All DVDs are encoded in mpeg 2 regardless of the company. This has nothing to do with us, but was decided upon and set by the DVD International consortium many years ago. All Ipods use mp4 video. Again this was not done by us, but by the inventor of the product – Apple Computers.
Several people have asked us about being able to copy files from a DVD so they would not have to purchase digital files. There are several reasons why we have not included this feature.
#1. It is illegal to copy files from a DVD for the purpose of creating a new product. You can only make an exact backup copy for yourself of the original product. Taking segments from different DVDs to create a new product is a violation of federal copyright laws. Since we will eventually use and market the blender for more than just our DVDs, we can not legally include such a feature without risking a major lawsuit.
#2 We’re going to license our digital files instead of selling them. You will be able to use them on any of your personal computers in your household, but you will not be allowed to sell them. This is necessary to stop the illegal selling of our products on sites like ebay which have reached astronomical proportions.
#3 Our files are encoded with a lot of metadata. The metadata is very important as it will be used by the blender for sorting ,organizing clips and tabulating data. Copying files from a DVD would not have metadata and would have to be added by the user. This would be very confusing and time consuming for the novice.
#4 Though there are plenty of rippers and converters that can turn a DVD VOB file into an MP4 file, few do it well enough to be used in a program like ours that must decode and then re-encode every file. We spent over 6 months testing and perfecting our encodes to get the highest quality possible. Without knowing exactly how to encode a file for an Ipod you will have motion problems with your encodes. We also take most of our encodes from the source tape, not a DVD which means our encodes are simply better than what you could make from just a DVD.
#5 Lastly, we’re not selling the workout blender for a lot of money. We want to keep the price as low as possible. With each blender we sell we have to pay a license fee to the MP4 codec company that we use in the software and this is not cheap. The way we make money and can afford to pay our staff and programmers is by selling the digital video clips. This product has taken over two years to develop and has been by far the largest capital expenditure in our company’s history. We realize that in the beginning many consumers will not want to purchase clips of DVDs they already own. This is why we plan on discounting for a limited time many of the clips. The older the clip the more the discount will be. We had similar problems going from VHS to DVD and I’m sure we will go through the same period of adjustment with our new products.
