[mythtv-users] Importing DVDs to Myth

[Scott]

On Jul 12, 2005, at 2:17 PM, flim wrote:

> Your best bet would probably be to read the recent posts about  
> playing ISO files.  You could make ISOs from your DVDs and play  
> them through Myth with a suitable player, such as MPlayer.  As for  
> the menu options, it's a nice idea - I look forward to seeing your  
> plug-in! :-)

I've seen the recent DVD ISO files posts and they were what got me  
thinking about this project, again. Several months ago I experimented  
with a few different "import" ideas:

1) use vobcopy to import all DVD contents unencrypted
2) use lsdvd + dd to import the DVD as an ISO file (remains encrypted)
3) use dvdbackup to import the DVD (don't recall if it decrypts)

I never got around to taking my findings and putting them into a  
script or any kind of MythTV plugin though. All three methods seemed  
to work okay with some drawbacks:

Looking at dvdbackup it pretty much looks like a dead project. I  
found some pointers to lxdvdrip which looks interesting but seems  
focused to actually doing DVD -> DVD-R backups. Not something I'm  
interested in.

vobcopy has more recent updates and appears to be under active  
development still which is gt tood to see. I need to go back and  
experiment with this more but I think I had issues getting a full  
duplicate.

Using lsdvd to "unlock" the DVD and then dd to copy it to an ISO is  
by far the easy solution. The downside is that because it is a bit  
for bit copy this method will take up the most space. On the other  
hand, having a bit for bit copy is nice when it comes to making a DVD  
Jukebox and hard drives are cheap, right? :)

--
Scott <catfather at donpoo.net>
AIM: BlueCame1