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When it takes an hour or longer to figure out how to rip a particular disc, I find it pointless to be ripping by then. It takes a shorter amount of time to watch the actual movie, than ripping it. This is why I don't really buy large multi disc bluray sets anymore, such as tv shows on bluray...

This has been a standard feature of anydvd for many years. If it doesn't find the correct playlist, folks usually post up the logfiles to redfox's forum. Somebody on staff figures out the problem and anydvd is updated within a day or two.

I do a similar thing, but without anything like plex. If I want to watch something, I just copy the episodes from the external drives to my htpc's drive. End up just drag and drop the entire directory of episodes into VLC in sequential mode, where all the episodes just play one after another...

Win10 auto updates can actually be turned off in a roundabout way. In the Administrative Tools part of the Control Panel, there is the Services program. In Services one can turn off "Windows Update" which can disable any auto updates. This is what I do to turn off any auto updates. It is a...

(More generally). Nowadays I don't bother updating the operating system and drivers on my dedicated htpc machines. My current htpc box still has the old factory default win8 which hasn't been updated at all. This machine has never been connected to the internet, and probably never will be...

If there's more to say about this line of thought, I'll start my own thread. :) Though at this point, I suspect there isn't much more to talk about in regard to dvd/bluray drm. DRM that is designed to behave like a precision WMD in the service of total destruction (ie. via infinite loops), is...

(Some more thoughts on general algorithms). Recently I noticed there was a complaint (on anydvd's forum) that there was a Lionsgate title released last week which allegedly caused anydvd to take 4 hours to process through the dvd. If this allegation is true, then this is highly suggestive that...

(This may sound really silly). Today it was VERY tempting to buy a 4Kbluray player on blackfriday. I had talk myself down and out of making such a purchase. The one argument I keep on telling myself over and over again, is that I should not be buying any optical disc format which has not been...

I get the impression a lot of "tech support" is just a bunch of minimum wage folks going through a script.

Today I looked more closely at the Sony/Lionsgate basketcase drm being used on Lionsgate dvd titles over 2016 and into 2017 (ie. after The Hunger Games Mockingjay 2). Basically tracing through the machine code in the *.ifo files by hand. It appears Sony/Lionsgate dropped a lot of the...

I was bored recently over the past few evenings, and decided to give this ^ another shot. Just about every "simple" or "obvious" hack to the *.ifo file(s) I tried, was largely ineffective. At this point, I've come to the conclusion that Sony/Lionsgate's designers have produced a dvd drm...

Same here. I recently hit another "burnout" phase in regard to dvd/bluray. Currently there are no upcoming dvd/bluray titles on the horizon that I'm willing to buy, other than maybe the next Star Wars live-action movie. (I went through a previous "burnout" phase more than a year ago, but...

(This is strictly anecdotal and semi-historical). Most of the hardcore pirates I knew of back in the day (mostly former classmates from college), were the types who just collected tons of cracked software, movies, etc ... for bragging rights. They rarely ever used any of the cracked software...

Definitely. I'll probably eventually move on to streaming completely, once it becomes ubiquitous and inexpensive. Currently I don't really have much motivation anymore to buy recent movies on bluray (or dvd), such as Marvel stuff and various action, scifi, etc ... type stuff. Nowadays I end...

(On a more general big picture perspective). Nowadays the main targets of the MPAA and the movie companies, are most likely the parent companies of anydvd, dvdfab, and makemkv. I strongly suspect the primary reason the MPAA wants to destroy anydvd, dvdfab, makemkv, etc ... is because the...

I was bored at a lunch today, and decided to search through the wikileaks archives (via googling) to see whether there are any leaked Sony documents which discussed dvd/bluray type drm. I won't bother with any links, but there is indeed several leaked Sony documents of this type. Everybody has...

I was bored last night and decided to look into makemkv more, and guessing what primitive general algorithm they might be using on dvds with extra basketcase drm. In the case of the Disney/Paramount variety of multiple playlists obfuscation drm, it appears all they're doing is just choosing the...

(Some more rambling thoughts on multiple playlists obfuscation drm). In the scenario of makemkv not doing much of anything to choose "correct" playlists on blurays, it would suggest their programmers might not be too savvy about cracking the extra screenpass drm on bluray. Brute force type...

(On a more general tangent). Over the years I got the impression the makemkv folks were rather slow on the up and up, when it came to cracking newer drm schemes. For example in the case multiple playlists obfuscation drm on dvd (such as Disney and Paramount dvd titles from the late-2000s and...

In the case of anydvd, I strongly suspect the "database" is just a stopgap measure. (Dunno about dvdfab). For somebody to spend so much time and effort at cracking bluray repeatedly, I strongly suspect the head designer/engineer of anydvd is a hacker type who takes pride in his/her work. If...

I wouldn't be surprised at all, if somebody has already figured out a way of data snooping on a legitimate computer software bluray player in action (such as powerdvd) and extracting the exact playlist(s). In the scenario of going through the playlists systematically, there's always shortcuts...

The way I think about extra basketcase dvd drm nowadays, is how it foreshadows many possible bluray drm schemes which Sony and other drm designers can come up with. For example, such as the multiple playlists + obfuscation "screenpass" drm on bluray, which had many antecedents back in the...

Definitely very annoying. (From an historical perspective). This idea of multiple playlists + obfuscation drm has had a long tradition in dvd. For example, many Disney 2009-2010 dvd titles and Paramount 2009-2014 dvd titles already used it. Many Lionsgate dvd titles have used it since mid-...

For example, there's a few reports of Sony's bd-mod releases where the alleged "burned" bd-r discs have deliberate bad sectors protection drm on them. (Allegedly aacs might not be used on such bd-mod burned discs, though not definitive). Nevertheless, it is a big enough issue that the anydvd...

Sony's "screenpass" is the primary bluray extra drm which keeps the anydvd/dvdfab/makemkv folks busy nowadays. Bluray's filesystem structure makes it easy to do, which would be a lot harder to pull off on dvd. Basically splitting up a movie into many individual segments, with hundreds of...

(On a slightly different tangent). Another nasty drm to look out for is Cinavia, which is very popular on more recent blurays by Lionsgate, Sony, etc ... Current versions of powerdvd are designed to detect Cinavia from "unauthorized copies" and displaying a warning message + turning the audio...

In theory, it shouldn't matter. In practice, it would depend on how smart/dumb the mkv converter is at dealing with problematic sectors from a vob file. In a few rare cases, I've encounter problematic vob sectors where a vob->mkv converter just outright skipped over the problematic sectors...

I still prefer to watch the raw unmodified *.vob files, especially for tv shows. If there's problems, I'll run a raw vob file through another program which ejects the padding packets and rewrites the timestamps to be sane. Occasionally I'll use makemkv or a mkv toolkit, if I'm dealing with...

If I had the patience of a saint, in principle I would write my own ripping program for my own purposes. But alas, I don't have that kind of patience.

(As another long rambling tangential aside). I should qualify why I prefer to not use full fledged modern programs like anydvd or dvdfab, in favor of ancient discontinued programs from a "generation" ago (such as dvd decrypter). For the record, currently I don't rip any bluray discs for...