AnyDVD HD 6.7.7.0

Rated 50/50 by emanresU deriseD at Feb 17, 2009

If two software applications are incompatible, it doesn't make sense to automatically blame one or the other. Or does the reviewer know specifically that AnyDVD contains an egregious bug? Sure. And of course, those wonderful freeware alternatives have nooooooo compatibility issues themselves. I like and use AnyDVD because all I have to do is install one thing, and it works. If it doesn't work with some specific title, I can either wait or report it, and it will be fixed. What will happen if I run into a problem with freeware? (Oh, I know--that free software is perfect.) But yeah, I concede that 109 EUR for a lifetime license (which is equivalent to around $137 USD as I write this) is shockingly high.

Rated 50/50 by EarlyMorningHours at Feb 17, 2009

Always improving and has never failed on any title I've thrown at it.

Rated 10/50 by DudeBoyz at Feb 18, 2009

Please, if you would, let's just focus on reviewing the product and move beyond speculation, attributing quotes, articulating disagreements, etc. I think we all know where we stand, and it would do us all good to simply review the product at hand. With that said, here I go: After detailed testing, it appears that the same reasons why I have expressed concern are all still applicable, so I have forwarded those details to Slysoft in the hopes they will be made aware of them and work to address them. Given the lack of progress in terms of solutions to those issues, a rating of 1 out of 5 is, in my opinion, well justified.

Rated 10/50 by DudeBoyz at Feb 27, 2009

Ongoing problems / issues / concerns as noted previous still apply. Newly discovered issue involves the use of AnyDVD HD on LightScribe enabled configurations. I'm not yet sure if AnyDVD / AnyDVD HD is the cause of the compatibility errors or more recent LightScribe driver releases, but I have reported the issue to Slysoft / HP and will also notify non-HP optical drive makers as test results warrant. This software is too expensive for compatibility issues such as these not to be addressed and corrected quickly. Please focus on the software. Personalities need not enter into this. Anyone can get a fully-functional 21 day version of the very latest release and run as many tests as they may wish. Ownership is not a requirement for making reviews here, I believe. That said, I was lucky enough to find and purchase AnyDVD early on. That said, it doesn're really have a bearing on the content. There's no prejudice, slander, etc. behind reviews of a Beta or Final release. This has all been explained and covered before. Please do the research and please focus on facts and data so that you can make an informed review of your own, within the context of all of the valid reviews made in the course of the application development. Reviews not based on up to date, factual and honest appraisals have been and will continue to be removed at the discretion of the site runners. I see no reason not to follow their wishes in regards to the content I choose to enter on their site. Do right by them, do right by the product and let the chips fall where they may...

Rated 50/50 by rotjong at Mar 3, 2009

Works as advertised. Perfect for dealing with my HD-DVDs, BluRays, and DVDs. You can still purchase a lifetime license regardless of what people say about the subscription license options being a negative.

Rated 10/50 by BruddaMan at Mar 3, 2009

way too much cost for this and litescribe never works anyway so anydvd cant blame for that. it wont work with incd and its expensive and now you buy and pay for license every ear over and over so its a ripoff now

Rated 10/50 by BruddaMan at Mar 9, 2009

stop whining to making it personal. review the program forget names. its too much money.the license changes are a joke. you can rip everything except bluray with free program and more bluray with other free doom9 people. dvdfab does blurays for free but not as many blurays but with doom9 and dvdfab you get blurays for free.

Rated 50/50 by iamnotyou at Mar 10, 2009

To put it as simply as I can ... IT WORKS. Put your big girl panties on and deal with it.

Rated 50/50 by emanresU deriseD at Mar 17, 2009

I agree that the price has become outrageous, but I am independently wealthy so I don't care. The software is excellent and that is what I care about. I don't have the time or inclination to deal with a dozen carelessly-written freeware crap applications that attempt to do the same thing.

Rated 50/50 by PunkTiger at Mar 18, 2009

Sorry, haters, I've been using AnyDVD for years and nothing else comes close to the convenience and elegance of this program. It does its magic in the background and it just flat-out works. I have yet to throw a working DVD at it that it didn't know how to handle. I wouldn't own a Windows machine without it. Mark it down as Essential.

Rated 10/50 by BruddaMan at Mar 30, 2009

agree it cost to much and still to buggy with laserscribe disk burning and incd a terrible value for unless you have only bluray you dont need anydvd hd for regular dvd movie and there are free rippers for regular dvd that work as good and better

Rated 10/50 by DudeBoyz at Mar 30, 2009

IF YOU TEST EVERY SINGLE VERSION RELEASE, YOU SHOULD REVIEW EVERY SINGLE VERSION RELEASE - PERIOD If you don't want to test every Point and Beta 1, Beta 2, Beta 3, etc. release, then don't Then you can also skip reviewing them. But if you test every single one, why NOT review every single one, good OR bad? Not agreeing with someone's review is not cause to have that person and their opinions blocked and/or removed from the site. We all have a point of view and we all focus on different factual reasons for our ratings. Everyone should be allowed to post rational, thoughtful reviews of products, even if they factor in things that others do not. I factor in Value. I factor in Cost. I factor in Licensing terms. I factor in Tech Support and Bug Fixing. I factor in Loyalty to an existing customer base. I factor in a failure to fix bugs that were introduced into the product even though previous versions never seemed to have those bugs. I legally own AnyDVD. I have for years. I report all of my technical support issues, bugs, compatibility problems, etc. directly to Slysoft. I run comprehensive tests in real-world scenarios and I do it on multiple machines. I find the bugs and problems are in fact reproduceable, and Slysoft has found them to be repeatable in their labs as well. They make the choice of what to fix and what to leave out there. They make the choice of pricing and licensing options. All I'm doing is responding to those choices and their consequences. It is fair, unbiased and based entirely on facts and data and relevant opinions therein. It is not some un-supportable, un-justifiable campaign against the product. It is not some conspiracy where hords of people login and slam bad reviews onto the product. There is no mass push to discredit the product. There is no spam-laden list of reviews in the negative. If anything, there are far more positive reviews than negative reviews, so surely there is balance. Trying to silence everyone who

Rated 50/50 by emanresU deriseD at Mar 31, 2009

If you're not poor, there is nothing better than AnyDVD. If you are poor--or if you enjoy wasting hours chasing down and figuring out how the hell to use a bunch of free crapware--then by all means, do so. I'll be here laughing.

Rated 10/50 by catchpole at Mar 31, 2009

another person here who don't like this program (and file forum moderators can check our IPs). is it so hard to understand that there can be more than just one person who don't like this program? ill stick with free programs. thank you.

Rated 10/50 by BruddaMan at Apr 3, 2009

still too expensive with bad license needing to buy subscription just to get updates and lifetime subscription how is that different from free lifetime updates but not upgrades. if you buy lifetime subscription it only is for updates not upgrades like before so it is not a good thing to buy is that right do you think. still buggy even if they got the rip to dvd shrink fixed but it is mainly too much money compare to what it was before that bothers me most.

Rated 20/50 by DudeBoyz at Apr 3, 2009

CATCHPOLE - Just read your post after I had made mine. Did you mean use DVD Shrink INSTEAD of AnyDVD, or that AnyDVD now produces a rip that can work properly with DVD Shrink again? ORIGINAL REVIEW BELOW I'm going to have to upgrade my rating to a 2 with this latest 6.5.3.4 Beta release. They have made a correction to a long-standing bug that I have found in my test suite before, and reported before numerous times. I use DVD Shrink 3.2.0.15 to process the ripped optical DVD's that are on my hard drive (like after I use DVDFab HD Decrypter Free Version) and for many versions, AnyDVD rips were not clean at all by comparison. I would rip the DVD's using AnyDVD and unlike back in the day, they would yield these "garbage" type of results. I would open the files in DVD Shrink and there would be a ton of these extra things listed that should not be there at all. A bunch of Zero Byte and Low Byte entries that seemed to serve no purpose at all. For instance, you'd get the main movie, but you'd get 8 more (or whatever number) of junk entries that showed up right there, but should NOT have been there. It was a sloppy rip - they didn't clean up the small details like that. Early versions of the AnyDVD program did NOT show that behavior. They did NOT provide junk-filled rips. They produced a ripped set of files that was just as clean as DVDFab HD Decrypters (and other decrypters) and they processed very well in DVD Shrink and gave me a nice, clean backup. Both Full and Re-Authored turned out just fine. But then, it seems like years ago, that stopped being the case. I submitted the bug over and over and over to them, yet nothing came of it. Until now, it would seem. Every disk in my test suite rips CLEAN with AnyDVD 6.5.3.4 Beta. I right-click on the AnyDVD entry in the System Tray and choose "Rip Video DVD to Harddisk..." and let it complete the process. Unlike all the other times in the recent past, THIS version appears to provide a nic

Rated 50/50 by Fafner76 at Apr 11, 2009

6.5.4.0 is out, come on! Where are the usual consecutive, conceptually identical reviews? It's expensive, doesn't work with InCD, it's expensive, doesn't work with InCD, oh did I say it's expensive? The only prob I have with this version is Avast reporting a trojan into it, but pretty sure it's Avast's fault. As for the rest, still my preferred program of its kind.

Rated 20/50 by DudeBoyz at Apr 15, 2009

No need to be so bitter and accusatory Faf and any others. Just focus on the program and not the personalities. That said: I do wish that Windows did not have to be restarted after installation. But it being Windows based, I guess I'm used to that. I also still wish it was not a Driver level service. It can have issues with Virtual Machines and Virtual Drive systems from other vendors. All the other high-cost, lame licensing concerns still exist, however the issue that they fixed in that earlier release, the one related to non-essential data being left behind after a rip - is not a problem in this release either. I'm glad to see that fix stay in place. Yes, there are often a number of extra Unspecified tracks under Subpicture in DVD Shrink (none in Dark Night, 30 in Memoirs of a Geisha, 29 in DaVinci Code) but the can be unchecked and processed. There may be a slight bit of that bug remaining, as both Geisha and DaVinci end at 32 Unspecified under Subpicture, and I'll submit that to Slysoft as I do all other bugs. Still, it is improved. Not perfect, but nothing is, and the remaining oddity is correctable through some manual unchecking and does not cause DVD Shrink to crash out as it used to. So, score of 2 it remains. As long as bugs like that keep getting fixed and stay fixed, it'll only continue to benefit the program and the consumers who have purchased it (including me).

Rated 50/50 by 4122 at May 5, 2009

Ranking this program down because it is a driver level application is not fair, IMHO, as it was designed to be so from the very start & is designed to be this way in the future. If you do not like this, but do not rank the program lower because it is not what you expected it to be. You didn't do enough research before buying the program. There are some wonderful programs that do what AnyDVD does without being a driver level application. If one doesn't like AnyDVD's behavior then I politely suggest one check out AnyDVD's competition. Personally, I'd have never bought AnyDVD if it did not operate on a driver level as this mode of operation is perfect for the way I work. Ranking this program down because of the way it interacts with DVDShrink is not fair, either, as DVDShrink is old, obsolete, and has been deprecated by the author. He's moved on and is the programmer behind Nero Recode. If the same problems show up when using AnyDVD with Nero Recode then it's a problem. This program is still a 5 in my eyes. It always does what I ask of it without any problems at all. The only black mark on AnyDVD's record is the new pricing structure.

Rated 20/50 by DudeBoyz at May 5, 2009

Crap. That problem the had fixed just recently is back again in this beta. I hope it's something that they can track down quickly since they only have to go over the code changes since that previous release and compare then to now. I'll continue to send them the info and hope they fix it again. It's a bummer to see any program have a successful bug fix only to find that they broke something else when they coded another part of the program. Happens a lot with games and video drivers. At least for now I'll give 'em a 2 again, cause they did have it fixed, and this is only a Beta. But if a final comes out and the code is still broken I may adjust that later. emanresU deriseD - thanks for the comment. The restart thing is just an annoyance really, but that's one of the things you get used to on Windows. The MAC's I have had before didn't require so many reboots. That said though, if Slysoft would make ANYDVD into a stand-alone executable application instead of a driver-level app, I think they would avoid many problems such as this. I hope that happens sometime in the future.