I have not rented a DVD in years. I started buying them because the late fees on the rentals that we never return on time are usually as much or more than just buying the movie. About 2 years ago i stopped buying DVD's because we use itunes now.

Last night i stopped and picked up 2 DVD's at the local video store. In my bedroom, i have a laptop & docking station and a large monitor that we use for TV. I pop the first DVD in and it wont do anything. I pop the second one in and windows media player wont give me audio and continues to pop-up some warning and winDVD wont play it either.

I assume it has something to do with hollywood trying to keep DVD renters from ripping movies. Am i right? How long has this been going on?

If i were blockbuster i would complain about this... seems like one more reason not to visit them and one more nail in their coffin.

...And you have no problems with your purchased DVDs on the same system?

None.. i just pulled 5 random DVD's off the shelf and all of them work just fine.

I have a desk with a docking station where i pop my laptop in every night. Its in the cubby corner of the bedroom. We rotate the monitor when we want to watch TV or movies. Once or twice a week we watch a purchased DVD and i have never had a problem playing back with WinDVD.

The punisher (warzone 2008) DVD pops this warning up...

I figured it out... Well.. i googled it and found someone else who figure it out :). They actually got a message telling them to change back to a non-tv display. I didnt receive that message. Only the first part.



I got a new Lenovo Thinkpad. When its docked it wont play a DVD. When its undocked it will.. and it worked via the VGA port ive been using until my dock showed up :-/. When i tested earlier i had the laptop with me in the family room, out of the dock. I had no idea that copy protection would kick in if i tried to display the movie on a monitor via the dock. I made a lot of assumptions today. If i were on the clock i wouldnt be able to bill for the time i troubleshooted today :).

Are you hooking up a digital monitor to the dock via DVI? Perhaps a monitor that isn't HDCP compliant?

There's no good reason to require HDCP for lowly DVD playback, but I guess if the software has been designed for BDs then it could now be part of the "base" program.

Frankly older, non-BD compliant software might be what you want.

Yes, im using DVI from the dock to the monitor. Not sure if the monitor is compliant. Its a an hp2335 thats probably 5 years old now.

[Link: slysoft.com]

Have you tried VLC?

Funny that you mentioned this.. I used your howto in another thread to try and rip movies for my iphone using VLC but never got it to work. To be fair i played with it for an hour one night and gave up :).

The error definately, 100% has to do with me trying to use the HP2335 monitor with a DVI cable. The monitor is not compliant according to a few different threads i have read where people have the same issue. The laptop will play a DVD fine when its not docked.

Its not a big deal. I changed some things around and now i have directv & dvd being switched with receiver. I had an old sony receiver and a denon DVD player that were pulled from upgrade jobs so it didnt cost me anything. I wanted to add a couple of speakers anyway. The computer speakers arent very good.

There's nothing that says a computer has to use "computer" speakers...

For many years I hooked up Aiwa mini systems to my computer. But more recently I now use a full-fledged 5.1 A/V receiver with Energy RC-10 mains, an RC-Mini Center, RC-Mini rears and an S8.3 sub.

The rule for the master bedroom was NO ELECTRONICS. I broke the rule (that i created) "just this once" when i got rid of the sitting area and put a desk in. Then one night... "hey lets watch a movie @ hulu.com in the bedroom" and the rest is history.

The attic is open and theres plenty of space in the master closet for the components. The room is 20'X20' with a big empty wall ripe for a screen....

So my issue of not being able to play a DVD while my laptop is docked has turned into a project that in no way solves the original issue :).

Well, if you mention what problem you had with VLC, it may just be a simple thing to adjust/fix (regarding DVD ripping).

Originally i downloaded the latest version and found that your howto didnt jive then i followed your direction and downloaded the older version you wrote the howto for.

VLC ran all night long (12 hours or more) and never stopped ripping spiderman2. I killed it because i had to take my laptop to work with me.

My laptop has Core 2 Duo T9400 2.53ghz and 3GB of ram with nothing else running. Does ripping actually take 12+ hours per DVD?

It shouldn't...

Was the progress bar moving? What bitrate did you pick?

Right now I'm using an older machine - 2.2 ghz single core, 2 gb RAM, running Norton, and a DVD takes me less than an hour when ripped to 512k.