It's my understanding that Anydvd is about the best software to rip BluRay to hard drive files. Do you agree or do you recommend other programs instead of it or in addition to it? Once I've ripped the files to hard drive, what methods can be used to play them out to an HDTV over an HDMI cable? I've been told that playing the files on a pc/laptop with a software player and setting up the video hardware to output over an hdmi connector rather than out to the monitor screen is the easiest and pretty much always works fine. Is that true? What software player(s) do you recommend to play BluRay files that have been ripped to a hard drive? What programs do you recommend that would let me edit BluRay files on a hard drive to remove fbi warnings and other junk, make playback start at the main title or else the main menu, etc? In the DVD world, I've been using IfoEdit and basically am wondering what the BluRay equivalent to it is.
In my opinion, AnyDVD works the best to remove copy protection methods. It also works quite well as a ripper, if you simply want a rip of the entire disc. You can also try a program called DVDFab, although a lot of people question the ripping quality when shrinking Blu-rays. I use a program called Blu-ray Rebuilder or BDRebuilder as it's known. It allows you to rip just the movie out of a Blu-ray, as well as remove audio streams, subtitles, special features, etc... And when shrinking a 50GB Blu-ray down to back up to a 25GB disc, I don't notice any quality difference when I use BDRebuilder. It's freeware too. You'll still want to run AnyDVD along side of this program though to remove encryption. Here's the AfterDawn download link for it. http://www.afterdawn.com/software/audio_video/convert_video/bd_rebuilder.cfm As for playing the files straight off your PC. You can certainly output an HDMI cable from your PC if that is an option for you. However, be certain your hardware is up to snuff. Playing some HD video files off your PC can take a surprising amount of power. My last computer had a Blu-ray drive in it and would play Blu-rays just fine, off the drive. However, if I ripped the Blu-ray onto my PC and tried to play the file, my PC would lag along, the audio would be off and the video would be choppy, just cause my PC didn't have the power to process and play the video itself.
