Thinking about buying, have a few concerns

[SirQUK]

Hi HanSolo and welcome to our forums I'm glad you are enjoying some of the latest additions to v3. Don't worry about having to use a cracked version, if ever Dimadsoft decide to call it a day DRM will have its ID protection removed - But that wont be for a very long time hopefully.

[Hagrinas]

I just downloaded the demo of V3, and was glad to see that I'd finally be able to try it out to see if it works. 15 seconds is just fine for that. The problem is that it merely complained that export if multi-angle is not supported in the demo version. I don't get it. How would it hurt prospective sales to let me try it? When reading through this thread, I saw lots of discussion on this topic. Some of the points are valid, and some are merely conjecture with no supporting evidence. And some don't address things completely. One thread likened the demo version to a flight simulator. That's a bad analogy. The demo version is more like a parked airplane where the user gets to look at and move the controls. He has no way of knowing whether he would actually get anywhere if the airplane could take off. If I can't save the DVD, then I don't know if the changes I made to any pre or post commands were the correct ones. If there were a trace facility, and I could do a virtual eject, and walk through my changes, then at least I'd have an idea. For trace, I currently use PGCEdit. It's a nice little tool, and it has a nice trace facility that includes breakpoints. It's free, but I was happy to make a donation for it. I'd hate to buy another product that does not handle this aspect as well unless I knew that the trace facility would eventually end up in it. It would be nice if it ended up in the version I paid for. Another user mentioned the cracked versions out there. It's no secret that there are a few. If anybody wonders if they hurt sales, they might. But that's because they allow a user to see the same interface that he would have seen in the demo version, but also verify that the product had bugs. But if the cracked versions worked, they would not necessarily siphon off more sales. There are always companies that will look at the estimated number of pirated copies of something, multiply it by the full retail cost, and then claim that that's how much money they are losing. There's no real world evidence to support it, though. In fact, there's evidence to support the opposite. In the real world, sales figures are often inversely proportional to the amount of problems caused by copy protection. Two years ago, Intuit added strong copy protection to Turbo Tax. It was a fiasco. Sales went down, and they lost customers. If you make it a pain to use software, fewer people will use it. Did they stop some people from copying the software? Of course. There are always going to be some people who think that something is too expensive and won't buy it. They might use it if it's out there for free, but keeping a free copy away from them does not mean that they will buy it. In many cases, there were people who would get a copy from a relative or friend, and there would end up being three copies even though only one was paid for. With the copy protection in place, that same group of people would have to buy a single copy of TaxCut (and no copies of Turbo Tax) to do the same thing. So it's a loss of revenue, not a gain. The license agreement used to say that all three of them could use it, but they couldn't use it on different computers at the same time. Fair enough. But the fact that one of the users failed to do a complete uninstall before lending the disk to a friend had nothing to do with revenue. I don't know where the license agreement is on the website, and some of what I read here is vague. If I want to use it on my computer, and my wife wants to use it on her computer, is that a problem? We don't tend to do this type of thing concurrently, but if I'm using my computer for something, my wife might want to use one of my kids' computers since mine is tied up. What exactly does the license agreement allow for? If I visit a friend, I can remake one of his disks on my laptop, but from what I gather, it would be impractical or impossible to use it on his machine temporarily. Basically, it boils down to convenience, and it seems as if there are potential inconveniences that could impact sales. As far as these things impacting small developers more than big ones, perhaps somebody can provide a link to such a study, because I've never seen one. If anything, it seems as if the more copies there are out there, the more likely somebody is to have seen it and want to buy it. There's no question that just about any software I've ever bought could have been copied illegally, but had the software not been in widespread use, I never would have known about it in the first place. Many things that I've paid for were things that were originally bundled for free in a less than full form with something else. The fact that I was able to use it was enough to make me want to upgrade. Business people know that sometimes you make more money if you raise your prices, and sometimes you make more if you lower them. In this case, the product is expensive enough that I wouldn't jump out and buy it without a lot of thought. And if I had to decide ahead of time which computer is least likely to be used by something else when I need to reauthor a disk, then I'd be even less likely to buy it. As for price, it's nice to be able to pick and choose what's on a disk, but a lot of people I know would just as soon use DVDshrink to strip off all but the main movie and shrink it down. It's certainly nice to have the flexibility, but it's up to the individual to decide what it's worth. Keep in mind that phonograph records did not kill off live concerts, but boosted their attendance. FM Radio did not kill off phonograph records, but boosted their sales. DVD sales took off once copy protection was cracked. With all the talk about music piracy, people forget that selling a million albums back when there were 200,000,000 people in the country was considered good. The percentage of fans who bought the albums was minuscule. But had there been no way of hearing the music in the first place without buying the album, sales would have been much lower. I mentioned Intuit before, and the irony here is that they were the first company to truly defeat software piracy in an effective way. Back in the DOS days, when PC software under $300 was almost unheard of, they decided to sell Quicken for $19.99. Suddenly, people who used to use illegal copies and buy an aftermarket book (the assumption was that you needed a manual since DOS programs didn't have comprehensive on-line help) found it more practical to buy the software and get support. People will buy something if they think it does what they want and that the price is warranted. When you sell something for a lot of money in an arena where there is a lot of free software, people will be reluctant to buy it unless they can be sure that it does what they want. If I could try it for 14 days, or even make a DVD with the first 15 seconds of each scene, I can't guarantee I'd buy it, but at least there would be a good chance.

[DimadSoft]

Welcome to the forum, Hagrinas. And thanks for feedback (sorry for delay answering).

[Hagrinas]

[netsouth]

If you have any problems with DiMadSoft software, you'll receive insulting e-mails and an order to take it up with PayPal. In fact, you can't even see any contact information on DiMadSoft's website and their web registration is a "ghost" with no legitimate address. We purchased the software and were very, very dissatisfied. We hope you'll consider buying software from a company that actually has an address and telephone number. In our opinion, DiMadSoft is a hack house. That's our personal opinion. We intend to spread the word about our personal experience with DiMadSoft.

[Mirx]

Well, I can't say anything about your personal experiances with Dimad, but everyone who's been around this forum for a while knows how he is around his customers, and he's quite the opposite of what you paint him to be. Not knowing the background, the only valid explaination I could think of I he would be less then subtile, is that your version was "comprimised" and floating around the web as an hacked version. The course of action that follows are clearly stated in the user agreement.

[rubicat]

I have to agree with Mirx. I can tell you that my dealings with Dimad have been nothing but cordial. From what I've seen, his dealings with others is the same. There are many software companies that are not brick-and-mortar businesses and don't use an address or telephone number.

[DimadSoft]

Here is the brief history: Friday evening netsouth has purchased a license for DvdReMake via PayPal. Email was sent in few hours after purchase that program is "locking up repeatedly" and that he wants to submit refund request at PayPal. Today (Sunday) we've read email and asked:

[bandito]

hi DVD Remake Pro, I want to buy it. But at home I don't have any internet (only my workplace). So... the register procession is impossible Do you have any idea? (register by phone, or ohter way?)

[DimadSoft]

Welcome to the forum, bandito. It is not a problem at all that the computer where you intend to run DvdReMake Pro has no internet connection. You just run Demo version of the program on it to find out its Computer ID (look into "About" box"). Then use this ID when downloading copy of the DvdReMake for your computer (using any computer connected to the net) from your DimadSoft account.

[CDR-Zone.COM]