[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Make Exact Backup Copies of Your DVDs here

[JayDr]

Since PC World published this article, how about translating it to PC speak?

[rcprimak]

Note to USA readers: All of these programs are illegal in the USA. Fairmount in particular will not download to North America. Nice try, folks, but copying is still copying, and there is no such thing as "fair use" in the USA.

[edwardssr]

JayDr: For PC users, there is a suite of programs made in Antigua and, I believe, England, where the encoding is stripped out, including the regional encoding, so that you can view a disc on your computer without having to change the region on the computer and then be locked out after 5 changes. The company is called Slysoft (www.slysoft.com), and the program is AnyDVD. I have used the program for years and loved it. Also, they have another program called CloneDVD2, which will copy DVDs. It will let you make backups (I have worked in copyright at my last job, and know some of the laws for the USA, and it actually IS legal to backup your commercial DVDs (or in other words, USE software) in the USA, it's just not legal to CREATE the cracking software in the USA) of all your DVDs, including commercial ones (provided you have AnyDVD running in the background, so it will break down the encoding. They also have a program called CloneCD, which is a nice program for copying CD discs, as well. To copy Blu-rays, I just use AnyDVD HD (lets you view Blu-rays from any region (and HD discs), as well as (and not only) DVDs. Sorry about all the parenthetical expressions! Anyway, AnyDVD HD will allow you to break down the encoding to be able to view BDs and Slysoft will be coming out with a program soon called CloneBD or something similar. That should be by 31 March 2013, but their first target date was January 2013 and they haven't made it, so there's no telling with software. In the meantime, I can also use CyberLink's PowerToGo 7 to do the copying, of course, with AnyDVD HD running in the background. You can copy BDs quite easily. Just hover over the Copy Disc icon at the top and then click on the Copy Disc icon which pops up at the bottom of the screen. Just set the parameters on the next small screen and click Copy. BTW, the nice thing about CloneDVD2 is that it will copy an entire disc of dual layer quality onto a disc which is a single layer disc (i.e., you don't have to cut out language tracks or other things), just compresses it and is slightly lower quality. It does all this automatically, which is nice. Or you can simply use a DL (dual layer) disc to get an exact copy and quality as the original. Hope this helps!