Ripping DVD to Harddisk

Playing DVD is something that always anonys me, most probably because I am so used to having everything I need to use/watch/play on the home network.  The idea of yanking out a disc from the binder in the bookshelf, put it in the DVD slot of my computer, wait for the disc to spin up, for an application to play the disc, navigate the DVD menu, and finally got to see the content ....  that process was so brizzare to me since the playback experience of most of video files on my network is something like this: search the file, and the play.

So today I finally decided that it's time to rip all my DVDs and put them all on the hard disk on my network. For non-protected DVD disc, I simply use the free ISO Recorder 3.1 x64 bit edition to rip DVD disc to ISO file.  For copy protected disc, I use DVDFab.  For playback, I use XBMC on my Netbook or my MacMini (running Windows 7).  Everything work great so far.

Notice a few things though:

• You cannot use Remote Desktop Connection to conduct ripping on a remote computer.  I found out that I have to explictly go to that physical machine to rip the file, or those ripping program will not recognize the physical DVD drive.
• It takes about 30 to 35 minutes to rip a copy protected D9 DVD Video disc.