TVSquad

High end home theater PC makers Niveus and VidaBox are treading into shady waters by adding features that either enable or compliment ripping HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs. Now, in theory there's nothing wrong with using software that can rip video from a disc, if it's a disc you own the rights to, like say your wedding video. But generally speaking, renting a movie from NetFlix and then ripping it is a no no.

But that hasn't stopped VidaBox from adding the option to rip high definition movies to its media center computers. The software won't play encrypted video streams, but if you've got third party software that can rip encrypted movies, VidaBox's software will let you watch your videos.

Niveus is taking a different approach, by developing a new media management program that will let users watch any video saved on their computer, whether that video is a recorded TV show or a ripped DVD or Blu-Ray disc. Because the Niveus Movie Gallery doesn't inlcude any ripping software, Niveus reps are confident they won't run into any legal troubles.

Niveus's software also has a nifty feature that displays ripped high definition movies when you're using your main computer but hides them from view when you're using a Media extender device. That makes a lot of sense, since ripped high definition videos will tend to be huge files that might not play very well over a network connection. The Movie Gallery application also has a recommendation engine that will show similar titles you might want to watch. Niveus plans to release a beta version of the application in a few weeks.