DVD player software for the DELL 400SC & DVD ripping with it

[Slug]

I removed the 48X Samsung cd-rom drive, and replaced it with a Toshiba 16X M1802.
I tried 3 programs, and each one generated an error when I tried to play a DVD or a mpeg2 videofile. The ones I tried were:

WinDVD3 --capable of playing mpeg2 on a PII 300Mhz pc using a 2MB ATI card.

ASUSDVD --based on WinDVD

PowerDVDXP4

Needless to say I was quite bummed about all of this. Then just by chance I ran across my old PowerDVD3 software, installed the .m2p patch, and viola! I am now able to play DVD and mpeg2 files.

DVD ripping:

When it came to using SmartRipper to say I was disappointed in the performance is an understatement. I was barely able to get this pc to go faster than 2X. Perhaps the prog works better in Win98se, as I can easily achieve 4X on my ASUS a7V with a 1.2Ghz Athlon using a Hitachi drive (not sure of the speed as it was salvaged from a dumpstered pc :) ), and 6X or more on my ASUS A7V133 with AthlonXP 2000+ and ASUS 16X DVD drive.

Then the DVD2AVI program, once again this pc was slow as molasses, as in 1/4 the speed as my other pcs mentioned above.

The only saving grace this machine has is with TMPGenc+. This pc really rocks with that prog. I might just do my ripping on one of the other pcs, and transfer the .d2v and .wav files to this pc. I really do not like using my DVD drives for ripping any longer than needed, and this way the hard drives on my ASUS PCs don't have to work as hard either encoding.

[PCC]

I'm using PowerDVDXP4 and it's glitchy. The first time I installed it the program would throw errors until I rebooted. Then it works most of the time but occasionally, it would throw an error when just clicking on the menu and stuff.

For ripping, I've been using DVDShrink. Works really well and is pretty fast. I don't have a frame of reference when it comes to this piece of software, though, as I never used it on my previous computer.

I've never even heard of the other software you've mentioned.

BTW, I'm using a PowerEdge 400SC 2.8GHz, 512MB/PC3200, 2X 36GB SCSI hard drives, a Toshiba SCSI DVD-ROM, XP Pro.

[bachviet]

I use PowerDVDXP4 and I have no problem. I also use DVDShrink to rip and it takes about 15 minutes per DVD.

[Slug]

I guess I should have explained that I do my DVD ripping for the creation of VideoCD
and Super VideoCD, and not for DVD duplication since I still don't even own a DVD burner yet. I own a 5 disc DVD changer so it's no big deal to put a movie on 2 or even 3 CDRs, and my Toshiba 20" flatscreen really gives me an outstanding picture using s-vid & component video when I play my VCD/SVCD. It's also not a big deal to have the dvd menus or the chapters to skip through for me on a movie. DVD blank media still is a bit costly in my opinion, whereas CDRs are still dirt cheap, not to mention I still have several hundred blanks laying around my place.

[bachviet]

Ripping DVD into SVCD takes too long.