Thursday, August 30, 2007

SmartRipper is dead, long live DVD Decrypter!

For the longest time I have used SmartRipper as my tool of choice for ripping the VOBs from a DVD and effecting CSS descrambling. It is fast and you can re-map streams or only rip a single stream if you choose. It can do sub-sections of a transport stream by timecode and does one thing very well - it isn't in the business of trying to re-compress the MPEG2 data or anything and it has served me well. The other day I got the DVD of Amazing Grace out of the library and wanted to watch it on my PVR (which doesnt have a DVD drive) - normally I'd just rip the VOBs across the network to it and watch it. However - it features the bad sector RipGuard protection system - in fact when I did try it in a set-top DVD player it burped and jumped many times during the movie. Anyhow - I had to use DVDDecrypter so I could watch the movie on the equipment I own.
As ever - DRM is an annoyance to legitimate users who've paid for the content - pirates will always find it easy to circumvent copy protection.

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