TBH, those things can produce a brilliant picture. We bunged our old Panasonic Viera in the attic for the boys to use for cartoons, games n'stuff. It's 15 years old, still going strong and has a super sharp picture. For standard def stuff, it's great.
Is there a quick and straightforward way to do that these days? Last time I looked at ripping my collection it involved all sorts of different steps that I couldn't be arsed with.
I paid for Wondershare Video Converter which works for nearly everything I want to rip for my server. For the very occasional bluray that confuses it, MakeMKV produces a lossless .mkv version that Wondershare can then chew up. WVC is very fast and produces a really high quality HD mp4 in a couple of hours (on an i5 PC with 8GB tbh) as opposed to the overnight and all day with multiple steps that it took me a few years ago.
If you're OK with .mkv then MakeMKV is fine on its own. Technically it's pay-for software, but it's free while in beta (which it has been forever) and the developers are happy to share the beta key here. It strips region and drm as part of its process (and actually objects if you use something like AnyDVD as well). I only bother with Wondershare because not all my devices handle .mkv, and I've already paid for it, and it's quick and easy. Oh, also, MakeMKV's key expires every month but they post a new one so you can reregister it.
And obviously you need an optical drive that can read blurays.
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
I used a free version of Aiseesoft's blu-ray ripper that I got via giveawayoftheday (that kind of software tends to crop up every few months), and it worked fine, though it struggled with copy protection on some new blu-rays. I found another ripper called somethingorother that got around all that, it had the same UI albeit in a different colour, but was from another company. I'll dig out the name for you tonight.
I dunno what it's like on a Pi but I use it for all my TV/video needs on a Mac Mini, got pretty much no complaints for serving content off my network at least.
