Copying DVDs onto your computer, an act which as recently as a year ago almost assuredly involved breaking the law, is becoming downright respectable.
More and more discs are being released with a bonus feature that allows copying onto a PC or hand-held video device, as studios look to spur DVD sales and head off wholesale pirating of their films. And new copying software, set to debut next week, could legitimize copying any prerecorded DVD.
The bonus feature, usually included on two-disc special-edition DVDs that are increasingly showing up at major retailers, allows for a single download onto a PC, iPod or other compatible player, such as an iPhone.
It allows airplane or bus travelers, for instance, to watch movies without having to carry the DVDs with them. It also preserves a copy of the movie inside the computer, in case anything should happen to the disc.
20th Century Fox was the first company to include digital copies with selected DVDs, beginning in January. Since then, most of the studio's major DVD releases have included the copy option in its two-disc special editions, which usually cost $2 to $5 more than single-disc DVDs.
Fox recently released a list of 25 films from its back catalog, including There's Something About Mary, Napoleon Dynamite and the three X-Men movies, that will be made available with digital copies starting today.
"It's a matter of providing consumers with what they've told us they want ... portability," said Steve Feldstein, senior vice president for corporate and marketing communications for 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. "If the family wants to watch the movie together, you've got the disc. If the kid wants to watch it in their room on the laptop, they can transfer the digital copy right onto the laptop."
Warner and Paramount have since begun adding digital copies to some of their new releases, including The Love Guru and Sex and the City: The Movie. Disney included its first digital copy with the August release of a special edition of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Copies are made by inserting the disc into the PC and typing in a serial number included with the DVD package. An Internet connection is needed; downloading a film takes about two minutes.
The average digital copy takes up about 1 gigabyte of memory on a PC, according to Feldstein. Since most PCs have at least 250 GB on their hard drives, there's plenty of room for storing film copies. Space is more limited on iPods or iPhones, which may be able to hold only a few movies at a time.
