Late reply, but... I'd like to add some comments.
Many DVDs released by big studios cannot be copied to a hard drive because of a standard copy protection called CSS; if you try to copy the files, the drive will say there's errors in the files and they cannot be copied. Basically: If you own a DVD by Warner, Universal, 20th Century Fox, Sony, Disney, etc: The disc is copy protected with this. More info can be read at Wikipedia.
Nowadays there's different kinds of protection that are much more complex than this, but they also make the discs a bit slower to load on some players and PC playback software. (Which made newer Redbox rentals a pain in the butt to watch!)
This protection costs money, I think the licensing fee has to be paid for every single title... And a lot of DVD distributors - particularly ones that did Public Domain content - won't pay for it, so they just release their movies with no protection. Those discs can be copied easily with any software. I collect a lot of PD distirbutors and I've never seen any of the smaller ones use copy protection. However companies like Echo Bridge and Mill Creek do.
There are also printed DVD bootlegs that look just like a normal DVD, only well, they're bootlegs. There's this specific company from Mexico called DU Video, which basically sold Mexican TV dubs of anime shows on DVD, and every one of their products was pressed at a factory. I figure a bunch of the ones people are buying are like that. I've also owned a lot of anime bootlegs that were factory pressed.
Sorry for rambling, but I had been doing some research on this stuff a while ago for a project I was working on and I tend to geek out a bit, heh.
Last Edited on: 7/18/20 2:02 PM ET - Total times edited: 1 |