I spotted a DVD cloning app this weekend -- we see a fair number of rippers & players on GOTD, but not too much else. I thought a brief rundown on the types of software available, & a few words on their uses, might be useful. As always do not do anything that's not legal where you live.
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Players... Pretty much self-explanatory, they decrypt the discs for playback -- most everything else is added features to set one player apart from the others. DRM updates so players need updated too -- you might buy one & own it for life, but that means little when it's no longer updated. There are generally 2 classes of players -- some work like rippers & copiers [cloners], often calling home for directions on DRM handling, and can only be counted on to play the movie -- others like PowerDVD pay license fees to the DVD &/or Blu-Ray folks, & so use software means to unlock DVD & Blu-Ray discs the same as a stand-alone player.
Mainly for Blu-Ray there's a 3rd option -- once a disc is unlocked or DRM bypassed any video player can play the video... I say primarily for Blu-Ray because that video has the same pixel aspect ratio normally used by your PC/laptop. DVD video needs resized on anything but an analog display using a picture tube. Some software players handle that, but many do not.
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Decrypters... This can be a part of other software, or it can be a stand alone app. Slysoft AnyDVD & DVDFab Passkey work with their included drivers to sit between your DVD or Blu-Ray disc & all your installed software in Windows -- the idea is that if they work properly, that disc will appear like any other, with no DRM. Other features have been added to, for example, make a disc you copied to your drive still work.
I think these are a bit more popular for letting folks use whatever player they want, but they also allow copying & ripping using other software -- it just may be more work.
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Rippers... These are your basic video converter coupled with both a decrypter & a player -- the player part is necessary so the software understands the layout of a video DVD &/or Blu-Ray disc [the video's not just sitting there saying "Play Me"]. At best they'll generally choose the main movie for you, but you'll often get a list of every video on the disc instead, and have to choose the one you want. You can do the same thing if you can access the disc contents without DRM, having used a stand alone decrypter &/or having copied it to your hard drive, but rippers & video converters may have an edge with Blu-Ray -- working with the AVC [or rarely VC1] video on your own can be Very problematic.
On the downside, many rippers severely limit their output formats & encoding settings. You can get around some of those issues, for example you can replace the AAC audio your ripper gave you with AC3, using the original on the disc or something you encoded separately.
There is a separate class of ripper, e.g. BD Rebuilder, primarily designed to make the contents of a disc smaller, so they'll take up less room on a drive or disc. For video DVDs they're of limited use & popularity nowadays -- dual layer blank discs &/or hard drives are fairly cheap. But you're not going to stream video with typical Blu-Ray bit rates over WiFi, nor can many media players handle it if you could.
There are Gotchas... mpg2 is much faster encoding & easier to decode than typical Blu-Ray AVC, but IMHO mpg2 HD may be better done using regular retail apps from companies like Roxio & Nero & Sony, that will never handle anything with DRM. And because it's harder to decode, a lot of media players & such will have hardware set up to assist playing AVC, but not mpg2, to the point that some will not even play the format. Encoding HD AVC is likely the slowest encoding you'll encounter.
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Copiers or Cloners... As a separate app or built into decrypters like AnyDVD & Passkey, this is the easiest route of all, but it's also the most prone to glitches. Bypassing DRM is imperfect. It's also the least efficient in terms of the final output you save, including stuff like trailers & unused language tracks & subs. Lots of people taking a more DIY approach will copy a disc to their hard drive to both get rid of DRM & make it easier & faster to work with those files -- you can always read MUCH faster from a hard drive than an optical disc.
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Blu-Ray software is a bit rarer today -- one of the presumed reasons is that the company behind one of the methods of Blu-Ray DRM sued a couple of companies in US court, & other companies are afriad that they'd face similar.
