That’s right, many of people don’t want to spend dollars to the software, only think it’s a waste of money. Maybe DVD Decryper is your best choice. It’s so popular because of “free”. It can copy DVDs to your PC. From there you can choose to watch them with the likes of PowerDVD and WinDVD or you can re-encode them to MPEG-1(VCD) or DivX. Though the website dvddecrypter.com was shut down and development on it halted, we can still download it through any other places. I have used it for a long time, and help me a lot.
I’ve used Xilisoft DVD Ripper Platinum for more than one year. Recently, I paid only $19 to upgrade. The current version has added more functions which other same kind software does not have. The function attracted me most is the “merge and clip the segment”. It can clip any segment of the movie, and then merge them into one. Wow! I can be a scenarist and have my own play! Also it’s added one Bitrate Calculator tool, which can customize the output file size. If you are using this product like me, you will find more improvement in this version. BTW, if you have never used it before and now you want to do something like editing your DVD and backup to your hard disc, you can try it. Although it’s upgrading, the price is still $45 as before, in my opinion, it’s a good choice for new users.

Shareware and freeware are both the tools to solve our problem or make our digital life more wonderful. What you should think is whether it can meet your needs and whether it’s worth to buy or not.