Blu-Ray Conversion heads up

[Ryan Gallagher]

Or drives for a personal computer. And talking about missing DCP options, have you tried to find a copy of "The Wall"...?

In the sad event of "mike admin"'s peril, I am afraid that the forum will be the next thing that will vanish, along with the updates and the chance to purchase or beta use.
It remains to be seen.

No, but this season our "problem" 35mm screenings relevant to finding BR quality digital backups were: "House Party" (no BR/DCP), "Now and Then" (no BR/DCP), and "Strange Days" (No DCP, which only had a non region 1 option BR).

I think it's too soon to worry about Mike's situation, as others have pointed out he's known to go off radar for periods. But others have speculated that if it becomes abandonware someone will likely have a keygen for it in pretty sort order. But the longer problem of abandonware still persists. IMHO he should have switched to an open source + donations model eons ago... but to each their own.

Also, there are some less popular alternatives out there, I know nothing about this one but claims to support encrypted blu-rays:
https://www.leawo.com/blu-ray-ripper/

And I shudder at the thought, but there is always the screen record or output record methods if you have a functioning PC based BR playback method. 1:1 record time would be quite a burden though.

[Ioannis Syrogiannis]

On that forum, it's been some time ago, that Mike made a post explaining that this was a rip-off of MakeMKV, and provided a way to run a command and actually see the familiar user interface.
Maybe they changed it since then. I don't know.
It is probable, for someone to make or publicly share a key generator, as you describe. Yet, I am trying to say that it would be a pity, if all that knowledge shared in the forum ends up at the internet archives.

(P.S. It's a really old announcement, seemingly from 2010. See: "Scam alert - leawo blu-ray ripper".)

[Ryan Gallagher]

On that forum, it's been some time ago, that Mike made a post explaining that this was a rip-off of MakeMKV, and provided a way to run a command and actually see the familiar user interface.
Maybe they changed it since then. I don't know.
It is probable, for someone to make or publicly share a key generator, as you describe. Yet, I am trying to say that it would be a pity, if all that knowledge shared in the forum ends up at the internet archives.

(P.S. It's a really old announcement, seemingly from 2010. See: "Scam alert - leawo blu-ray ripper".)

Thanks, I figured most "shiny" looking alternatives were just a quick UI slapped ontop of a less than legit version of MakeMKV. But if they do the business and can still be installed, and are still being maintained, they might inherit "some" legitimacy were MakeMKV to become abandoned.

[Ryan Gallagher]

I just did a test rip at home using the date workaround. I already had the last beta key associated to MakeMKV. All it required was indeed temporarily setting the Windows Settings date back to before July 31 manually (before launching MakeMKV). If it's a fresh install, I would set the date before doing the install and key. Though probably just doing it before a launch where you associate the beta key would work too.

If that is all it took to keep beta keys alive makes you wonder why he even bothered with keys at all? If he ever opted to exit beta and charge for all versions, the all too easy date workaround would have made forcing adoption difficult.

In an IT managed windows domain without user admin privs, this workaround might be quite a bit harder. Pretty sure system date/time changes are one of those that would ask for privilege escalation. Or perhaps your only machines to run it on have other tasks that really need the date/time to be accurate.

There are now several "flavors" of efforts in that forum to automate this process with "loader" scripts/executables for windows probably to ensure compatibility with other pre-existing automated ripping tasks/tools, or just desire to be lazy and not poke windows settings constantly. (by god don't trust any of these enhancements without a scan for viruses... this situation is ripe for trojans and ransomware insertion).

[Carsten Kurz]

As I said, it will keep track of dates it was operating. Before I bought a temporary license, I had to keep track with the modified date, so that when I changed it, it would never fall back before the last adjusted date. Because MakeMKV will remember the date it ran last time. Not rocket science, but if you miss it once, your installation is done until you get a new key. You have no second chance to readjust the time.

Given the fact that temporary keys exist for many many years, I think this is a method that makes sure that people update often. Which is necessary for this type of program in order to be able to crack new encryption keys/methods on new discs.