convert DVD to HD without DVD player

[miguelito]

I am new to video stuff. I bought 4 kareoke dvds and I am trying to convert the videos to any computer format (avi, mpeg4,whatever ) i wanna be able to play the videos without having to buy a dvd for my computer. is that possible ?
I just have a cdrom isntalled and would lie to know if i can play that with the tools that I have or i need to buy a dvd player for my computer.. please advise..

thanks

[UncasMS]

you will need a dvd-rom to be able to read the dvd and transfer them onto your pc

[miguelito]

I was wondering cauze i think i heard that could be done with some software. So.... hardware would be a limitation, uh.
Do you have more details? Since I have no money to buy a DVD, I was thinking that I can use my friend's computer and convert kareoke videos to a format and save them in a CD that can be played in my CDROM. how would I do that assuming that I can borrow the DVD for a while.

[kimomakano]

You should be able to pick up a DVD-ROM for your computer for between $30 - $50 on sale. If you are going to be doing this it would be worth the cost as compared to having to move components around.
If you are thinking about using your friends desktop DVD player then you are going to have to have a capture card to get it into your computer.
Either way you are going to have to invest.
The only way you can get around this is to open up your PC and install your friends player. This can be tricky if you are not real savvy with such things (not to mention compatibility and driver issues).
As far as converting to VCD or SVCD, it can be done with freeware, but the main issue for you is going to be getting the video into your PC.

[miguelito]

thanks,

I bought the DVD. What would be the steps to tranfer the karoeke videos to my hard drive and the save them into a CDR with a format that can be played with windows media player or something like that? is there any free software to do that?

Thanks again

Miguelito

[simoyd]

read the tutorials at the top of this forum