DVD buring question w/ VAIO

[smartalecc5]

I purchased a SONY VAIO computer a little back ago and was elated to find out it came with a DVD BURNER. Now, when I finally want to use it I do not know how. After calling CompUSA and asking them a few questions I have found out i cannot copy a stopre-bought DVD to a DVD-R disc because Sony does not allow it.

Is that true?

[oracleguy]

It's more complicated than that, its not that Sony doesn't want you to. It's the shady Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the US that doesn't want you to, lol.

However, it is still supposedly legal to backup DVDs you own under fair use; you just can't be giving out copies to your friends and such. I've helped friends backup their kid's dvds so when they break them (you know how little kids can be) they don't have to buy it again. The catch is, and the problem you were probably running into, was that normal movie DVDs are a) Dual layer discs (9GB) and you probably were using a single layer DVD-R (4.7GB) disc and b) they are encrypted to prevent said copying.

Now the reason for the former is so they can fit all the extra bonus features garbage onto the CD and more than that, it makes it "harder" to copy since you'd need to re-encode it to be smaller to fit on a single layer disc. Although if you do have a dual layer burner, the discs are outragously expensive and not worth it.

There are free programs available to get around both problems, although I'm not sure if I can post them here or not, I'll have to check.

But in the mean time, I'll post another DVD burning tip: find out which brands of blank media work well with your drive. Most of the time the REALLY cheap stuff doesn't work at all. And like with my 8X DVD burner, Memorex, Verbatim, Maxwell, TDK, and Ritek discs work the best. Imation discs will not work at all. You should be able to find out which discs work with your drive with a minimal ammount of internet searching, just punch in the model number of the drive or look in the book for it.

You can also re-flash the firmware of your DVD burner with a newer version to make it more compatible with more media. I've done that twice with my drive since I bought it 6 months ago. You can get updated firmware from your drives manufactuer.

[raf]

since it's legal to backup DVD's you bought, we should be allowed to post links to packages that enable you to execute your legal rights no?

anyway, if it's allowed (little sign from oracleguy) then i'll post a link to a great free package that allows you to copy any DVD to a 5GB DVD with almost just one single click. And it'seven a very well documented tool. I searched quite long and wasted a lott of time installing other free packages and demoversions and was almost prepaired to buy a commersial one, till someone gave me the url to what i now use.