Dev's DVD Backup Guide for Beginners

With the recent increase in availability and affordability of DVD burning hardware, many are inquiring about how to use their burners to their full potential. Since DVD burners can burn to DVD format it is logical that they can reproduce commercial DVD discs for whatever purposes, lawful or not, that they may desire.

There are several limitations imposed on users in order to help stem the possible piracy scenarios entailed by being able to flawlessly reproduce expensive commercial material. Two main security features are used on commercial DVDs: CSS encryption and the dual-layer nature of commercial DVDs.

CSS encryption was basically intended to prevent the unauthorized copying or access of a DVD disc. CSS encryption was hacked a while ago, with lawsuits and the American justice system not trailing far behind. I cannot legally link to CSS cracking software because of some silly laws making linking really evil. But ever since CSS was broken, software makers have had ample time to incorporate it into their programs

All commercial discs (or 99% of them at least) are dual-layered. Rather than having just one side with one DVD worth of information, they have one side with two layers that can both be read. This effectively doubles