It’s surprisingly difficult to find a good Windows DVD ripping and encrypting software; most of them seemed have been litigated or threatened with litigation out of existence! Looks like AnyDVD is still around (though it’s something like 79 euro for it), but I see it has been banned in Germany. They seem to be the only one that still has an official site available; you basically have to find every other similar tool through third-parties as their official sites are now down.

Again, it’s the encryption stage that’s the big hangup at this point. Once the DVD is decrypted, Handbrake seems to be able to take care of the rest.

Just sad that this is apparently easier on Mac OS X or Linux than on Windows at this point (Though, again, I’ll see on the Linux angle).

Actually, reading through the docs ( http://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/Sources ), it looks like Handbrake can do decryption + re-encode as either a two-step or a one-step process (they seem to recommend the two step for various reasons: rip/decrypt to HD, then re-encode), though you may have to supply the decryption libraries separately.

Gonna give it a try in a bit on my Windows 7 setup, but I know I’ve heard very good things about it on Linux platforms.

The encryption is actually not a very large factor in needing multiple programs. The multiple program route is often needed due to how dvd’s store the info. The video and audio are separate files on the disk (which is how you can have multiple language files on a dvd…).

A possible rip direction would be: 1) decrypt/create iso file, 2) iso file converted to usable format (this step includes extracting the video and audio data and overlaying them into one stream, i.e. AVI or XviD), 3) break out chapters from large video or combine segments into viewable chapters (depends on how the dvd was authored as to which is needed), 4) hope like heck that what you play the file on likes your settings. …not that I’ve pondered, planned, done anything like that before, mind you… I plead the 5th!

“Hopefully, in the near future, houses will have ethernet jacks put in the walls as by standard.”

They’ve been saying that for years and years and years… with Wireless Ethernet Bridges/Access Points becoming cheaper it is really hard to justify the extra parts and labor to put in standardized wall outlets. (unless, of course, you are a hardcore level 20 geek).

As for my statement, really, the only reason the RIAA seems more openminded was because the “internet” revolution basically hit the music industry before the movie industry. Sadly, the movie industry actually has working models now thanks to events that happened to music (I.E., iTunes, etc.). And CDs didn’t include any real encrypted copy protection built in, and DVDs has CSS, which while easily broken, still had the weight of the DCMA to legally restrict who could decrypt DVDs and in what matter. If the music industry had the foresight to add encryption to CDs as a standard, we’d probably have to go through 3+ tools to rip CDs to MP3/FLAC/whater too.

You know, my A-110 actually spends much of its time playing shoutcast radio stations. Whether it’s anime music, 80′s popular music, 80′s Hair Metal, Classic rock, or 90′s Alternative (That particular station really brings me back to listening to the radio in highschool!). The lack of playlist or shuffle support for my FLAC connection isn’t really that big of a deal to me.

As for making an ethernet line run; to me, it made sense given just how many things on my AV stack actually have wired network only connections. It would get worse if I add an XBOX 360 or PS3 to it. Hopefully, in the near future, houses will have ethernet jacks put in the walls as by standard.

As it is, I’ll be keeping an eye on the PopBox and The Boxee Box.

unfortunately running a ethernet cable is a problem as it would have to cross open walking areas no matter how I run it, so the kids etc… blah blah blah. If I do get a popbox I’ll likely try my existing USB wifi dongle, and if it doesnt work i’ll just buy the proprietary one. since i dont have the hardwrae already lying around for a ethernet-wifi bridge it wouldnt really save me any money.

was cd ripping really poisonous to the music industry? sure cd sales are down but the ripping created the market for mp3s and ultimately the itunes store which has been a huge financial success. I think youd see something similar from the movie industry but the MPAA is even more reactionary and closed minded than the RIAA.

totally agreed that all of these solutions actually are superior to building your own media box. I wonder how the Apple TV compares?

Though the Popcorn hour is running a Linux kernel, they couldn’t include every wifi driver with it. Though there do seem to be standards for USB DVD/BD drives, USB Hardrives/Flashdrives, and USB keyboards, USB Wifi adapters do not have any standard interface to the hardware.

You can, of course, always use a ethernet -> WiFi bridge (I used to do this as I also have other devices that were wired network only until I tired of performance/interference issues and just ran an ethernet wire across the house to the AV stack (Hint, learning to crimp your own wires means you can save lots of money to do a 100 ft run…))

I’d imagine the PopBox will probably have something similar available down the road (if it isn’t updated to simply use that particular unit).

As for FLAC support, that would depend if the hardware decoder they are using is updated to include FLAC decoding. The main processor is rather slow (250 to 300 MHz? I don’t remember but it’s around that range), but it has to be for the Popcorn Hour (and PopBox, I suspect) to be able to get away with passive cooling.

As for DVD ripping, heck, CD ripping was poisonous to the music industry. As it is, if something like HandBrake could include CSS decoding without getting into legal problems, I’d think they would go for it and simplify the process of dumping a DVD video into an AVI or MKV file.

That said, despite some of the issues of the A-110, it’s a far superior solution to building an HTPC that could handle 1080p output or burning XviD avi files (after converting MKVs to them if needed) to DVDs to play in my old XviD-capable DVD player (that could actually only handle videos that are max 720×480, no 720p or 1080p videos that way). As it is, I can get on my desktop, click on most torrents, download videos straight to the Popcorn Hour, then go to the living room, select the video file, and enjoy.

would you be able to use any USB wifi adpater with the unit? thats a key point – i have a spare linksys one lying around that I could use, and then the effective cost of the box would be closer to Roku. Im not keen on paying another $50 for something proprietary that should be rights be off the shelf.

as far as FLAC goes, teh popbox page does claim FLAC codec and container support, but as far as multichannel FLAC support, I have no clue. I wonder if theres a forum somewhere that we can ask?

Bear – the idea of ripping a DVD the way we do a CD is pretty much poison to any of these guys IT would be great but theres no way theyd make it happen. we can dream though

I really only have two complaints with my current D-Link…
1) no on-the-fly playlist generator (Boxee looks to correct that, I’d imagine Popbox will as well.)
2) not addressed, that I’ve seen… no easy way to get my DVD’s into the system. Hopefully one of the two have that ace up their sleeve. It would be nice to easily be able to convert my umpteen hundred DVD’s into a legal(ish) and viewable format AND do it in a way that doesn’t require hours of babysitting while I chunk through 3 different programs to get a good file.