Real Networks, best known for its ties to the Rhapsody music service and RealPlayer multimedia software, announced Monday the release of a DVD copy and playback program at DEMOfall 08 in San Diego. RealDVD lets users copy DVDs to hard drives for later playback.
Ryan Lukin, spokesperson for Real Networks said, “It’s very reasonable for someone to save a DVD to a portable drive and want the ability, flexibility to watch on his or her home computer, work computer, etc.”
Real Networks says average consumers have more than 50 DVDs and shuffling through the stack is time-consuming and discs can get damaged. The company estimates that more than $16 billion has been spent on DVDs.
The company also claims that running DVDs off a hard drive consumes far less power than playing a movie on optical drives, especially laptops. The software preserves all the original features of the DVD, including parental controls, special features, and menus.
According to Real Networks, RealDVD lets users make exact copies of DVDs to any internal or portable hard drive. Multiple, simultaneous playbacks of the DVD are also possible with the RealDVD player. The catch? Up to five users can access the DVD, but only if each of the five are using licensed copies of RealDVD software.
Lukin said, “Each PC needs a separate license. First one is $29.99. Each additional license is $19.99.” So home networks and laptops using portable drives would be a natural for accessing a DVD library. The software catalogs all the DVDs for ease of playback and allows categories and search tags.
At 4GB-8GB per movie, that average home library of 50 movies takes up 200GB-400GB of disk space. Some users will probably want to have backups of great DVDs in case the originals get damaged.
The DVD content resides on the media…