making an array at some point in the future since I have 6 SATA ports on my motherboard. Is it worth it?

[Scott Campbell]

mray, careful about posting threads making game copies available. Sounds like you are already familiar with the laws though, so I'm sure you will choose your words carefully! You certainly don't want to see anyone getting slapped with a lawsuit or even drawing attention to PR that someone is making game copies available. BTW, let me know when you have the SB tape done...LOL

I'm not too worried about this. I used to get a guy to send me game tapes. He only charged for the price of the tapes and the shipping - essentially he was lending me his game tape - he even advertised in Packer report. The key was that he wasn't rebroadcasting or making any money off it. I would follow the same rules as he did.

I have to admit, I'm a bit concerned about SC, etc. using those DVD decoders and possibly getting busted. I see no problem with it so long as it's just for at home, but the DVD guys might see it differently. Anyone know whether they've tried to shut down the distribution of that software? Have they had any success doing so? Are they chasing after people who use it?

SC, are you using a RAID utility and SATA drives? I have but one 750gb SATA drive and was considering making an array at some point in the future since I have 6 SATA ports on my motherboard. Is it worth it?

I haven't tackled RAID yet. I use JBOD. You can use RAID for different things - either redundancy or to improve throughput speed (dubious) - or both with RAID 5. But if all you need is more storage, RAID is a bit of overkill.

Disclaimer. I use decrypters to archive legally purchased DVD's - all part of fair use rights. I also never used Napster, and emphatically denounce all forms of digital piracy!

DVD decrypter was shut down, but you can still find it out there. No more updates though. That's why I use the RipIt4Me plugin.

[GrnBay007]

Where are you Mraynrand?? We need you.