Sherlock Holmes DVD Review (copy)

By Kam Williams

If I've said it once, I've said it a kazillion times, the book was better. But in the case of this incarnation of Sherlock Holmes, we can't compare the movie to any of the 4 novels or 56 short stories based on the beloved character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, because director Guy Ritchie relied on an original screenplay collaborated upon by five different scriptwriters. The action-oriented production represents a significant departure not only from the original source material, but from the series of 14 screen classics featuring Basil Rathbone between 1939 and 1946.

Apparently Ritchie could care less about remaining faithful to Holmes (Robert Downey, Jr.) and his sidekick, Dr. Watson (Jude Law) in terms of appearance and demeanor. For the pair's personas bear precious little resemblance to what fans of the franchise might expect. In fact, this Holmes is more of a macho, butt-kicking superhero than a cerebral sleuth who leads with his grey matter.

That disclaimer out of the way, however, there is much to recommend about this adventure, especially for the attention-deficit generation weaned on the cattle-prod of incessant electronic stimulation. The supernatural storyline unfolds in London in 1891 where Holmes finds himself having to track down serial killer Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) for a second time. Despite having been brought to justice, executed and buried, the slippery patrician somehow cheated death, rose from the grave and escaped to resume his sadistic spree.

Since they neither behave nor look like Holmes and Dr. Watson, the heroes could just as easily have been named Batman and Robin or The Lone Ranger and Tonto. In any case, director Ritchie, whose career had been in a bit of a decline since casting his ex-wife, Madonna, in the remake of Swept Away, has ostensibly reversed that trend with this rollicking, rough-edged affair on the order of the best of his work ala Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking barrels.

So forget pithy sayings such as, "Elementary, my dear Watson," the new and improved Sherlock Holmes is more inclined to gloat as he doles out damage, spitting out lines like, "Weaken right jaw. Then fracture. Break cracked ribs. Heel kick to diaphragm." Downey assumes the mantle!

Very Good (3 stars)
Rated PG-13 for intense violence, startling images and one suggestive scene.
Running time: 128 minutes
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Extras: "Sherlock Holmes: Reinvented" featurette and a theatrical trailer.
If you want to watch DVD on iPad 2, iPhone 4, or back up the dvd on your computer, you can choose this DVD Ripper to help you.

Top 10 Free DVD Video Converter ( Copy )

Many video file formats, so many handheld video players, so many online video sites, and so little time. To have your favorite clips how you want them—whether that's on your iPod, iPhone, PSP or desktop—you need the right utility to convert them into the format that works for you. Commercial DVD video converter software's aplenty, but there are several solid free utilities that can convert your video files on every operating system, or if you've just got a web browser and a quick clip. Put DVDs on your iPod, YouTube videos on DVD, or convert any video file with today's top 10 free video rippers, encoders and converters.
1. Handbrake (Open source/Windows, Mac)
Back up your DVD's to digital file with this open source DVD to MPEG-4 converter app.

2. DVD Shrink (Freeware/Windows only)
Copy a DVD to your hard drive and leave off all the extras like bonus footage, trailers and other extras to save space with DVD Shrink. Download Adam's
one-click AutoHotkey/DVD Shrink utility to rip your DVD to iTunes for skip-free video play from scratchy optical media.
Honorable mention: DVD Decrypter, which Windows peeps can use to copy DVDs to their iPods.

3. iSquint (Freeware/Mac OS X only)
Convert any video file to iPod-sized versions and automatically add the results to your iTunes library. iSquint is free.

4. VidDownloader (webapp)
When you don't want to mess with installing software to grab that priceless YouTube clip before it gets yanked, head over to web site VidDownloader which sucks in videos from all the big streaming sites (YouTube, Google Video, iFilm, Blip.TV, DailyMotion, etc.), converts them for you to a playable format and offers them for download. Other downloaders for online video sites buy you a Flash FLV file, but VidDownloader spits back an AVI file.

5. Hey!Watch (webapp)
Web application Hey!Watch converts video located on your conmputer desktop as well as clips hosted on video sites. Upload your video to Hey!Watch to encode it into a wide variety of file formats, like H264, MP4, WMV, DivX, HD Video, Mobile 3GP/MP4, iPod, Archos and PSP. Hey!Watch only allows for 10MB of video uploads per month for free, and from there you pay for what you use, but it's got lots of neat features for video publishers like podcast feed generation and automatic batch processing with options you set once.

6. AVS Video Converter (Freeware/Windows only)
Rip and burn personal DVDs, convert video, create HD Video, split, join, edit, apply effects.
Convert almost all video formats including DivX, XviD, MOV, rm, rmvb, MPEG, VOB, DVD, WMV, AVI to MPEG-4 movie format for iPod/PSP or other portable video device, MP4 player or smart phone with Any Video Converter, which also supports user-defined video file formats as the output.
Key features: Convert Video between Almost Any Formats, Convert within Minimum Time, Create Movie DVDs, Manage video from HD-Cameras, Convert & Edit Blu-Ray Video, Output Videos to Various Devices, Make Videos Ready for Website, Straight from Disc to PC, Extract Soundtracks and Images from Movies.

7. Videora Converter (Freeware/Windows only)
Videora Converter is a set of programs, each designed to convert regular PC video files into a format tailored to your favorite video-playing handheld device. The Videora program list includes iPod Video Converter (for 5th gen iPods), iPod classic Video Converter (for 6th gen classic iPods), iPod nano Video Converter (for 3rd gen iPod nanos), iPod touch Video Converter, iPhone Video Converter, Videora Apple TV Converter, PSP Video 9, Videora Xbox360 Converter, Videora TiVo Converter, and Videora PMP Converter.



8. . Avi2Dvd (Freeware/Windows)
Make your video files burnable to a DVD with Avi2Dvd, a utility that converts
Avi/Ogm/Mkv/Wmv/Dvd files to Dvd/Svcd/Vcd format. Avi2Dvd can also produce DVD menus with chapter, audio, and subtitle buttons.


9. MediaCoder (Open source/Windows)
Batch convert audio and video compression formats with the open source Media Coder for Windows, which works with a long laundry lists of formats, including MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, AAC+, AAC+V2, MusePack, WMA, RealAudio, AVI, MPEG/VOB, Matroska, MP4, RealMedia, ASF/WMV, Quicktime, and OGM, to name a few.

10. VLC media player (Open source/All platforms)
Ok, so VLC is a media player, not converter, but if you're watching digital video, it's a must-have—plus VLC can indeed rip DVD's, as well as play ripped discs in ISO format (no actual optical media required.) VLC can also play FLV files downloaded from YouTube et al, no conversion to AVI required. Since there's a portable version, VLC's a nice choice for getting your DVD rips/saved YouTube video watching on wherever you go.

How to Convert DVD to HD H.264/TS/MOV?

I. What video file extension provides the best quality when converting DVD?

Q: What file format to convert DVD to save as much of the video/audio as possible. I know that converting it into any format will decrease it's quality, but which will preserve it the best?


A: Convert DVD to HD H.264 Movie (including H.264 Transport Stream Video with HD standard, H.264 TRP Video with HD Standard, and Apple's Quick Time video with HD standard).


What's H.264?H.264 standard, the state-of-the-art digital encoding format for high definition video, is a high quality video compression algorithm and is suited for all types of applications with different ranges of bit rates. In addition to MP4 files, H.264 compressed video data can be stored inside AVI or OGG files with the option of saving the file with or without the audio data. The technology is also known as AVC (Advanced Video Coding) or MPEG-4 Part 10 (ISO/IEC 14496-10).



Why to convert DVD to HD H.264?Well, to make a long story short, H.264 provides powerful compression technology that delivers a superior video experience at a low bit rate. Its flexible bit stream control enables H.264 to deliver high-quality video to a variety of devices ranging from low-powered cell phones to high-powered Blu-ray devices. In a nutshell, H.264 is suited to any platform-handheld to high def.



Which Player software supports the HD H.264 file format?For HD H.264-TS video (*.ts)--VLC Media Player;
For HD H.264-TRP video(*.trp)—Windows Media Player
For HD H.264 video (*.mov)—Apple Quick Time Player.

II. How to Convert DVD to HD H.264?


Step1. Free download Wondershare DVD Ripper Platinum, which can rip DVD and convert DVD to HD H.264 video. Install and run it with the overall interface like this.


Step2: Click "Load DVD" to import the DVD files, select output format you like, as well as the other settings to customize the output file size and quality.


Step 3: Edit the Video (Optional)
If you want to customize the video, this DVD to HD H.264 Converter offers a powerful video editing function, including cropping video, setting the video effects, trimming movie, even customizing personal watermark to meet your personalized needs.


Step 4: After finishing the presettings, back to the main window, click "Start" to convert DVD to HD H.264 legally, and the format conversion will progress in tune.


Now you see this simple yet one-stop solution on how to convert dvd to hd h.264 movie and play on iPod, iPad, iPhone, Apple TV, Zune, Xbox, PSP, PS3, Blackberry, and Android smartphones etc. at free.

How to convert DVD to HD WMV Formats?

For Computer users, a video format of WMV should be no kind of unfamiliar at all since it is the most popular video formats with long history till today. With more and more cool portable multimedia players, to  backup DVD to WMV becomes common. For higher requirement of the video quality, now it comes the WMV HD format, then how to convert DVD to HD WMV?

Before we start the converting process, we should make understanding on:

1. What is WMV ?
WMV stands for Windows Media Video -- developed and controlled by Microsoft specifically for internet streaming. You can view WMV files from a hard drive or other media to the easiest Windows Media Player. With the born of this video format, people enjoy more happiness on the internet. However, according to the fast development of technology, people ask more for video quality, that’s why WMV HD format born.

2. What is WMV HD ?
Windows Media High Definition Video (WMV HD) is the marketing name for high definition videos encoded using Microsoft Windows Media Video 9 codecs.These low-complexity codecs make it possible to watch high definition movies in 1280x720 (720p) or 1920x1080 (1080p) resolutions on many modern personal computers running Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Vista, although the hardware requirements are steep. Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3 video game consoles( PS3) and WD TV HD Media Player can also play WMV HD.

3. Why should I convert DVD to HD WMV?
With the virtue of low-complexity codecs, HD WMV videos can be watched on many modern PC running Windows XP or Vista and popular players. Since WMV HD is of better output quality, to watch DVD movies of high definition quality on LCD TVs, Laptops and other popular portable players will be more enjoyable. If you want to backup the wonderful DVD movies in high definition on hard drives ( copyright protected or not) for personal use only, to rip DVD to HD WMV (for CSS protected DVD) and convert DVD to HD WMV are necessary.

Ok, let’s start the process of converting DVD to HD WMV step-by-step: 

How to convert DVD to WMV HD ?

Step 1: Download, install and launch DVD to WMV HD Converter

Download a converter of ripping or converting DVD to HD WMV funtion, such as Wondershare DVD Ripper Platinum ( recommended since it reputes very well among the DVD converting field.),Install the software, get registered and then launch it. See the interface as follow:

Step 2: Load DVD, select output format and set destination folder

There are four ways to importing DVD, namely by pressing "DVD Rom", "DVD Folder (Data DVD)", "ISO image files " and “IFO files”. As soon as DVD files are loaded, you can click the drop-down button of "Profile" to select output format. In order to keep the movies in high definition, here I choose "HD WMV Video" for example, so that the ripped files can be played via HD Media Player such as WD TV HD Media Player, Xbox360, etc.

At the same time, you can specify the output directory to save your converted files in "Output" drop-down list. Of course, you can skip this step, because this program offers a destination folder set by default, if you do not specify, it will export files to this folder automatically. Moreover, if you want to play all your files without intervals, you can check "Merge into one file" to combine multiple chapters to be one file.

Step 3: Edit the Video (Optional)

If you want to customize the video, Wondershare DVD Ripper Platinum offers a powerful video editing function, including cropping video, setting the video effects, trimming movie, even customizing personal watermark to meet your personalized needs.

Step 4: Set advanced settings

Besides this, you can set the related video/audio parameters (resolution, frame rate, video encoder, bit rate, sample rate and audio channel etc) in "Settings" window by clicking " Settings" .

Step 5: Start to convert

Once all the above settings are completed, you can click "Start" button to start the process of ripping DVD to HD WMV, then you can get a cup of coffee and come back later to check if the conversion is finished. The output WMV HD files can be found by clicking on the button "Find Target". After that, you can copy these files via USB to your hard drives, and plug in it to HD Media Player to enjoy on LCD TV.