DVD Shrink (unfortunately its a little hard to find the installer download) And then to watch, I recommend VLC
Sorry to dig up an old thread, but when you rip DVDs can/do you get an identical vesion complete with menus etc and can you play these by double clicking like you would a normal mpg etc? I'd like to put my dvds on hard drive, so I could maybe set up some sort of video duke box without having to load the disc each time I want to watch a film.
DVD Shrink allows you to by-pass most copy protection system, and region lock, and make an ISO out of it. With free programs like Daemon Tools Lite (free for personal usage), you can double click on a iso file, and it will load it on a virtual drive. Windows will see it like if you inserted a DVD. It fully support Windows XP, Vista and 7 both 32 and 64-bit. Daemon Tools also feature it's disk protection emulation to by-pass other protection system that your DVD's or software may have. Allowing you to have almost all your disks (CD, DVD, Blu-ray) backup on you system. Daemon Tools Lite: http://www.daemon-tools.cc/eng/products/dtLite For commercial usage, you need to purchase a license.
vlc plays back iso files. no need to muck about with mounting them first. use dvd shrink to make the iso, use vlc to playback. you can keep all of the menus and extras in thimage if you want in dvd shrink, or strip them out, its up to you.
MediaBrowser is an aswesome plugin for Media Centre, I'm absolutely loving it. An alternative to using daemon tools to play the iso in media center of media player, is to use a tool like MagicISO to extract the contents of the ISO to a folder. MediaBroser will pick this folder up as a movie and still allow access of the DVD menu etc. I prefer to do it this way personally.
