Hi, I use Ant Downloader to save movies off the internet and have recently discovered a bit of software or code that removes Windows Activation Technologies even when KB971033 is already installed (RemoveWAT 2.2.5).
Not that I'm aware of my ever having needed to take advantage of either of those things, I just feel more comfortable not running a lot of MS's media restricting and/or the assumable spyware that M$ gets away with forcing on users, not to mention, if I understand it right, the removal of WAT and bypassing of the encoding that I believe somewhat negatively affects video and/or it's audio playback (at least I read that some music files can be affected by DRP, so it stands to reason video probably also can be affected).
Since I currently run a W7P platform (safer than my XP netbook) and I'd like to think of me as qualifying as an advanced newbie, my question is this, does anyone know if 'we' can view online movies like Amazon's and/or YouTube's $2 ones (apparently each 'rental' of these are essentially from the same source) and capture them for lawful private use, ie; such that 'we' can play them when we want, for as long as we want and store them where we want, and do so by bypassing or circumventing their 'paranoid' like restrictions that normally accompany these basically pay per view outfits? I know about screen capturing software, but it's too pricey and I don't need or want to buy and install it's likely buggy software.
I suppose if nobody really experienced reads and comments on this, I'm simply left to buying into Amazon's $2 movie thing and finding out for myself if I can somehow capture the movie (might Ant Downloader actually capture Amazon's streaming vids and save it on my EHD)?
And I know that some online movie websites will up front allow saving the movies w/o restriction s on how long or how many playbacks, but I'd prefer not to jumping thru hoops by creating a network such that the video's protection crap would then allow me to save movies where I please, so it sure would be nice to know before I maybe make the mistake of registering with Amazon and maybe confirming they'd dumped issues that go along with their track and spy ware'.
Not only is such track and spy ware no doubt installed using their free access back door active-x software (something i rarely allow on my systems, even if they're known to be so called trustworthy), but again I haven't yet sifted thru whatever info Amazon discloses and irregardless I'm wary enough to distrust what little they do disclose, not to mention what they don't.
If it means anything, on my W7P, I run WMC (which I rarely use) and the dongle's hard/software is integrated with my WMC. The dongle is Hauppauge's HVR-960 which uses WinTV, a great bit of hard/software that finally got me the ability to watch and record TV on my netbook).
Who knows, maybe Amazon's movies can be captured using Ant Downloader (likely not), but surely there must be a way around Amazon's spyware and I'm certain, it's un-nerving backdoor Active-X technology, again without expensive issue some screen capturing software.
And yes I've seen freeware that does a fair job at good quality screen capturing, but it lacks audio and while I'm somewhat familiar with Audacity, I've yet to figure out how to use both and then dub and sync the audio to the screen capture.
