basically i have a archos gmini 500 which can play mpeg/avi files for movies.

i can take pretty much any dvd and break the protection with say dvd shrink(using more advanced now but just for example) then i can make a mpeg-4/avi file using clonedvd mobile and put it on my archos(ipod video without the suckiness).

i can then connect the archos to my ps3(i can even use the ps3 controller usb cable) and then copy over easy as pi. and then watch the movie from the ps3 hard drive.

now my question is if there is another less time consuming way to do this?

can i just rip the dvd using dvdshrink and then copy to the ps3? will the difference in size be alot greater? i take it with improved size comes improved quality.

any ones you guys use that are effective or even made almost for the ps3?

I havent copied a movie onto the hard drive but i use dvd fab platinum. It has a ps3 device setting. I then stream my movies to my ps3 via my network. If you mean a one click backup solution there is a 30 trial of dvd fab you can try at dvdidle.com

ok cheers i have used dvd fab seris before but only up to dvd hd decryptor from about a year ago.

1 thing i notice is that using the hd decryptor only takes 15 minutes tops to rip a dvd (die hard 1 if you must know) whilst using the ps3 setting on platinum gives me a 5 hour quote. I'm assuming this is to not only rip but also re-encode to make it into a mpeg-4 etc file.

I'm going to try to use hd decryptor first so the cpu can use a bit more juice to encode the ripped file.

also philly37 what size do you get per film. Idly 1 gb per film is the target.

Here's my experience:

Lets say.. hypothetically... I have a Netflix account.

I then rent a series of movies.. but am only allowed one at a time. So I really want to watch movie X.. but my wife has movie Y in the house and decides that she wants to wait till friday night to watch it which means I can't expect movie X to arrive until the following week... grrr. (hypothetically of course)

I then take my wifes movie "y" and use DVD Decryptor to copy the relavant .Vob files to the laptop.

After I have the 3-5 or so .vob files that make up only the movie segment, I need to make them playable on the ps3. THIS IS THE EASIEST PART!!! just change the .vob to .mpg and the files will play in FULL QUALITY as an MPEG 2 file on the PS3!! This will of course require you to move the files to your PS3 first. I personally like to watch a whole movie without having to click on the next chunk (i.e. the way the .vob/.mpg files are broken up) so I then use MPEG Mediator to merge the files into 1. Now I have the whole movie in its FULL quality with no compression and no loss of quality. This file will be more than a couple gigs and may be difficult to move to your PS3 with a USB stick/IPOD/whatever. You can do it that way, or you can set up your PS3 to a router and "stream" the file to your PS3 right from the computer. I prefer TVersity, but Windows Media Player 11 will also work and can be much easier to connect. There are guides on how to use these on this site.. just search.

If you aren't worried too much about having 100% quality... you can convert the merged .mpg file to DIVX using virtual dub. YES this means it will be a 3 program process to get your DVD to your PS3, but if you intend to save it to the HDD of your PS3, DIVX will take up MUCH LESS room than the uncompressed .mpg file.

There's a much more painless way of doing this.

Both my PS3 and my PC are on the same network. I use TVersity to act as a media server to stream content to my PS3. Check out the tutorial I used:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-11W8DOLK78&feature=related

It's very important to edit the "profiles" file (shown at about the 2:40 mark)

If you need some help, let me know.

ps. You can also copy the content from your PC to the PS3 this way as well.

Your better off ripping with DVDFab, but encoding with the likes of MeGui, to H264 video AC3 6 channel and mux with TSmuxer to a M2TS file, that way you have high quality vid with surround sound and much better streaming than an mpeg4.