Customer Reviews

Xilisoft DVD Ripper Platinum

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

This review is regarding my experience with Xilisoft as a business, and its DVD Ripper 5 *standard.* This is not a review of the platinum edition. I believe my experiences with Xilisofts' poor business ethics will help potential customers choose a better product.

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It's difficult to find a good DVD ripping program. The movie industry has thrown in every hurdle to make copying DVD's as inconvenient and as difficult as possible (despite its legality). That's why, when I was dissatisfied with the free DVD programs I found on the internet, I decided to pay Xilisoft for their application, with the assumption that their software would be reliable, and that their customer service would be helpful. I was *SORELY* mistaken. Not only did Xilisoft's DVD Ripper 5 not fully rip my DVD's, but I found their customer service deceptive and dishonest. I highly recommend for potential customers to invest in another business.

After ripping seven of my DVD's to my computer, I discovered that they ALL ended at 1 hour and 47 minutes. Initially, I thought I had screwed up program preferences, or I that the application had installed incorrectly. But, it hadn't. The application is DESIGNED to not fully rip DVD's, and Xilisoft fails to mention this on their website. For an entire week, I fought with Xilisoft to help me with what I perceived as a system "bug," but their assistance was useless, in essence telling me to "get used to it." Today, I finally got my money back.

Here's an abbreviated transcript of my email's with Xilisoft. Keep in mind that each Xilisoft reply represents one business day, and thus this interaction expands over the duration of a week:

Me: Xilisoft and Staff: I've been having trouble ripping the full length of movies. For the last four movies, your program doesn't finish ripping the ending of the movies (very frustrating). Is there any way to rip the full length of the my DVD's?

Xilisoft Support: Thank you for supporting Xilisoft! Could you tell me more about what product you're using?

Me: Thanks for your reply. I'm using Xilisoft DVD Ripper Standard 5.0.50 build-0814. I tried to reinstall your program, but I still can't get the full length of my movies. See screenshots.

Xilisoft: Thank you for supporting Xilisoft! Please enter the length of the movie in the advanced system preferences. You can enter "1:47:50" for one movie.

Me: Thanks for your help. I attempted to edit the duration of the rip in the advanced settings box, as you advised, and to my surprise, it continues to kill the rip at exactly 1 hour and 47 minutes into the film. So, setting the duration to 2:34:49, the feature-length of the movie "Gladiator," still produces a movie that's 1:47:24 long.

Xilisoft: Thank you for supporting Xilisoft! Would you please set the "start time" to rip the part that is behind 1:47:24 to have a try? Can you get an output?

Me: Thank you for your reply! I successfully ripped between 1:47:00 and the end of Gladiator, so yes: there is an output. What's the solution to this problem?

::First day passes without a reply::

Me: I continue to have problems getting a full-length movie. If we can't find a solution to this problem, I'll be asking for my money back. It's unreasonable for me to pay for your product, and not be able to burn movies beyond 1:45 minutes in length.

::Second day passes without reply::

Me: Should I take your silence as ignoring the problem?

::Third day passes without a reply::

Me: [frustrated] I understand that xilisoft's mission to create a stable program that rips DVD's is not an easy task, nor is it easy to make sure it works flawlessly on everyone's PC. But, at least reply to your customers and admit when you don't know how to solve a problem. I've shown patience waiting five days now, hoping for a solution to this problem; I ask that you show at least consideration to your paying customers by at least engaging in dialogue. If this is what I get for dishing out cash for your product, I would have done just as well filtering through BitTorrents.

Xilisoft: Thank you for supporting Xilisoft! We're really sorry for the delay because of the weekend. Do you mean that you can get two parts of the movie [Gladiator] and you can't get it as an whole file?

Me: Every single DVD I have attempted to rip with Xilisoft's DVD ripper 5 fails to rip to completion. [I include a list of the now seven failed movies, and their respective rip times].
I look forward to your advice on how to rip the full length of a DVD.

Xilisoft: Thank you for supporting Xilisoft! What about just ripping from the latter half of the movie? For example, if you enter "1:48:18" for start time, can you get the latter half ripped in this way? Thank you. -Jack.

Me: Thank you for your reply. Say I decide to see a movie my local movie theater, paying $30 [the cost of your DVD Ripper] for a ticket to see the movie "District 9," under the impression that I would enjoy the entire film. At 100 minutes into the movie, I get a tap on my shoulder from an usher, telling me I need to leave, and see the rest of the 12 minutes tomorrow, since my ticket does not "validate" me to see the entire move as a whole.

Would you be frustrated in this situation, Jack?

I wouldn't be, supposing that the box office openly and honestly notified me, "Before you buy this $30 ticket, sir, you should know that you won't be able to see the entire film." But, I would be furious if they didn't disclose to me that information, since it would be *dishonest and deceptive.*

In you reply, please show me where on your website it openly and honestly discloses that my $30 purchase will not allow me to rip the full length of my DVD.

Xilisoft sales representative: It is a pity our product didn't meet your needs. We have refunded your money for Order ID: ************, maybe it will take few days, please wait patiently. Please keep on supporting our products.

Paypal: Payment refunded from First International Shareware Holdings.

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Review of the business and its ethics: Deceitful
Review of customer support: Unhelpful
Review of the product: Practically useless, and wouldn't meet 99% of people's expectations.
Conclusion: Support another business.

I purchased Xilisoft and the product works great. However, my system crashed and I had to reinstall products on my laptop. That was back in Novemeber 2009, when I looked at my online receipt it did not have the product registration code. They claim you can email them or enter your email address the information was sent too and retrieve the code. I've been emailing everyday for 2 months still not 1 reply back and when I enter the email I still receive nothing. No way, I'm going to pay for this product again.

This product is marketed under more than one name. I bought it as ImToo DVD Ripper Ultimate 5. The first question is, "Why?" But it seemed to work well for awhile. I've converted several violin instructional videos so that I can use them on my iPod.

Then I converted a DVD that had a large number of segments lasting a few minutes each. In a dozen cases the software converted the segment video but not the audio.

I corresponded with support figuring there was some condition or parameter I could change to remedy the situation. But I had an experience very much like reviewer N.J. Matthew - totally nonsensical responses that seemed to answer questions I was not asking and ignore the question I was asking.

Clearly, there is something odd going on with this company, marketing the package under various names, etc. (Look at the two web sites...the similarity is comical.) The software is real and it does some of what it is supposed to do. But it doesn't actually work the way it should and if you need support, you're totally out of luck. You find yourself corresponding with people who seem to be living in an alternate reality

Xilisoft DVD Ripper Platinum

Absolutely no user instructions. Perhaps if the authors spoke English instead of Japanese they could determine why the video-audio is so often whacko! Product also causes the ripped video to briefly stop between frames just enough to be irritating. You will spend more time trying to figure out how to rip your videos, and how to get the video-audio in sync than the product is worth. The same goes for their identical twin iMtoo. Don't throw your money away. Some videos do rip successfully, and that accounts for the higher reviews. However, the test of true quality is 100% accuracy every time. This product should be rated below zero!

This product works, they want 40 bucks for a liscense key if you download it online. The only thing I didn't like is it takes awhile to rip a movie. The good news is you can run it in the background while doing something else and the program still works flawlessly. I would recommend this for anyone trying to put dvd movies onto an ipod also.

I bought software and on disc. The disc didn't arrive, so I contacted the company. Short version: after three months, it hadn't arrived and I asked for a refund. They wouldn't give me a refund and, instead, offered me free downloads of several of their other products.

I had numerous problems with the installation of the download version. After several emails to the company, the download version still wouldn't run. Still no refund. Still no copy in the box.

I agree with the other reviews that this product has problems, especially there product support. And there response time was not very quick. I don't recommend this product.

I have used xilisoft-platinum to attempt to rip DVDs for PSP and iPAD. After hours upon hours of trial and error using the proposed formats supplied by Xilisoft and even creating custom user formats I have yet to successfully rip any of several DVD's where the audio-video actually syncs appropriately. Their on-line FAQ and other support is lacking. I strongly suggest saving your money and do not buy this product.

Any thing good, said about this product was written by the officer of the company. All I got was audio and video garbage. This is the worst I have been burnt on a product.

Tried to use it to rip a variety of video items I currently have on DVDs, so I can serve them up directly from a Network attached storage device.

Unfortunately, I've never been able to get the sound and video for H.264 rips to be perfectly coordinated. Always a bit of "lip lag" behind the sound. There are some options that seem like they may be designed to address the problem, but unfortunately there is absolutely no documentation, no user forum for sharing tips, nothing for support other than an email address that is attended to by somebody who doesn't understand English and seems to take the position that if the product doesn't work or you don't understand the meaning of any of their options, it must be your problem, not theirs.

In addition, some of the advertised features seem not to work. To date I can't figure out how to specify the outbound filename. When saving a profile, it seems not to save the audio settings at all. Many other minor bugs that you can work around but which are annoying.

Avoid this one.

I started using this software to put DVD's on my laptop because I was deploying to Iraq for a year. The software was extremely easy to use and didn't seem too expensive. When I got it in the mail, it wasn't in the professional looking box that I am looking at in the picture. It wasn't packaged like I had just picked it up from the retail store. It was packaged in a DVD like case with the logo and graphics printed on paper and slid inside the plastic coating of the case. The disc itself looked like a legit retail version though.

Anyway, once I installed it and started ripping movies, it wasnt until after I had left home and was on my way to Iraq that I realized many of the movies I copied were messed up. The picture quality was great, but the sound and video were not synced up. It was pretty bad with some of them, bad enough that I couldnt watch them because it was like watching a Japanese movie...except in English.

I also emailed the company asking them if there was something I wasnt doing right when using it, maybe some sort of setting or something, but they never responded.