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RealNetworks launches DVD ripper
Author: Gareth HalfacreePublished: 9th September 2008
RealNetworks will be hoping its new RealDVD package will appease the industry with its DRM restrictions.
According to a report on Wired.com, the company – best known for its video streaming software – revealed a DVD ripping package at the DEMOfall Conference in San Deigo yesterday. The interesting part? The software is, the company claims, complete legal.
As you would imagine, a 'legal' DVD ripping package comes with a whole host of hidden extras to ensure its legitimacy – in this case, it's in the form of a DRM wrapper. Unlike free packages, the videos created by the software – called RealDVD – will only run in a special player application bundled with the ripper. So, no streaming to your Xbox or PS3 in the living room then.
To prevent sharing-style naughtiness, the digital copies are further restricted to play on a maximum of five unique computers – all of which must have a copy of the RealDVD package installed, at a cost of $30 (£15) each.
While the digital rights management included with the package is likely to placate the film industry, the company might still land in legal hot water: the DVD Copy Control Association is currently appealing a case against a video server company which claimed that the licence included with retail DVDs don't include a restriction that the disc itself is physically present during playback – opening the doors to technologies such as RealDVD. Should the courts accept the appeal and reverse the decision, it's quite likely that RealNetworks could find itself on the other side of the law – despite its best efforts to maintain some level of usefulness alongside the DRM restrictions.
Would you purchase a DVD ripping toolkit that was fully legitimate but came with restrictions, or would you prefer to keep on using free solutions and rely on the defence of 'fair use'? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Comments (17)Stats: 0.070 seconds
Riiiiight, so anyone else think this will be a complete flop then!?
I am certainly not sold by this product.
I personally can not stand any of the RealNetworks software, mostly due to poor gui and bloatyness and formats that are not comatible with anything other than RealNetworks own software.
On the bright side, I got a giggle from this feeble attempt
By analogy - imagine someone made a CD ripper that cost £15 and you could only rip to a copy protected format at 64 kbps, that you could then only play using that ripper on that computer or up to 4 others (each of which also had to have a £15 copy of the ripper on it). Or you could use EAC / Windows Media Player / heck even iTunes and rip to your choice of unprotected format at quality of your choice. I bet that software would fly off the shelves at PC World.
same, RealAlternative FTW :)
this one will be a flop, sure, it's a legal way of doing it, but just like DRM discussion, it saves so much space and so much easier if you just rip into 700MB Xvid or 1400MB m-HD x264.
i even take it as far as down converting some not so good films to iPhone format for long term storage.
I archive my movies as straight rips (main movie only, no extras, no subs, no additional sound tracks etc.), then encode as required.
Still, I don't see how this could be legal, at least within the US. The "illegal" part about ripping a DVD is breaking the CSS encryption on it, not that possible fair use issue. Unless this software not only outputs a css-encrypted file but retains the original encryption (which I think is impossible unless you're just ripping the video_ts directory outright), it still violates that damned DMCA.
Haha yer this is true, so id be interested in how they do this... yet im sure we are unlikely to find out as no one will buy it hrhr.
Handbrake be made of much WIN.
it's all about most effecient backup :) (and idling quad core wanting to be used)
hehe, same here.
Even more WIN once the BluRay build is released :D
its just so much less effort to just download themovie.avi
That's realNetwork all right
How many ***Associations do they need?
Bwuuuoooohahhahahaahaahahahaha
yeah right!