there are many options but the best one for all purposes is and will continue to always be ImgBurn.

ImgBurn has not been updated since 2013. This is because it does not need to be updated anymore, unless a new optical disc format hits the market (highly unlikely). ImgBurn does not have bugs. ImgBurn works flawlessy. ImgBurn will run just fine on Windows 10 or 11, but will adorably proclaim itself to be running on Windows 8 in its log window.

ImgBurn has a setting for every possible thing you could want to do with a recordable disc, and gives you as much information as it possibly can, while adhering strictly to the specs laid out in the respective formats' official standards.

ImgBurn is love. ImgBurn is life.

To get my dad and I physical copies of unaltered versions of Star Wars!

Any of y'all ever heard of this movie? It's p good. Underrated imo.

So far, the only software I've found that meets my specific weird desires has been DVDFab, which is unfortunate because it's one of those absurdly overpriced sludgeware applications that's always "on sale" and is purposefully designed with the most infuriatingly confused pricing system imaginable to ensure you accidentally spend 4x as much as you intended to on shit you don't want or need, or manage to accidentally "subscribe" to their garbage. You know the kind of software I'm talking about. Just look at their fucking website; it's the exact same as every other company that does this - bloated with ads, "sales," asking for fucking notification permissions, the lot.

However, in my testing it does seem to perform the tasks I want of it - once you get their bloated app with its overbaked UI installed and running (feeling completely like you're installing some malware "driver finder" app or something the entire time, the vibes are that bad), and once you've clicked past the 5 dialogue windows asking you to give them literal hundreds of dollars, you can insert a blu-ray or DVD, tell it to copy it to an ISO file or folder, and it will do so, while removing all encryption, region codes, and UOPs from the source in the process. You can then burn this copy to a blank disc, and it will work perfectly.

So I'd like to integrate this software into my collection of Tools somehow, but they make it very fucking difficult. Firstly, the tasks I described, the only things I've ever done with this software, are supposed to be FREE. One of the 500 apps this company provides is a notionally "free" application called DVDFab HD Decrypter.

They have some weird nonsense restrictions like "You can only do this for discs that are one year old" which sounds impossible to enforce but this is absolutely the kind of software that phones home for every single task it performs and will become a useless brick if this company ever shuts down, so I have no doubt they could enforce that rule quite easily. But whatever. I'm not that worried about the one-year rule; I don't buy modern stuff all that often anyways.

But all the things I described should be possible with this free tier of their software.

Installing the "HD Decrypter" actually just installs the full DVDFab application, of which this HD Decrypter is apparently a component. Yet there's no tab or button for "HD Decrypter," just options like "Copy, Rip, Convert, Create". So I click Rip, point it at the disc in the drive, tell it I want to copy it to an ISO file, tell it where I want that file saved, click Start... And I get a pop-up saying "This is a function of Blu-ray Copy which costs $$$, however you can trial this software for 3 discs. Would you like to continue?"

So, hold on, am I allowed to copy discs for free, or not? What the fuck?

I will try copying 3 discs and then see what happens. Maybe the software will lock me out of all "premium" options and only present me with what I, a Poor, am permitted to do with it, and then I will see it only allows copying from disc to disc or something (which I can probably still work with tbh). Or maybe it will just stop functioning entirely? Who knows.

Anyway if anybody knows a good way to source a cracked copy of DVDFab please hmu

AnyDVD HD, which is a significantly less scummy program from a significantly less scummy company, does exactly all of the things that I want, and all without an overbloated adware/malware feeling piece of shit app that wants to nickel and dime you for every single function.

Only issue is the full version costs €109 (about $117 at the time of writing) and that's a lot of money that I could instead put towards something like Getting A Region Free Blu-Ray Player...

But the purpose of this journey isn't just to be able to remove region coding, it's also to remove shitty software things like UOPs and above all to have the ABILITY, the OPTION of backing up an entire disc in effectively 1:1 manner and being able to burn that copy to a blank disc, in the case of a disc failing (which I have had one blu-ray in my possession delaminate around the edges in the years I've been collecting... one very crappy blu-ray that was quickly replaced by a superior release, but still, it's now permanently on my mind).

So yeah no reason to buy anything DVDFab makes I'll just buy this someday when I remember to care enough to spend that much money.

So far, the only software I've found that meets my specific weird desires has been DVDFab, which is unfortunate because it's one of those absurdly overpriced sludgeware applications that's always "on sale" and is purposefully designed with the most infuriatingly confused pricing system imaginable to ensure you accidentally spend 4x as much as you intended to on shit you don't want or need, or manage to accidentally "subscribe" to their garbage. You know the kind of software I'm talking about. Just look at their fucking website; it's the exact same as every other company that does this - bloated with ads, "sales," asking for fucking notification permissions, the lot.

However, in my testing it does seem to perform the tasks I want of it - once you get their bloated app with its overbaked UI installed and running (feeling completely like you're installing some malware "driver finder" app or something the entire time, the vibes are that bad), and once you've clicked past the 5 dialogue windows asking you to give them literal hundreds of dollars, you can insert a blu-ray or DVD, tell it to copy it to an ISO file or folder, and it will do so, while removing all encryption, region codes, and UOPs from the source in the process. You can then burn this copy to a blank disc, and it will work perfectly.

So I'd like to integrate this software into my collection of Tools somehow, but they make it very fucking difficult. Firstly, the tasks I described, the only things I've ever done with this software, are supposed to be FREE. One of the 500 apps this company provides is a notionally "free" application called DVDFab HD Decrypter.

They have some weird nonsense restrictions like "You can only do this for discs that are one year old" which sounds impossible to enforce but this is absolutely the kind of software that phones home for every single task it performs and will become a useless brick if this company ever shuts down, so I have no doubt they could enforce that rule quite easily. But whatever. I'm not that worried about the one-year rule; I don't buy modern stuff all that often anyways.

But all the things I described should be possible with this free tier of their software.

Installing the "HD Decrypter" actually just installs the full DVDFab application, of which this HD Decrypter is apparently a component. Yet there's no tab or button for "HD Decrypter," just options like "Copy, Rip, Convert, Create". So I click Rip, point it at the disc in the drive, tell it I want to copy it to an ISO file, tell it where I want that file saved, click Start... And I get a pop-up saying "This is a function of Blu-ray Copy which costs $$$, however you can trial this software for 3 discs. Would you like to continue?"

So, hold on, am I allowed to copy discs for free, or not? What the fuck?

I will try copying 3 discs and then see what happens. Maybe the software will lock me out of all "premium" options and only present me with what I, a Poor, am permitted to do with it, and then I will see it only allows copying from disc to disc or something (which I can probably still work with tbh). Or maybe it will just stop functioning entirely? Who knows.

Anyway if anybody knows a good way to source a cracked copy of DVDFab please hmu