I have several noob questions, that cross several versions of AnyDVD, so tell me if I need to post this somewhere else. I have been reading for hours on multiple forums, wikipedia, AnyDVD faqs, and I think I am just getting myself more confused so please don't flame me... 1) If I use anyDVD HD to burn my HD DVDs to my hard drive do I need it to watch them? I only have a couple HD DVD's and I can't justify paying $30 for software just to backup $30 worth of HD DVDs. 2) I don't understand the differences between clone DVD and anyDVD... what can 1 do that the other can not? Do I really need both if I just want to backup my DVDs to HDD, watch them on the computer and if I chose to later maybe burn them to a DVD? 3) Do any of these options compress the DVD into a smaller file size? I assume that reduces some picture quality. True? 4) Also, what makes anyDVD software better than DVDfab or others? It seems rather expensive, but like I said, I'm pretty confused about features at this point. Thanks in advance!
1) No you do not need anydvd to watch them and anydvdhd will do dvd's HDdvd's and bluray's so any dvd you have will now be able to be ripped and watched. 2)Clonedvd WILL NOT remove copyright protection (from what I understand) I do not have Clonedvd so if im wrong someone please tell me. You do not need both you only need anydvdhd if you want to use one. You also can use a program like imgburn to burn it so you don't need clonedvd to burn it later on there are freeware versions. 3) Clonedvd will shrink them to a smaller size from what I have read. For my normal dvd's I run them through dvdshrink to make them smaller but there are many other programs out there but im not sure about HDDVD's I only have regular dvd's. 4) Anydvd (from my understanding) gets updated more often and faster than DVDfab. DVDfab is good I have the free version on my computer. Anydvd is better for me because some dvd's were not seen by my dvd drive but after I installed anydvd they were seen. Another reason anydvd is better than Dvdfab for some people is because you do not have to rip it with anydvd or at all you can use a program that converts to avi, mp4, mkv, etc. and it will do it directly from the disc. Converting to a format as listed above normally saves room because it only takes the movie and NO extra items like subtitles or extra audio unless you tell it you want the subtitles or other audio. If you want a program to convert to a video format let me know and I will tell you the one I use. Hope this helps.