Help! new Ripper In Distress!

[CubDukat]

I just picked up a DVD-Rom drive from our local computer store, and while there's a firmware patch that will make it region-ree (it's an RPC-1 drive, no less), i don't want to take the rick of killing it, so I had a few questions about using it to rip DVDs from other regions:

1. I know that the drive's region has to be changed in order to play the title, but if all I want to do is rip it, do I still have to change the region? And if so, does it automatically reset itself when I put in a new disc?

2. Second, if worse comes to worse and I actually have to apply the firmware patch and it screws up my drive, will the manufacturer refuse to fix it at all because it's been hacked? I got it for cheap, but I don't have another $40 to spend if I don't need to.

3. Finally, several of the titles I want to rip (The Sleepwalker Project, AKA NBC's "Sleepwalkers," "Family Guy" and the upcoming DVD release of "24") are all in PAL. is there anyway to convert them somehow to NTSC format? I was thinking that maybe that could be done within FlaskMPEG. The end result (hopefully) will be a Motion-JPEG file I can play back through my Studio DC10+ to put on S-VHS.

Any help would be most appreciated.

[mh2360]

1. You don't need to change the region to rip, ripping removes all the region info...

2. I doubt the manufacturer will would replace/repair the drive if you screw things up...

3. PAL to NTSC conversion or vice versa is possible but not easy....