RealNetworks to introduce a DVD burner to carry movies on the road

RealNetworks is expected to announce today a new software program that will for the first time give consumers a simple and legal way to copy movies and TV shows from DVDs onto their computers.

Called RealDVD, the software will target mobile professionals who want to take their video libraries on the road to watch on their laptops. Although the company says its product is for copying movies one owns, nothing stops someone from using it to copy rented DVDs. The $30 product will go on sale this month.

For the last decade, copying — also known as ripping — music from CDs to computer hard drives has become a regular habit for millions because the discs include no anticopying technology to protect copyrighted songs.

The lack of copyright protections has enabled people to transfer their songs to their iPods and make compilations of their favorite music, but it also made possible mass piracy of music via the Internet.

Making personal copies of a movie or TV show on a commercial DVD has proven elusive for ...

... most consumers because of the encryption software built into the disc.

There are software programs for copying commercial DVDs, but analysts say they are complicated to use, often break the DVD’s copyright protection and the sites that distribute them are frequently shut down by legal threats. 

Kaleidescape, which designs multiroom home entertainment systems, sells a server enabling people to copy and store DVDs then stream the movies across a home network. It was sued by the DVD Copy Control Assn., a consortium of movie studios, other content companies and consumer electronics companies that oversees the copy protection system used on DVDs.

Kaleidescape won the case in 2007. The DVD association is appealing.

That ruling cleared the way for RealDVD, says Eric Fox, a senior product manager at RealNetworks, a Seattle-based digital media company whose offerings include the subscription music service Rhapsody. RealDVD preserves the copyright protections on the DVD, Fox said, so the movies can’t be sent over the Internet.

“What people get worried about is shipping files,” Fox said. “That won’t work here.”

The DVD association and the Motion Picture Assn. of America declined to comment.

RealDVD, which will be available sometime this month for a 30-day free trial at RealDVD.com, was supposed to go on sale today but over the weekend the company decided to delay the launch.

Copying a DVD takes about 20 minutes, depending on the speed of a computer’s DVD drive.  It works only on Windows XP or Vista operating systems and only with regular DVDs, not high-definition ones such as Blu-ray. The movies cannot be transferred to portable devices such as iPods.

RealDVD could prompt a conversation about whether in the future, people who buy a movie once will be able to copy it and watch it on any screen they own, whether it is a cellphone, TV, computer or iPod, said James McQuivey, a media and technology analyst at Forrester Research.

“There is a logical need for this,” he said. “The question is whether the technology is far enough along where this makes a lot of sense.”

-- Michelle Quinn

Comments

[Charlotte Free in California]

This is a very lame story as most of us are personally aware of the fact that there are multiple (dozens) of versions of software to rip DVD's and it is being done by literally hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.

The barn door was opened years ago (a lifetime in the digital community) and all the horses are running free !

Isn't this the same as making an ISO file and then using a media player front end to organize the thumbnails and present the user a nice interface?

Linux has been doing this for free for quite some time with mouseclick menus (no command line wizardry).

Whatever the case Hollywood, the TV industry and the music industry needs to work out new ways to enable to the user to do what they want to with their media. If I buy a DVD and I want to carry it along on my PDA to watch then there should not any reason I can't. We have a portable DVD player but it is much too heavy and bulky for a quit watch during lunch or on the move where I might have time to watch ten minutes in a sitting.

Doesn't really matter - a person who wants to experiment can rip and resize a movie or show for mobile consumption now for free. The only problem is the amount of time it takes to do it on a mere mortal computer (hours and hours). Sort of an overnight thing. Rip, watch, delete, repeat.

FWIW a PDA viewed at arm's length has the same screensize as a 26" TV across the room.

I think consumers would get behind some sort of portable device that is sized like a PDA, has an interesting GUI, and has no subscription cost to view shows which would otherwise be free to watch over the air. A person buys a device for $300 (exisiting PDA hardware optimized for this purpose with a media player like TCMCP), and then can go to a website to download for free ABC/NBC/CBS shows already resized for use. These shows can be traded freely and b/c of their reduced size look terrible if played on a fullsize TV and thus not damaging TV series DVD sales. For shows found on pay channels like Discovery there could be a $2 charge. These would expire (warn the consumer up front) or not.

[dvd copy software]

Consumers cannot and will not keep paying multiple times for the same content. For every new device and format, the Hollywood Studios want you to pay again and again. Until a fair business model is developed, consumers will always copy, convert and / or backup digital content. There are so many new and better dvd copy software programs. Most of the new and best dvd backup software programs are listed, rankd and reviewed at the old 321 Studios (DVD X Copy) website: www.dvdxcopy.com . Better yet, let bring back DVDXCopy!