Venice V36 - Special DVD Player

[its95]

Came across this in gadget forum. Looks very interesting. Is this legal?

Venice V36 allows the user to backup a DVD title to its internal hard disk drive.

Reference: divxtech.com

FEATURES: Multimedia player with slot loading DVD-ROM drive. Play commercial DVD titles and audio CDs. Can play all the popular video, audio and picture format.

VIDEO: MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (VOB, ISO, IFO), MPEG-4 (DivX 3.1/4.0/5.0 or higer), WMV, ASF, TP, TS

AUDIO: MP3, PCM, WAV, OGG, WMA, AC3, AAC, DTS

SUBTITLE; smi, smil, srt, sub

PICTURE: JPEG

[jumpingben]

Cool

This little device can do it all. What intrigues me the most is the DVD backup function.

[jumpingben]

Did anyone test this out.

Im thinking of getting one for the kid's game room. They tend to destroy the DVD disks with scratches. Is this kids/wife friendly?

I'll probably get it by this week. I'll post my impression.

[jman98]

Whether it's legal or not is a good question. Nobody knows. In the USA you have the right to backup your purchased media. I think the US courts have been very clear on that. However, you do not necessarily have the legal right to decrypt DCSS on a DVD and the courts have come down hard on businesses who have tried to do that (Studio123 for example). Will you as a consumer be raided by the FBI or taken to court for buying and using such a device? I have not heard of any cases of that happening. I think that would be very unlikely as a court case might possibly rule that consumers do have the right to decrypt DCSS and Hollyweird definitely does not want that to happen.

My advice for anyone looking into a media streamer is that they do intensive web searches BEFORE buying because the players all seem to have things that they claim to support but don't really support well if at all.
For example, I know of players that can play everything you say the Venice V36 can play, but there's a huge catch - the bit rate of EVERYTHING has to be below 6000 Kbps for it to play. DTS playback is almost always problematic in anything but DVD format. Those are just some things to illustrate what you need to look for before buying.

[hech54]

Whether it's legal or not is a good question. Nobody knows. In the USA you have the right to backup your purchased media. I think the US courts have been very clear on that. However, you do not necessarily have the legal right to decrypt DCSS on a DVD

Since 99% of the time you cannot do one(backup your DVD) without the other(decrypt/defeat the copy protection)....
the legality of it all is STILL a valid question not matter how you look at it.

It's just another example of the courts refusing to make a definite decision by allowing
the decision to be complicated with legal mumbo-jumbo.

[TBoneit]

That description did not say it can backup a copy protected DVD to its hard drive. As long as it can backup a home DVD recorder or Home movies on DVD it meets the advertised function.

I tend to be of the school that thinks, if it doesn't say so it can't do it.

[jumpingben]

OK, just got delivery of this.

First thing I did was to install a SATA drive (200 GB) and delete whatever was in there. While connected to the PC, I transfered some media file for test. Some family photos, mp3s, avi files and an ISO file of a ripped DVD. They all played fine (uneventful). More on this later after I give it a detailed test.

My main reason for the purchase was the DVD backup. So, the first test was to see if it will play a commercial DVD inserted in the DVD drive and upscale it to my plasma at 720p via HDMI. BTW, it has a slot load DVD drive and its very cool. Played about 3 DVDs and they all played fine. Did not notice any problem playing the DVDs. I'm not sure but the pictures seem bit more sharper than on my other DVD player.

Second, I've inserted a DVD (Spiderman 2) and followed the instruction for backup. After a long while, it was complete. Played the .ifo file in the folder that it had created and the movie started. Everything worked fine. Good as the original.

Out of curiosity, I reconnected the V36 to the PC and try to play the .ifo file through the PC without success. Maybe the CSS is still there. I can only assume that it actually backs up the commercial DVD without removing the copy protection of the DVD.

My only preference at this time would be for the backup process to create an ISO file (1 file) instead of a folder with multiple files as in the DVD. Also, I wish the backup speed would be faster.

Anyway, I'm satisfied. ordered a 1TB drive to beef things up. In my calculation, I should get about 130 to 150 DVDs backed up.