Have a Windows PC and a Netflix account? Perfect. Grab your credit card and get ready to hand over $30 to RealNetworks. Yes, that Real. The one with the obsolete streaming audio format. Yes! That’s the one!

You see, Real just released RealDVD. It’s a legal application that allows you to rip DVDs to up to five computers without ramifications. It’s legal, easy to use and will surely benefit the amateur pirate. Hollywood wasted no time in threatening RealNetworks and now, in a counter move, Real has sued the major studios. It wants a judge to essentially insist that RealDVD is legit and here to stay. As Chamillionaire says, controversy sells.

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If there’s one thing that’ll interest you about Sony’s third generation internal Blu-ray optical drive, the BWU-300S, it’s not the specs. So, what if it can write single and dual layer BD-R discs at up to 8X speed, or if it writes DVDs at up to 16X, CDs up to 48X and supports DVD-RAM recording.

No, we don’t care about all of that. We care that this drive comes with a free movie, not the news about no DH DVD playback. So long as it comes with Men In Black on Blu-ray, we’ll buy it. That’s like - a fifteen dollar value. Unbelievable.

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Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to make a digital copy of any of your DVDs as if it were an audio CD you wanted to import with iTunes? You can! I mean, you will once RealNetworks introduces it’s $30 software program: RealDVD. It’ll allow users to make a digital copy of an entire DVD, including all the extras and artwork from the box.

Let’s face it: Blu-ray is king these days and that sucks for all the loons who bought a library of DVD movies (which is everyone). Now that DVD is out the window, Hollywood could care less if you copy all of your DVDs and start selling them on your website. OK, that’s not true at all but at least it’s giving up the ban on digital backups. If you dare do it with Blu-ray discs, the peoples of Hollywood will hunt you down and kill you. Just prepare your hard drive beforehand, otherwise you’ll only be able to fit the first season of Dawson’s Creek on it, and we all know that the second season is way better.

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LG makes every product under the sun. You name it, LG probably mass produces it. LG also enjoys marketing bizarre combination of electronic equipment. Take this 8″ portable DVD player, the LG DP889. Little excessive on the numbers, don’t you think?

Well, this portable DVD player not only works as a normal CD player but it also happens to be a digital photo-frame. Now, when you aren’t watching The Dark Knight on it, you can gawk at family photos as you dream of days past. It’s compatible with a plethora of formats, including DVD video/DVD±R/DVD±RW/Audio CD/CD-R/CD-RW, ensuring nearly any burned disc will work. It’s priced at $200, making it the most diverse digital photo-frame in existence and while, not quite as compact and portable as the Panasonic LF-P968C DVD burner, it’s certainly getting there.

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Everyone has been knocking on Nintendo for the past years for not equipping any of its systems with a DVD player. Even third party developers are finding something to bitch about. With all this flashy DIY work people are doing to the original NES like that old school DVD hack, it makes me wonder why no one has made a DVD hack for Nintendo’s latest system.

Wait, what’s this? Instructable’s member LAM83RT has used a homebrew method to get his Wii to play DVDs and now he’s telling everyone how he did it. Well, what are you waiting for? You’re Nintendo Wii isn’t getting any more entertaining, so you better strap it with a DVD player quick because The Dark Knight will be out on DVD in a few more months and you best be ready.

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For years now, I’ve been been producing my own music. I’ve played gigs here and there and the one thing I always wanted to do was whip up a batch of 100 or so limited edition CDs. But what’s a limited edition release without the bitchin’ artwork? I didn’t have any cheap methods years ago, but now I’m highly considering the Dymo DiscPainter. It’ll print any artwork you want on a blank white CD at 600 dpi. Not too bad.

Core77 has a nice brief review on it and some great example photos of printed CDs. Looks perfect for anyone self-releasing material.

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Ever wonder where your bootleg movies come from? If you live near Texas chances are they might have been made at a house in Fort Worth where the police just shut down a huge DVD counterfeiting ring. After receiving a complaint from a neighbor who saw a lot of late night activity at the house, the cops searched the place and found a bootleg movie factory filled with over 100 high speed DVD burners and piles of cash.

Inside the house, the DVD pirates were printing nearly 7,000 discs per hour and the police say they had burners ” alt=”" />DVD jewelers with some of the leftover discs when they’re done with the evidence. Since these bootleg movie barons were so professional, I bet the police also found some of those slick DiscPainters during the raid.

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Good day, Mr. Phelps. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to read this article with a close eye, because one day, you could be dealing with self-destructive DVDs. A German company has designed a new type of DVD, called an Einmal (German for “once”.)

These new DVD’s can only be watched for 48 hours, before a special chemical coating on the discs makes viewing impossible. There doesn’t seem to be a DRM method on these discs, so if you’re super speedy, you can manhandle yourself a copy, but after the 48 hours are up, so is your DVD viewing window. This post will self-destruct in 10 seconds. Good luck. — Andrew Dobrow

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Distractable drivers beware. This Touchscreen Sun Visor is just another way for you to swerve lanes and miss red lights as you ogle at the DVD or TV you watch, thanks to the ultra-sensitive TV tuner included. It also has radio, but so does your car.

So, yeah, we’re pretty sure that the Touchscreen Sun Visor is made for passengers, and not drivers, but something tells me that all it takes is a sudden dose of ADD to be totally infatuated with the episode of Family Guy that your passenger is watching. Get yours for $128. Hit the jump for specs and more pics. (more…)

Aren’t you kinda sick of seeing some random company logo strewn across your very personal CD mixes? We know people put a lot of heart and soul into their mixes. It’s only right to have your own design on it a well. The Dymo DiscPainter prints 600 dpi graphics directly onto your disc in about a minute.

The USB powered DiscPainter spins the disc around a it prints the image onto its face. The device is compatible with Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, or the included Dymo Discus software, on both Mac and PC platforms. A nice touch of custom taste is a cool addition to the plain old blank disc model. Available for $280. — Andrew Dobrow

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