[BluRay]

I had a movie night last night and one of my friends brought his portable hard drive, hooked it up to a laptop which was connected to the TV, and voila! We had his entire digital movie library to choose movies from.

It's amazing - eBook readers let you carry your bookcase around with you, mp3 players let you carry around your music collection, and now even shelves of movies can fit in someone's back pocket. Gotta love technology!

[Cotton]

That is impressive. Do some DVDs come with the provision of being able to make a digital backup copy? - That seems to ring a bell. Otherwise I guess you could get the software that allows you to rip copies.

Personally, I wouldn't want to challenge the copyright laws, but I think it's good when legal options are there to make backups.

[SoundGuy]

Personally I think these copyright laws are ridiculous when it comes to personal use. If I'm ripping movies, placing them on a hard drive and using myself, then I don't see what's the issue. If I rip movies and put them on a torrent site, then I see a problem.

[BluRay]

I've bought a few movies recently that came with a code you could enter online for an included digital copy that came with the purchase. I think he had ripped the movies to his hard drive from his DVD's, but really, they're HIS movies that he paid for...what's the harm in copying them to his hard drive to carry around?

[SoundGuy]

BluRay, on 12 March 2010 - 07:09 AM, said:

...but really, they're HIS movies that he paid for...what's the harm in copying them to his hard drive to carry around?

That's exactly my point, too. This is no different (for us older guys ) than when we used to record our music on cassette tapes so we could take our music anywhere we wanted instead of carrying vinyl records around.

[Webster]

I have a buddy that has one too and he just hooked it straight up to the TV, no need for the computer. I am seriously thinking about making that my next purchase.