hardware based DVD to DIVX encoder?

[lazylazyjoe]

Hi,
I am currently in the processes of backing up all of my dvds onto my harddrive so I can select shows/movies from a filemanager instead of putting discs into my dvd drive. I have been using fair use and have been getting good results. However, the time needed to do this conversion is still long and holds my computer up. Are there any hardware based solutions that will rip from a dvd and encode straight to DIVX or Mpeg4 or any good compression. I have no use for compatibility with dvd players as the files will only be on my HD. I have seen units that will encode in this mannner from an input source like composite or svideo. I would prefer not to do it by this method as it would require either running a line from dvd to my computer and tying up my dvd player... or buying a dvd player strictly for vid. out purposes. I apologize if this topic has been covered, but I searched and was unsuccessful in finding a solution.
-joe

[teegee420]

I believe Plextor puts out a hardware mpeg-4 device. You would have to run your stand alone DVD player through it and probably a seperate device in between to disable macrovision.

Instead of going out and spending money on something like that you should have a look at Nero Recode 2, which comes bundled with Nero 6 Ultra Edition. It's much faster than Divx/Xvid and quality is pretty good. Even if you do a two pass encode you'll still probably get real time encoding depending on your CPU speed. I'm running an AMD 2000+ and it works fine for me.

Now that I have just looked at your computer specs(Athlon 700mhz) I see what your real problem is. A CPU upgrade would be a good idea first.