Digital Home Thoughts: Making Windows Media Center A Better Ripper

"I have a feeling Auto Rip n Compress is going to be everyone’s next “must-have” add-in for Windows Media Center. The add-in allows you to easily rip DVD or Blu-ray movies from your couch using only your remote."

By now, most people should have already converted their video library, but for those of you that have not, or are just starting building your digital library, you might want to consider Auto Rip n Compress. The program does not give you anything new that other programs such as Handbrake, already do, but it does make things really simple, and easy to do from within Windows Media Center itself. In truth, it actually uses Handbrake to do transcoding. The only part which I feel slightly apprehensive about is in order to pull metadata, like the movie description and cover art, you need to register an account with GD3. There are various free online sources for movie data that do not require registration, so why expose yourself when you do not have to? Still, it is great to have another option to archive your DVDs and BluRays.