If you're the adventurous kind, you could also try out BackupHDDVD, but this has a limited key database and isn't as easy to use as AnyDVD HD.WonderFox DVD Ripper Pro provides the best solution to convert DVD to a wide range of mainstream video and audio formats such as DVD to AVI, DVD to MP4, DVD to MKV, DVD to MPG for quick back up DVD to iPad, DVD to iPhone 5S, DVD to Android, etc. If you wanted to go a step further and have money to burn, buy a HD DVD or Blu-ray burner (along with the media that will cost you upwards of $15 USD per disc) and you've got a backup of your movies without any DRM-like infections.ĪnyDVD HD isn't the only software that is able to rip HD DVD's and we figured we'd give DVDFab HD Decrypter a go, but for some reason it refused to detect the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive.
If you know what you are doing, you could also convert the raw HD content into a different format such as x264 which is used for encoding H.264 and MPEG-4 AVC video into a smaller compressed file and that way you could potentially avoid paying for movie playback software.
The best we have used so far is CyberLink's PowerDVD Ultra (our personal favourite) which supports HD DVD and Blu-ray discs and the full version will set you back $99.95 USD (or roughly $125 AUD). To play back the HD content you'll need a HD DVD or Blu-ray software movie player and there still isn't a great selection out yet. Once the movie has finished being copied to your hard drive, you're not quite out of the woods yet. There are of course a range of more advanced options in the settings menu, but unless you're ripping a region coded Blu-ray disc, most of these can be left at their default settings. Move onto the next page for the quick and easy step by step guide!ĪnyDVD HD is dead easy to use - as soon as you insert a HD DVD or Blu-ray disc, AnyDVD HD scans it automatically. Other benefits include the ability to remove those annoying FBI warnings and trailers that you cannot usually skip past. With Blu-ray media, AnyDVD HD will also remove the region coding, perfect for those importing discs from abroad to try and save a few bucks.
This meant that AACS was introduced which bought with it HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) that requires certain parts of your system (and software) to be HDCP compatible such as monitor, graphics card and VGA driver. We're could go into a very lengthy debate about DRM and copy protection but basically it was a scheme employed to try and stop people copying and re-distributing their HD materials. There are several advantages to doing this, but the most obvious one is that you can playback your HD movies on systems that lack HDCP support. Once you've rebooted you're ready to start the time consuming part of stripping the AACS copy protection from your movies. Once you've installed AnyDVD HD you have to reboot your PC, as otherwise AnyDVD HD won't recognise your drives.
For this we used AnyDVD HD 6.1.3.3 of which you can download a demo of from the SlySoft website. The next step is to get hold of some software that makes it easy to strip the AACS copy protection from the video files and then copy them to your hard drive. This connects to your PC via USB, just as it would to the Xbox 360 and it's the drive that was used for this tutorial, but any compatible drive should work just fine. With HD DVD this is quite an affordable option thanks to Microsoft and the external Xbox 360 HD DVD drive.
It might not be a hack like regular DVD decryption DeCSS, but it seems very unlikely that this workaround will ever stop working as it means that all current HD DVD and Blu-ray players would either need a firmware upgrade or become obsolete when it comes to playing newer movies.īut how do you take advantage of this? Well, first of all you need the required hardware, which is a Blu-ray or HD DVD drive. It's really quite amazing how quickly Advanced Access Content System (AACS - HD content protection for HD DVD and Blu-ray discs) got defeated, especially considering how much money the industry and Hollywood movie studios putting into protecting their HD movie content. Quick and Easy HD DVD and Blu-ray Ripping Guide