According to one of Europes leading web sites the Inquirer the most significant product of 2007 has just been released to little or no fanfare, AnyDVD HD.

According to Charlie Demerjian of the Inquirer what it does is to rip out the DRM infection from HD-DVDs so you can watch them in accordance with your rights. DRM infections are about technologically removing those rights so they can sell them back to people dumb enough to buy them. HD-DVD allows you to do two things that are both quite legal, make a personal backup of an HD-DVD and play it on the machines you want to. You don't have to buy a new HD TV, cables, amp and the rest just to watch the movies you legally purchased any more.

So, ranting aside, what does AnyDVD do? Read the review we did a few years ago, and that is basically the core of AnyDVD HD functionality, it sits in your system tray and lets you turn DRM infections on and off with a mouse click. HD-DVD is now part of the action, and according to good people at Slysoft, Blu-Ray will be in beta before the end of the quarter.

The exact feature list is that of AnyDVD plus AACS removal, removal of artificial HDCP/HDMI restrictions, playback on the players of your choice, and most importantly it lets you skip those damn ads they inflict on you at the beginning of the movies. You may pay $10 more per copy for HD, but you get more ads, damn their black souls. You can also rip the movies for backup purposes, remaster them with a new 'magic file', and tweak to your heart's content.

Unlike MS, Slysoft supports older OSes, and this one works with 98, 98SE, ME, 2000, XP, XP64, Vista and Vista64. I don't think there is a version of Office that will match that spread officially. You need a 2GHz machine with 512MB ram, 2MB of HD space and obviously a HD-DVD player. Those are pitifully low requirements, 2MB of HD space? It just goes to show what you can do if you are not forced to program with ulterior motives as a guide.

I can say that after 3 years of use, AnyDVD is still on my very short list of must have products. They still update it regularly, it works without any problems, and just does what it says. I don't have a HD-DVD player so I can't try this one out yet, but based on past performance, I would not hesitate to recommend it. The software lists for $79.00 but there is a free 21-day trial here, or you can just buy it here. Worth every cent.