Why shouldn't you watch the movies you paid for on the device of your choice? With these DVD rippers and converters, you can.
A way to put their purchased movies on their PCs and move them to iPods, iPhones, PSPs, and network-attached devices.
There are two categories of tools you'll need. The first are DVD rippers, which extract the video and audio files from DVDs and put them on your hard drive. Once there, you can use a DVD converter app to transcode the files to a format that's playable on your iPod, PSP, TiVo, Apple TV, or whatever other device you might be using.
DVDFab HD Decrypter 5
www.dvdfab.com/free.htm
The free version of this software works well for DVD-to-DVD copying or for backing up discs to your hard drive. But if you want more features than that, there are tons to be had with the paid versions. For $49.99, the Platinum version does absolutely everything you might need to do: cropping, volume control, and many more customization options. DVDFab Mobile Option costs just $19.99, and it optimizes your movies for iPods, PSPs, Zunes, PDAs, and more.
DVDShrink
www.dvdshrink.org
Once you've ripped a purchased DVD to your PC with one of the tools on this list, you might notice that the files are too big to burn back to a blank DVD. Use the free DVDShrink tool to compress the files so they'll fit on a normal optical disc. Then use your app of choice to burn the disc.
HandBrake
www.handbrake.fr
This cross-platform (once more for emphasis: a cross-platform) DVD ripper is open-source, free, and highly customizable. It optimizes DVDs and video files for just about every portable device you'd want to watch a movie on, plus devices like the Apple TV.
Videora Video Converter
www.videora.com
Videora has developed a number of free video-conversion tools that are each specifically tailored to a device (Videora iPod Converter, Videora Xbox 360 Converter, Videora TiVo Converter, and others). They're all free (though there are ads that run in the app), and they're ridiculously easy to use—even video newbies will have an easy time using this software. You can convert files on your PC (including ripped files from DVDs) or convert videos from the Web.
ImgBurn
www.imgburn.com
There are countless apps to write images to discs, but ImgBurn stands out from the crowd. It has robust format support, ease of use, and a winning price (free!). Beyond burning, the app also makes images from discs, which is another good way to back up your optical media.
We recommend software: Aimersoft DVD Ripper, Aimersoft DVD Ripper for Mac
