Macrovision only prevents copying a dvd with a video tape recorder. It does nothing to prevent a user from ripping vob files using one of the dozen or so decss-enabled programs out there.
I see two problems with getting a recorder for copying purposes. First, there is the media cost. However, I expect this issue to go away just like it did with CDs. Second, current dvd-r media is limited in size as mentioned above, which means short movies, or tv series.
jay
<< What's to stop me buying one of these and backing up my movies DVDs ? - there must be something, otherwise someone with one of these and a netflix account is going to be very happy.. media cost ? storage capacity ?)
Plenty, Macrovision, something like Cactusvision (?)(no joke it has cactus in the name) and the fact that there is no program I'm aware of called cloneDVD like there is for clonecd. So I don't think you could copy bit for bit all the intentional errors built into DVD's. You didn't hollywierd was going to make it easy for you. >>