I have an extra PC laying around that I am thinking about using as a media machine. One thing I would like to do is use DVD shrink and DVD Decrypter to rip my DVD's to my hard drive and play them from there using the component video out on my ATI AIW9700 card to my TV. The question is: Do I have to convert them to another format in order to play them, if so what software do I use to convert & play the files? Am I going to lose any quality, and if so will it be noticeable? I have been nosing around the Digital-Digest Forums but, I am so new to video that I really don't know where to start and any input to point me in the right direction would be appreciated.

DVDs are recorded in MPEG2 format. Most software DVD applications supply such a codec that they use internally, but is also available to other applications on the system, such as Windows Media Player, for example.

If you can extract the movie, including decrypting it, and install a software DVD player, then you should be able to use pretty much any media player software to view it.

IIRC.

OK, I'll give it a try and post results. I didn't want to start downloading software that was not needed and muck up my PC with useless software. Thanks.

There are a couple of things you can do. You can either rip the disk to your HDD in ISO mode, and mount the ISO using Daemon Tools or something to play it. You can also rip the DVD in File mode, and just point whatever DVD player you use to the IFO file to play the DVD.

Either mode will give you an easy route to crushing the DVD down to a smaller size using DVD Shrink.

If all you want to do is play the DVDs, just rip to your disk, and use DVD Shrink. After DVD Shrink, you'll end up with directory with all the files you need to make the "new" DVD. Just point your player at the IFO file for the full DVD, and play away.

Hope that helps.

So what software dvd player do people prefer (on WinXP)?

I don't have a lot of experience (especially under XP), but PowerDVD seems to work the best for me under 2000.

VideoLAN Client is not bad for a free player. I haven't checked it out under Windows recently, though, and I don't think it installs an MPEG2 codec that will work with other applications.

Power DVD for me too. You can also use Windows Media Player with this codec http://www.dvdrhelp.com/tools?tool=323#comments

I'm guessing that PowerDVD link was not supposed to be a link to the Jaguar website

Hmmm. How did that happen? (fixed)