More ways to convert DVDs to Hard Drive

After searching the internet and watching slickdeals.net I have found several much more realiable and easier ways to rip DVDs and encode them for Media Center.

• WinX DVD Ripper (Not Free, but were free on a promotion found on SlickDeals.net)
• WinX Blu-ray Decrypter
• WinX Video Converter
• WinX HD Video Converter
• DumpHD (Completely Open Source, seems really good for my HD-DVD collection)
• works great on Windows 7 x64 platform
• MakeMKV (My Favorite, works with hard Disney proteced and Blueray)
• must be updated on occassion
• Ripbot264 (Completely Open Source, seems really good for reencoding from one format to another.  It is difficult to set up and does require a bit more components to be installed.  I do not like installing codecs that may be worse than my current set of codecs)

Overall all of these have there advantages and none of them are immediate.  In fact, each one takes a while.  Currently I use my WinX DVD Ripper to rip directly to WMV for most DVDs.  That appears to work great, although there is a weird issue that arises that I cannot fast forward or rewind unless I do the skip on my remote.  Does not seem to be series at this time.  I may try other formats to see if I can get one that is still pretty smal and lightweight.

When I come to a Disney or Blueray I am stuck to MakeMKV.  I love it.  I just wish Media Center did a better job at MKV file format support especially choosing the english language.  Overall MakeMKV is fast and pretty simple.  You really cannot beat it.

I normally have to reencode any HD-DVD rips from DumpHD (which is really fast that is why I use it.  It worked for all my HD DVDs and all but one of my Blueray) and any MKV file to MP4 file format.  To encode a file unfortunately takes a while.

I hope someone out there might be helped to find what I do.  I may go into each method further at a later date.