Useful Links

Newsgroups

Doom9's forum - Why should you go someplace else?
Oleg's Forum - THE newsgroup for DVD ripping
Flexion Forum - Another very good forum
Apachez' Forum - Yet another forum.
DVDDigest Forum - Another good forum
FlaskMpeg Forum - THE forum for FlaskMpeg related questions
TMPGEnc Forum - THE forum for TMPG
bbMPEG User Group - The forum for bbMPEG

DVD Ripping news

Oleg's Site - THE site for DVD ripping news
DVD Source - Freezy3K's DVD Source, another good DVD ripping and software page - currently not being updated. 
DivX Digest - One of the most comprehensive DivX pages on the web and a major contender for the best MPEG4 guides.
MyDivX.com - DivX News and Downloads
The Ultimate DivX Resource
Robshot.com : DVD, miniDVD, SVCD and VCD. He's the master of fps!
mpegx.com - Daily news of MP3, DVD, CD-R/RW Softwares
www.bestdownload.com - The place to get all the best programs, games, mp3 and emulator, UPDATED DAILY
I want you to DivX - DivX portal

Ripping Tools homepages

DivX Homepage - no comment
Maniakzi Page - Another really good Mpeg4 page
Mpeg2Avi Homepage
AC3DEC Homepage - dos based ac3 decoder
GUI for mpeg2avi/ac3dec/vstrip- Home of the mpeg2avi and VobDec GUI
Vstrip Homepage - need I say more?    
FlaskMpeg Homepage - the probably greatest conversion program ever
VirtualDub Homepage - the most powerful app for linear video editing
DVTool Homepage - Swiss army knife for digital video
SubRip Homepage - great subtitle ripper
I-Media Homepage - some really useful Direct Show filters
Dvd2avi_gui Homepage - GUI for mpeg2avi and VirtualDub to make avi/ac3
Subripper Homepage - the probably best subtitle ripper
CladDVD Homepage - one of the major VobDec GUIs out there
VobSub Plugin Homepage - add subtitles to your avis directly from DVD
Da Rippak
DZMovies
DivX repair - read here how to repair corrupt DivX downloads
Normalize homepage 
Mpeg2avi PX3 Homepage
Project DivX Homepage
AVIUtl HomepageM4C Homepage
AVIRevolution Homepage
_Angel Dus Homepage - home of aMPEG2Avi GUI
Tsunamis Homepage - home of FlaskMpeg PX3 Tsunami
Miha's FlaskMpeg page - contains the fastest and most accurate iDCT Flask

SVCD related

TMPGEnc Homepage
TMPG unofficial English homepage - contains the old MPEG-2 capable versions and patches
bbMPEG Homepage
AviSynth Homepage
Homepage of the modified AviSynth versions
FlaskMpeg Homepage
DVD2AVI Homepage

General Rip Software Sites

Apachez' Site
Q-Bert's Site - if he doesn't have it then it's nowhere to be found.. or almost
PCDVD - Chinese software site with lots of downloads
Tec-Video - French DVD site.. click on the Outils button on the left, then on the large Outils button
Oleg's archive - login/password: dvdfilez/GetPrvFilez

If you can't find the soft you're looking for on these sites don't bother asking me.. these are the only places I know of. 

The competition

DivX Digest - depending on whom you ask the best/2nd best DivX site on the web (you can guess which the other is)
Purpleman's DivX guides - Guaranteed synch using mpeg2avi
Sarek's 1CD guide
VCDHelp.com - probably the most comprehensive VCD site out there.
Kalel's Rip Guides
IEATLINT's SVCD Guide
Inwards SVCD Guide
Millenium Bug's SVCD Guide
Robshot's Site - lots of technical information and nice SVCD and MiniDVD guides
SVCD Overview

DivX Players

MicroDVD - nice DivX player with a PowerDVD-style layout. It can do almost everything: Multi languages, subtitles, Menus (that's right you can make your own DVD-style menus for DivX movies). 
DivX Player - small but nice DivX player
BSPlayer - another DivX player with subtitle support
GDivX Player - yet another DivX player

Thinking about getting a new DVD Drive? Check here first to see if you can get regionfree firmware.

IRC: Efnet #pcdvd - the one and only DVD rip channel

General DVD news

The Digital Bits
The DVD Resource
The DVD File
Area DVD - German DVD news
DVD Inside - another German DVD news site
DVDFR.com - French DVD news
The R2 Project - UK DVD news

DVD Software Players

I've tested almost every DVD player you can get on the market today. Most of them are crap. However I found 2 that really rock and I strongly suggest you get either one of them. They're also the only ones that work on Windows2000. A word about Cinemaster: Lots of people tell me that it's faster and better than any other player. Well... I tried it and it was painfully slow and crashed all the time. Besides I'm using W2Kk now and Cinemaster 2000 uses the windows region codes which is a real problem for W2K users because you can only change the region once and the patch to reset that counter does not always work.  

Beware: The above links provide full version of those players. They're for educational purposes only.

PowerDVD - Simply the best DVD Player: Geforce Motion Compensation, W2k and DTS Support, Zoom for 16:9 titles. I recommend this player for all rip situations. Official Homepage

WinDVD - Geforce Motion Compensation, W2k Support and they'll even make a Linux DVD player <g>. Official Homepage

Cinemaster - the first to fully support the ATI card but now WinDVD has catched up. Official Homepage

Eugene's DVD player - a freeware replacement for the DVD station