rippers

Filling your computer's hard drive with your favorite movies can be a costly or tough endeavor. iDVD Ripper helps you put any DVDs you own on your PC without much difficulty. The price is a little steep, but the program is worth paying for when you consider how much it saves you in the long run.

If you don't pay $35 for the full program, you can only rip the first 10 minutes of any DVD. That trial is enough to see how many options you have when using the program. It supports most of the major DVD … Read more

FreeRIP extracts and converts your audio tracks, as well as detecting CD and song info and making all of that info editable right from the interface. It's easy to start right up with FreeRIP, which supports the most common audio formats--MP3, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, and WAV. It can also convert files between any of those formats, play your audio files, and edit tags. With the release of version 4.0, the app now adds burning audio CDs to the mix of features that free users can access.

FreeRIP's bare-bones interface is set up for easy access and … Read more

Zortam Mp3 Media Studio is an all-in-one program for managing your MP3 collection, editing song tags, searching for and adding lyrics and cover art, and much more. It accesses and edits a lot more information about your MP3s, including ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags. It's freeware, but when you install it, you actually get the Pro version, which is shareware. If you don't buy the Pro version, it reverts to the standard program after a three-day trial period. But some of the Pro features we can live without or already have tools for, such as Normalization, CD Ripper, and … Read more

It's been a fun series of freebies this week! Free seasons of TV shows (now expired, alas), free movies from Vudu, a free membership to ShopRunner -- and today, to top it all off, some free software.

Before I tell you about it, I'm going to ask that you please read the instructions as I've outlined them below, as these giveaways always seem to trip up some readers. There's nothing complicated here, but if you don't pay attention, you'll end up e-mailing me about what a fake or scam or screw-up this is.

So. … Read more

This January I'll be winging my way to the Consumer Electronics Show for the first time in many years. The flight from Michigan takes a good four hours, so I'll need to stock my iPad with plenty of media for the trip.

Because I prefer to watch "comfort shows" when I fly, I'll be bringing along episodes of "Firefly," "Arrested Development," and "The West Wing." I've got the discs right here; just need to find the DVD slot on my iPad.

Oh, right. What I meant was, just … Read more

Update: According to software developer WonderFox Soft, iWonderSky Software is not allowed to give away WonderFox DVD Ripper licenses. Therefore, at the former's request, we have removed the link for the promotion.

Why settle for one freebie when you can get three?

From now until October 19, iWonderSky Software (which I believe was formally known as WonderFox Software) is offering CNET readers this exclusive: three Windows video utilities absolutely free.

First up: WonderFox DVD Ripper. Normally $39.95, it can convert just about any DVD into just about any digital format. It comes with profiles for a wide variety … Read more

The iPhone 5's screen may not be huge, but it's definitely a little nicer for watching movies than the old screen.

Consequently, you may want to rerip some of your movies to take advantage of the extra screen estate. Just one problem: your old DVD ripper doesn't support the new screen resolution or aspect ratio.

Here's one that does -- and it's free. For a limited time, you can get uRexsoft's iPhone DVD Ripper (Win) free of charge.

True to its name, the utility copies DVDs to your PC and converts them to iPhone-friendly … Read more

Acala DVD Ripper Professional Free Copy is a free DVD ripper. It's an easy-to-use program for ripping some DVD videos and converting them into a number of video formats, as well as ripping the audio into popular audio formats.

The interface is good, though very simple in appearance. We were able to understand the layout and navigate it easily, but getting started was a little difficult without the tutorial video. The tutorial video doesn't completely match the free version we downloaded, but the steps are pretty much the same. Without it, we probably wouldn't have known how … Read more

HandBrake is a free application for converting all types of videos into MPEG-4 files. You might be overwhelmed by the busy interface and numerous options, but once you get started, you'll find that HandBrake offers features that will help any user get up to speed quickly.

HandBrake's interface holds all the tools you need but the wide variety of options can confuse users -- especially beginners. We quickly found that the program's preset options were the quickest and easiest way to convert files. In fact, the moment you find the Presets tab, you'll find the best … Read more