AnyDVD is a must have utility

A FEW WEEKS AGO, I was raving about my love for Clone DVD , a tool for making copies of any DVD you are legally allowed to. It was easy to use, rather pretty, and had a pleasant user interface. Unfortunately, it won't let you do illegal things like copy CSS encrypted movies or even play with out of region movies. I deducted .1 out of 10 for that during the review, mainly because I knew it wasn't Elaborate Bytes who were forcing this 'oversight', but the MPAA and the throngs of lawyers they possess.

This still left me ducking my head with shame every time a friend brought over a stack of Japanese movies, and my DVD player thoughtfully flashed the 'wrong region, go away fool' message. Oh the scorn that was heaped on me, even the best tools did not help. How could I watch the legally purchased DVDs if both my computer and DVD player both choked on the discs? Was there no hope for this poor reviewer?

Actually, there was. In early July, a little company called Slysoft ( here), based on the beautiful island of Antigua ( here) had just the product for me, AnyDVD. It was love at first sight.

This little utility is little more than a driver that sits below the standard windows DVD driver and does some filtering on the fly. It will change region codes to one that your drive or software finds more acceptable, and remove all those little annoyances that drive you up the wall. Things like Macrovision, Scripts, and non-skippable commercials that drive you up the #(*&^$# wall are a thing of the past. Just pick settings from the System Tray icon, and check the things you no longer want to see, and you are done.

Before you start wondering how all this is done, let me backtrack and tell you a little about the installation. You download the software from SlySoft's site, and open the installer. It chugs away for about a minute, and then asks you to reboot. Once you do, there is an icon in the System Tray of a little fox head. Hovering over it gives you a little status popup, and clicking gives you a menu. Other than turn AnyDVD on or off, the only things you can do are on the settings menu, pictured above. If you have any trouble with the settings, you probably are to stupid to avoid choking to death, gumming a DVD, while mumbling 'shiny' over and over.

Other than turning on or off the features on a DVD, there is nothing that this software does. It just sits there and works. I have run it for just over 2 weeks now, and there has not even been the most minor of problems. They are actively developing the product, with a mind boggling 13 versions in the less than 2 months since it was released. While I have not encountered any, I would be surprised if any bugs were not fixed quickly. All companies should release software like this.

Overall, I think AnyDVD is a must have utility. I will forgo the usual numbered rating and simply say get it. If you have a DVD burner, or have a thing for movies, especially foreign ones, this handy utility will make life easy again. I am finally able to watch all those movies on my own TV, with my own equipment thanks to AnyDVD. There is a free 21 day trial, and you can upgrade that to the real version with a simple registry key after you buy it. It couldn't be easier. µ