Just received my latest update of AnyDVD 6.1.2.3 and just noticed that it now includes an ability to rip dvd's to hard drive and HD DVD's to hard drive.

Tried it on an old dvd that I had used shrink on and it worked great. Ripped all the files from my DVD to HD, and had the option to remove unreferenced cells and blank cells (assuming this is new form of copyprotection). I know there was a problem with AnyDVD and DVDShrink because of unreferenced cells in Saw3 and OpenSeason. This problem didn't exist with AnyDVD and CloneDVD combination.

Does anyone know if they introduced this new feature because of the latest copy protections. Does anyone know how this ripper compares to some of the classic such as DVD Decryter, ImgBurn, VOB etc?

From the brief testing I have done I can say that I am extremely impressed with feature, of course the real test will be ripping an HD Movie to your HD and burning to a HD disc and playing it . You can use PowertoDVDUltra from Cyberlink to do this without burning to a disc, just watch it from your monitor in HD. I think the difference is excellent.

What do you use for playing your HDDVD and do you have a HD monitor or are you using a VGA connection?

PowerDVD Ultra. With AnyDVD HD you can use a DVI connection (without HDCP).

What drive to you use to insert the HDDVD into. Is it an external drive like XBox? I am asking because I wasn't aware of any drives that are currently available for the computer that play HDDVD. I have DVI and its easy enough to get the software (PowerDVD Ultra) . I have a NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Graphic Card. The CyberLInk HD adviser listed it in as a gray circle. My processor Intel(R) 4 CPU3.40GHz was listed with a yellow circle. I assume I can upgrade the Graphic Card if necessary.

Also are there any HDDVDR/RW drives available yet.

There has not been much discussion about drive that I can find other that they are not yet available.

It *is* the external drive from XBOX360.
But your CPU is probably too slow for HD decoding (watching). A Core2duo 2.4GHz is recommended.

At this point I can assume that anyone that is posting in the various forums about playing HDDVD are using the XBOX360. Your the first one that has given me a specific answer. I have posted before. Thank you very much. My interest is going to escalate when the recordable HD drives become available. When people are actually making backups of HDDVD, and that is the format that prevails, I am going to purchase a laptop. I don't have one now. My table top Dell will be three years old in November. Not yet enough old enough to retire. Its got 1GB of RAM and can be upgraded to 2GB's.

I just got my Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive today and I love it. I'm watching Batman Begins on the 360 right now. AnyDVD HD works wonderfully! I couldn't be happier with this set up. Yes, recordable media would be nice, but, for now this set up will definitely do.

So, back to my question, has anybody used the AnyDVD ripper sofware and how does it compare to other software????

With Shrink, don't tick "the option to remove unreferenced cells".
Open the ripped files in Re-Author mode to copy the main movie.
The best ripper to use with AnyDVD is (drumroll) CloneDVD2.
Even if you want to use Shrink for compression, use CloneDVD2 to rip.

Is clonedvd2 really the best ripper around?
Ive read mixed reviews.
What are its pros and cons. Thanks.

Thanks for the info James. So what's the difference between the ripper in AnyDVD and CloneDVD2???

1. The best way to rip using Anydvd is to use Clonedvd2 (if you want video files and not a sector 1:1 rip). If you can't or are not willing to do that, this is how you rip using Anydvd:

2. With the latest version of Anydvd running, drag and drop the video_ts folder to your desktop using Windows Explorer. Alternatively, you don't need to rip at all and can just directly import the disc into whatever burning application you want, provided Anydvd is running in the background. You don't necessarily need to rip first at all. Not having to rip first at all is one major advantage of using Anydvd.

3. If you can't get what you want using #1 and #2 first, then you right click on the fox icon on your toolbar and select rip video-dvd to hard disk--but only if methods 1 and 2 fail first. This method uses an old version of FixVTS, which is often not required.

Please note that this does not apply to the HD-DVD ripper option in Anydvd HD.

This is exactly what I was trying to figure out in my post here .

Can someone please explain why ripping with CloneDVD2 is technically better than just using AnyDVD (Directly-Off-Disc, Drag&Drop, or Ripper)?

Don't get me wrong, the SlySoft products are the bomb. I'm just trying to understand why it's better.

First off, I don't work for Slysoft, so, this is just my opinion. However, the reason they recommend CloneDVD2 for ripping these days is because with the advent of Saw3, Grudge2, and Open Season, the AnyDVD ripper isn't working well for DVD Shrink users. DVD Shrink requires an ultra clean DVD structure, and those protections make that difficult. AnyDVD is, due to licening issues, using an older version of the FixVTS code in the Ripper portion. Apparently James has made some of his own modifications to this code, but, it's not enough for the latest protections. It still works on older titles and will work if you're doing a movie only copy of the new protections, so, they leave it enabled. However, if you want a full disc copy with DVD Shrink, they recommend ripping with CloneDVD2 because it will clean up the DVD structure. I hope this helps.

Thanks for the valuable info SamuriHL......

You're quite welcome. Another nice feature of ripping with CloneDVD2 before compressing with DVD Shrink is that you can remove previews and other unnecessary titlesets with CloneDVD2 as you're doing the rip to your hard drive. That also allows you to keep the menus, as well. That way when you load up the files in Shrink you can get down to business and start compressing right away. Anyway, just another benefit of using CloneDVD2 to rip.