@searcher - For quick and easy - I would say take your laptop....
But you then also have to have the Dvds, Power Cord etc. (you could of course rip your Dvds to your laptop for viewing, leaving the disks at home....

I have watched DVD movies on my (the ex) Palm T3 and now the N800 from a largish SD card. I have had 3 full length movies on a 1GB SD card. Whole lot easier to pull out the N800 on the bus than a laptop.

I would recommend only ripping Dvds that you own. This way you can be sure of what you are getting, quality, etc. And, You won't have to be concerned with any of the torrent trackers, or if someone put in a virus of some sort (Yes I'm paranoid).

Dvd Shrink is very easy to use and will do a 1-click backup of the entire DVD (menus, movie, extras, etc). It also has more advanced features to strip out everything leaving just the movie. As for the "rip / dup failure" you will know almost immediately if it will be successful.

M

From a purely technical (not legal) standpoint, if you have a high-speed Internet connection, it's easier and faster to download someone else's DVD rips than do it yourself.

The N800/N810 will struggle to decode most downloaded DVD rips, but Mplayer has the ability to decode videos at reduced resolution ("mplayer -lavdopts lowres=1 video.avi" in a terminal), which enables smooth playback of many downloaded videos. It's not the prettiest solution, but it's easier than encoding a DVD specifically for the tablet.

At least it's usually more work than expected to get your first DVD to the tablet. Searching for the right applications, re-encode according to personal preference... After the first one, it's a matter of routine. (Except you find a DVD with unusual copy protection.)

BTW:

Never forget the Wiki for such questions. There's two articles about this:
Video encoding (probably what you want, once you ripped the DVD)
and
Manual video encoding (more technical background, just ignore it if the first article helps)

I don't know how deep you're considering it, but if you think about it, the file must have an exploit targeting mplayer, which is a definite minority video player, it must target Linux builds (so some platform-specific exploits would be right out), and the payload must be ARM code rather than the much more likely (unless it's an ARM-build specific exploit) x86 code. Oh, and you're presumably running mplayer as user, so a true virus would still have its work cut out. (Most probable vectpr would be .debs, of which some are likely to be laying about in writeable areas, but most people are very unlikely to distribute them to other machines, anyway.)

That said, it's possible, and if you play them back in a less obscure desktop setting, the risk does increase by orders of magnitude. And there's also concerns about the mafiaa, which seem a greater danger to me, and probably other angles; I'm just focusing on the N8x0 virus angle.

But don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with paranoia, even at this low a risk! Just wanted to make sure there's some perspective for people who had not thought it through.

I think the better concern was the Torrent Trackers... there are *AA that scan those trackers for IP addresses and stuff all the time. Unless you have access to a private torrent tracker. They are uncommon, and are way to mitigate the risk.. but the risk is there - and people have been hit for being spotted on numerous trackers transferring gigs worth of data.

Your casual torrenter isn't (usually) worth their time or effort.

I wrote a simple perl script for me.. I can plug in any video and it uses mencoder to transcode it into something that is playable on the tablet. Whether i Feed it an AVI or a DVD.. One command... wait about 1.5 hours or so.. and I have me a movie.

@Benson - DOH I knew that was kinda vague.... I was mainly referring to the trackers and the sometimes iffy quality. The "other" stuff in the torrents is my paranoia over downloading ( on WinXP ) things from people / places I don't know.

I hate rebuilding my XP box....

@fatalsaint - care to share your script?

Snoshrk.. I just re-looked at it.. it was a one command simple shell script I wrote. I had a more complicated one that handled everything from ripping dvd's to converting avi's to DVD or the tablet.. but thats a bit unneccesary here. Basically if you have mplayer with mencoder.. this will adapt MOST videos to watchable on the tablet.

$1 is your output name.. $2 would be your input... so

Would rip the first track off the DVD.. which on most US based dvd's will be the Main Film. (you may want to check first.. run mplayer DVD://1 from a command line.. sometimes it's a preview.. in which case change the one to like DVD://0, DVD://3..etc.. until you get the main film.)

If you already have an AVI file (downloaded from torrent or made from Handbrake or whatever)..just do

etc... It doesn't "optimize" the ratios or sizes based on the original size/ration of the film.. but everything I've ripped with it has been watchable on the small screen.. and little noticeable loss of quality (for me).

ETA: It was adapted from this ruby script that actually picked your optimum output ranges:
http://felipec.wordpress.com/2008/02...the-smart-way/

Benson
Thank you for the detailed info, but in reality I was referring more about the dvd that I own. I think I've tried to copy into my HD etc. but they all are protected so I'm wondering how could I RIP a dvd that I own.

Of course the use is for my own not to sell or charge people to view the movie.

IN summary could I RIP a dvd that own.

Searcher: Use Linux .

Actually.. I know there is programs that will RIP your dvd for you in Windows. I just don't use any.. most cost $$.

If you have the USB stuff setup you could connect an external DVD player to your tablet and actually do it straight from that.. but it would take a while.

Could look at Handbrake. Has Linux, Windows, and MAC OS X versions.. has pre-defined rules for like the ipod touch/iphone.. which should look pretty viewable in our tablets..

IANAL - But last I heard you are allowed to make ONE legitimate backup copy of any DVD you own. But whether that just means DVD to DVD.. or if I can keep a Digital copy.. or whatever.. :shrug:.

@searcher

I apologize for taking your Thread OT

To "copy" a DVD to your HD you will need a program like DVD Shrink. This will "Backup" the DVD to your HD.

A good place to start with DVD Shrink is the WIKI