Hello My Fellow DVD Delving Daredevils,

In addition to enjoying virtually all of my DRM-free music library on my beloved Windows Mobile, AT&T Wireless Samsung Epix SGH-i907 Smartphone (complete with Code Factory’s Mobile Speak screen reading/magnifier software solution for the blind and low vision), thanks to some very nifty software, I now enjoy my favorite DVD movies, concerts, and television episodes on my wireless phone, as well. 

Although there are many free software solutions for ripping commercial DVD content such as Shrink DVD, DVD Decryptor, Hand Break, VLC Player, and many, many more, I strongly recommend that you read the following excerpt from a Consumer Reports article, by Richard Johnson, entitled “HOW TO QUICKLY CONVERT DVDS TO ANY FORMAT AND PLAY ON ANY HANDHELD DEVICE (WITHOUT GETTING RIPPED OFF BY LOSER SOFTWARE)”.

Enjoy,

Mark

[EXCERTP]
HOW TO QUICKLY CONVERT DVDS TO ANY FORMAT AND PLAY ON ANY HANDHELD DEVICE (WITHOUT GETTING RIPPED OFF BY LOSER SOFTWARE)

By RICHARD JOHNSON Special For Consumer’s Guides
Published: Oct 22, 2008

You’ve probably thought about converting your DVD collection to a digital format. …A quick search on Google reveals hundreds of these downloadable “DVD converters”.  But how do you know which one to use?  Our intrepid editors spent a full month testing and reviewing dozens of software to find the right answer.

To test each product, we converted newly released DVDs and TV shows to play on multiple handheld devices including the iPod.  This allowed us to easily see if the software created a quality conversion.  We tried new released movies such as Iron Man, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and tv shows such as Heros and HBO’s Entourage. 

Our Shocking Discovery … 

It seems the greater majority of “DVD Converter” software simply does not work as promised.  In almost all cases they had slow conversion speeds, could not convert to common formats, and gave an end product where the audio did not line up with the video! 
Another finding of ours was even more disturbing.  During our testing we downloaded many different products. It wasn’t long before we noticed our computers were not running as smoothly as they used to.  It seems some of these manufacture’s were including data mining spyware with the software!  First they sell you a poor performing product, and then they steal your personal information to sell to advertisers.  Maybe for them that’s business, but for us, it ’s a huge violation of privacy. 

Fortunately, we were able to find a few products that stood out above all the rest.  To begin with, these products did not come with any spyware to steal your personal information.  Second, no matter which DVDs we converted, we got a perfect copy that played on a variety of hand held devices.  Each of these proved to work faster with better quality than any of the competition.  If you want to convert DVDs to any format, without getting ripped off, use one of these services.

“Here’s The DVD Converters You Can Trust…”

Click Here to read the full article.  Please note that if browsing in Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, it may be necessary to view this article in the new Compatibility Mode.  To do this, either Click the Compatibility Button located on the Standard IE8 Toolbar or from within the Internet Explorer browser Window, from the Tools Menu, select Compatibility View and enter the appropriate information in the Compatibility Dialog Box.