DVD X Copy Platinum - 321 Studios shut down by 'The Man'
Written: Dec 16 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Makes perfect copies of any DVD
Cons: No longer in business
The Bottom Line: DVD X Copy is an excellent utility.
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| phungus's Full Review: 321studios DVD X Copy Platinum (200000) for PC |
If you visit the 321 Studios website, there is a sad notice about how legal problems eventually shut down the company. The MPAA does not want people to copy movies, period. Yes, I know a lot of copyright issues may arise from people being able to copy a DVD, but I think there are some practical uses for backing up a DVD movie. For example, say you have a portable DVD player or a laptop and want to bring a few movies along while you travel. Instead of running the risk of damaging your commercial discs, you can make your own travel copies while the originals are safely at home. What if you are an independent filmmaker who created a movie and need to make a few copies to distribute to friends or studios? There are plenty of legitimate reasons to have the ability to copy a DVD.
The DVD X Copy Platinum suite goes through all kinds of activation and verification processes during installation. I used this software on a machine where it was already installed, so I honestly can't tell you if you can even activate the software any more since the company is no longer in business. You can't reach their online support from the link within the program and all they have is a single message on the front page of their website. With that note, be warned about purchasing this program unless you have some other means of getting it to install without having to go through the activation and verification process. When the program loads, the firewall shows it trying to connect to secure.smarterimage.com, so perhaps they have taken over this process.
In short, DVD X Copy will copy anything. I was using a TDK DVD-RW 8x burner and it took about 20 minutes on average to make an exact duplicate copy of a single full-length DVD. I copied three different discs and they all took about the same amount of time. I did run into one problem on a disc where it seemed to get stuck and wanted to take an hour to copy. I ended up canceling the disc read, then rebooted and tried again, and it worked fine. This machine had Norton Antivirus 2004 on it, which is one of the worst virus scanning programs ever made, and it was probably choking up the system. Norton has a bad habit of doing that with large files, and DVD image files can get to be several gigs in size.
This software tacks on a warning message to all the copies it makes, sort of like the FBI Warning you get when you play a DVD. There is no option to disable this message and it was obviously put there to keep people from selling copies of discs copied with DVD X Copy. If you ever buy a DVD off Ebay and it comes from China or somewhere over that way and you see a message from 321 Studios, then you have a pirated DVD. As a general rule, never buy software or movies from overseas if the price seems way too low or if they don’t come with a case.
When you go to copy a disc, first it asks you if it is borrowed or a rental and you have to answer Yes or No. If you answer Yes, it displays a copyright warning and exits the program. Answering No will allow you to copy. Frankly, this little window is pretty stupid but I guess 321 Studios thought it would help them in court.
DVD X Copy gives you two modes (Simple and Advanced) for copying discs. With simple mode, you simply insert the disc to read, then insert the blank disc to write. With the advanced mode, you can select individual tracks and mix and match different parts of DVDs. The advanced mode would be great for putting together movie compilations like what you might do with individual songs on an audio CD.
Also included with the Platinum suite is a data recovery program called DVD X Rescue. Since I have not had to deal with any damaged DVDs, I was not able to test this program. The way kids sometimes mishandle DVD movies, I can see how this program would be very useful.
To copy a DVD, please keep in mind that you will need around 10 gigs of free hard drive space. This software copies the DVD temporarily to your hard drive before burning it to a blank DVD, so you will need to have lots of free space for it to work properly. One nice feature is that it will automatically disable your screensaver during the copy process so that it won’t interfere.
All in all, this is a great and useful program that was squashed by overzealous lawyers and copyright hounds. As the legal owner of a DVD, I ought to be able to do with it as I please, so long as I don't sell copies or distribute them to friends.
Recommended:
Yes
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phungus
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