Old Circuit City DIVX disks

[ebenton]

I was digging through a seldom-used drawer in one of my cabinets, and I found 2 or 3 of my old DIVX disks from 1998, which I had purchased at Circuit City. I found "Deep Impact", "Sling Blade" and "Apollo 13".
All right, I know I know, that whole DIVX thing was a bad idea, and I was stupid to buy a DIVX DVD player (now in mothballs) etc. so don't give me any crap about it, please.
However, I was just wondering if anybody out there has ever tried to transcode one of these disks, and if so, been successful in burning the contents onto a regular DVD -R/RW or + R/RW?
Note, for those who don't know what DIVX was, this is *NOT* DivX as described on this website, but a proprietary method of "renting" a DVD for by buying the disk for $4 or $5 and then being able to play it for 48 hours. After the initial 48 hours, you would be charged for addtional viewing periods. DIVX DVD players had a modem and were connected to your phone line. The player would call an 800 number in the middle of the night and report your usage, and your credit card would be charged accordingly.
These disks are in some format unrecognizable by regular DVD-ROM drives.
I know I could go out and buy the same disks in regular DVD, but I'm just curious if anybody has played with these things at all and had any success.

[Donny661]

From what i've heard they're encrypted with a really good 128-bit encryption (pity they didn't do that with regular dvds ) that hasn't been cracked yet. You probably could legally download those movies because you already own them. Kind of like the disclaimer they use to have on mp3 websites saying that you could only download them and keep them for 24 or 48 hours unless you owned the original. But, advice on how to download your own legal copy is not something that should not be discussed here.

[ebenton]

Yeah, I figure I'm pretty much screwed, since Windows can't even open them to explore them.
Maybe they'll be worth something on "Antiques Road Show" some day.