Rip Blu-ray Guide

There are several reasons why you might want to rip Blu-rays.  Here are my reasons:

1. There main one is that you want to watch your movies on a computer.  Legally playing your blu-rays on a computer is a big pain.  You have to jump through a ton of hoops.  Ripping out the content protection is the first step in being able to actually watch YOUR OWN MOVIES.
2. Protect your movies from kids.
3. Avoid using the awful blu-ray software players like Cyberlink’s PowerDVD.  If you rip your movies, you can convert them to MKVs or another format.  There are tons of free players out there that support MKVs.  Why pay $80 for PowerDVD?

If you notice, I did not mention burning blu-ray movies.   In my opinion, writeable blu-ray discs are too expensive and not worth burning.

MakeMKV is a free program that converts your Blu-ray movies to MKV files, which can be played on most computers with the proper codecs installed.

MakeMKV’s main selling point is that it is easy and makes fairly good conversions.  The one drawback I see in MakeMKV is that you can’t use lossless audio codecs like FLAC. The high fidelity of blu-ray discs will be lost in coversion to AC3. This may not be a big deal for some though, especially if you do not have a high-end receiver and speakers.

MakeMKV has some capability to remove the copy protection from your discs though I would plan on still using AnyDVD HD, which is by far and away the best ripper for Blu-rays.

Ever since the release of Blu-ray to the world, people have been predicting its demise. The most common reason is that downloaded movies are just around the corner. In essence, Blu-ray was dead before it arrived.

However, Blu-ray has two advantages over downloadable content from the likes of iTunes and Amazon. First off, Blu-ray looks and sounds better. Maybe not by a lot but the difference is still there. This by itself would not be a big deal, which leads us to the second reason: Blu-ray is actually cheaper. Blu-ray movies can be bought on sale or used for under $15. Brand new releases run about $20. To download a movie from iTunes or Amazon costs $20. This brings us back to the better quality issue. Plus you can always resell a Blu-ray movie.

In terms of renting a movie, Netflix makes Blu-ray almost a no-brainer. Sure you can rent a movie from iTunes for $5, but why not pay $12 a month for Netflix and get all the Blu-rays you can watch in a month.

Next time someone is telling you that Blu-ray is dying, tell them two things: quality and price. Pretty simple.

AnyDVD HD offers you the ability to rip a movie as either an ISO file (which is an image of the actual disc) or as a set of folders.  If you plan on manipulating the movie at all (i.e. remove trailers etc), I recommend ripping as a folder.

ISO files can be loaded seamlessly with a virtual drive, like Virtual Drive from Slysoft. I must say it works seamlessly if you want to preserve