I just got my DRU-500A last week and noticed everything wasn't as simple as all I read. Some things were left out (or spread out in all the various forums), so I'm going to try to help others who are just starting this like I did last week.

1. When ripping to your hard drive with DVD Decrypter use file mode. From there I rip everything and make the selections I want through DVD2ONE. I found out if you don't have all the files ripped DVD2ONE won't tell you and finishes its process saying it was completed, which it was not. You can tell this happens when you get a good portion into the encoding and it jumps to being done real quick.

2. Don't encode with DTS sound unless you have a DTS sound system. DTS can't be played from PowerDVD either. AC3 6-channel can be played through PowerDVD. I always test with a +RW to see if everything checks out before burning to a DVD-R.

3. DVD X Copy is worthless in my opinion. It is pricey, and will cost you more to back up your movies. I own about 30 DVD's and I have a total of 2 that will fit on DVD-5's. Who wants to flip DVD's mid way through a movie? The quality of encode DVD2ONE gives you is excellent. I burned Pulp Fiction (2 hours 34 minutes) and it looked great. I could not tell a difference until I zoomed in.

4. The $44 I spent on DVD2ONE was well worth it.

Last time I used PowerDVD (like 2 min ago) it played DTS fine. I burn all my backups with DTS- with that audio, why mess with anything else?

cheers

PowerDVD can be purchased with various 'sound option' which means that some folks will have it and some won't.