Ouch! Does this guy know what he's talking about?

Very helpful post, booman. Thank you! AFAIK, Blu-Ray players for PC's don't exist. Has this changed?

dd does a block device copy, which still includes the copy-protection. If you want to copy just the video itself, instead of creating an iso, makemkv is king, it gives you a movie file that can be played by any media player. And makemkv handles bluray as well.

I assume Mint comes with the required DVD cracking libraries preinstalled. VLC use those libraries to crack and play DVD movies on Linux. VLC is also able to play iso files without requiring you to mount them first, which is why you can play the iso files directly.

As for bluray, I'm using an external bluray player for my computer, connects via USB. It's very small so I can easily put it away in a desk drawer when I'm not using it. Playing bluray directly is not as easy as DVD, which is why I rely on MakeMKV.

Out of the loop again? Thank you very much, booman!

DVD (and bluray) is an encrypted proprietary format, and you need the decryption algorithm to play, which is proprietary. That's why physical DVD and Bluray players for computers come with this proprietary player software for Windows, which is required to play it on a computer. This applies to all DVD movies. Every single DVD movie you have is encrypted because the DVD movie format is encrypted.

The wikipedia article goes into further detail:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video

When you use the dd command, you are doing a block device copy, bit by bit. It does not alter the data it copies in any way, so the encrypted format is still there.

On Linux, you can install system libraries that are able to crack this encrypted format on DVD movies (don't mix up the DVD disc and DVD movie format), and since you are able to play your iso files made from DVD movies, you do have those libraries installed. If you didn't have them installed you simply would not be able to watch.

MakeMKV is a proper ripper, in that it creates movie files without any form of encryption or protection, using an open format. It also takes less space than copying the entire disc with dd.

Very interesting, thank you Daerandin!

Yowsa, serious money if you want to run with the big boys. Pausing to think about it actual disk DVD's and Blu-Rays ain't cheap. Avoiding Voyager shows good taste, Janeway's one note voice made me cringe.

I'll agree that Voyager is not on the same level as TNG and DS9, but it is still one of the GOOD Star Trek shows, unlike Enterprise. Janeway is awesome, and I'll die on this hill.

To each their own. If you like "Voyager" more power to you. Personally, "DS-9" is by far the best series. Have it on DVD but I know it too well to really enjoy it nowadays. Big Sigh!

My three favorite Star Trek series is TNG, DS9, and Voyager, in that order. I have everything Star Trek on DVD, except for the two new series, Discovery and Picard, and I still have not seen any episodes of them. I am very excited about the Picard series as I have seen that it includes characters from both TNG and Voyager, but I wanted to let the show run for a while so that when I sit down to watch I, can binge a lot of episodes without pause.

I actually prefer to have my own copies instead of watching on Netflix. I can rip stuff and then easily bring along whatever I want to watch if I'm going to spend a lot of time without internet access, such as the plane trips to Asia that me and my wife usually take every year. This year we are of course staying in Norway through our vacation.