And if you can, how do you get it from disk to HD and actually make it play?
Thanks for all those who help.
Cheers
Mike

Lots of different ways. You could use tools like DvdShrink to compress and rip a movie to your hd and then use player softwear to view it, like Power DVd. Alternatively, you could use conversion software to turn the DVD (after decrypting) into a normal avi or mpeg file which you could then view using Window's own media player. Another way is to convert the DVD to the Divx format, which shrinks the size of the film quite a bit to save storage space. Remember, though, each time you compress or change the file format of the DVD expect to loose some viewing quality.

Since the new protections are out, you'll need also something like anydvd or dvdfabdecrypter.

depends on the dvd, but the ripping portin i well covered above......I still use dvdshrink all the time to get the dvd..........."on the hdd" the other apps mentioned above do the same except powerdvd.

Once on the hdd..................pwerdvd is an application to play it on your pc....ulead makes a similar app, and i think VLC will handle it also...which is a free download.....

Thank you all. I have Anydvd and Nero and a program called Sound forge batch converter, which offers a conversion called video for windows. Would these applications be enough to do it? I'm not looking to purchase any additional software so if its not enough then no problem. I'm assuming I just rip it with Anydvd and then just convert it to whichever format works. I have an external HD with a USB 2.0 connection. Is that wire fast enough to just save the Movie to it for play back?

Just rip it in file mode with DVD Decrypter (free software), then open VIDEO_TS.IFO in your favorite DVD player software.

Hmm. OK, that worked...but the file sizes are too big...what software should I use to shrink them and is there a freeware version?

You can try dvdshrink.

DVD Shrink isn't really appropriate if you're just storing them to your hard drive... If you're just gonna watch the movie at your computer, I'd recommend encoding it to XviD with the help of a tool like AutoGK.