The items you listed in your post are the minimum requirements, not the ONLY requirements. That's why we have standards in the PC industry.
And why would you assume my environment doesn't meet those standards?
Standards help ensure that you can get HP or Dell (or roll your own) and as long as the hardware follows the standards, you can be relatively certain that software created following those standards will work. So it's a false argument to say that if something works on an HP or Dell, it should work in a virtualization environment.
My Parallels virtual PC apparently follows those standards closely enough that there's no problem installing Windows, playing CDs and DVDs, running all the other Windows software I've wanted to run... all except the latest version of AnyDVD. Windows itself recognizes that the are discs inserted in the drive that the latest AnyDVD doesn't see.
I'm sure if it was a bug, Slysoft would be working to fix it. Who knows, maybe they are. The fact is that we don't know.
You don't sound like you've ever worked for a company that produces software. I do, that's how I make a living. The mere existence of a bug and a decision to fix it are two very different things.
What i'm pretty confident in stating however is that Slysoft definitely knows more than we do about how Slysoft works, what it needs to work, and what security measures need to be in place to protect their intellectual property.
Many years ago, involving, coincidentally, a problem with another virtualization product, I noticed strange behavior that I guessed might be related to floating point computations, having to do with trouble I saw in one piece of Java software when drawing circular arcs. Another symptom was some Windows dialog (File properties? I can't remember the specifics.) where numbers that normally showed up formatted like "10.2 MB" were coming out reading "10.199999998 MB". I figured the most likely culprit was a behind-the-scenes conversion of 8-byte and 10-byte floating point formats, because the Mac's built-in 10-byte floating point math routines were likely tapped to emulated hardware-based Intel 8-byte floating point instructions.
I didn't have access to the company's source code. I didn't decompile their binaries. I simply understood the nature of the problem that had to be solved and the resources available to solve it.
I talked to software support for this older virtual PC (this was back when Macs weren't Intel based, making virtualization A LOT tougher, not to mention glacially slow), and the guy I was talking to acted like I was telling him I came from Mars, didn't understand what I was talking about, but assured me that their software engineers would be on top of it if any such problem existed, that whatever problem I had must be Java's problem, the software's problem, or my problem -- anybody's problem other than his company's problem.
I insisted on talking to someone who at least could understand what I was talking about, and, having had that request very grudgingly granted by the first person, I at least got a more sympathetic reception from the second, but still no clear sense that the problem I was reporting would be addressed.
After all, who cares if a few numbers look funny on the screen and some obscure Java applet doesn't draw things right?
A few months later an update was issued for the virtual PC software. The arc drawing problem went away. The release notes mentioned, among other bug fixes in that release, something to the effect "improvements in 8-byte floating point support".
Sometimes outsiders spot problems that insiders are not immediately aware of. That was not the only occasion I've correctly spotted, and even diagnosed, bugs in software simply by being an observant user of the software, one who knows how to troubleshoot and narrow down the relevant variables in a problem.
Instead of trying to run windows in a virtual environment, why not just dual boot windows. If you're running linux, you obviously have an X86 compatible PC, so just dual boot windows.
Dual booting sucks as a solution, especially when you're talking about doing it for something like ripping Blu-rays, which is a pretty slow process. That's a long time for your primary work environment to be down while your system is locked up for hours performing one specialized task.
A copy of XP can be purchased for less than the cost of AnyDVD HD.
The more you talk, the less you clearly understand about virtualization. I HAVE a copy of XP. It's installed in the virtual computer. The virtualization is a complete PC environment. It wouldn't be working at all without its own copy of an OS being installed, and in this case, Windows XP is it.
If you're imagining something like the Linux "emulator" Wine (yes, I know it stands for "Wine Is Not an Emulator"), you're imagining the wrong thing.
If you're running a mac computer, then it's just too bad.
If you think dual booting is a solution, then make the above comment, you're not paying attention to the thread. I have an Intel-based Mac, I can boot in Windows-only mode, and I even did that as an experiment that I reported on earlier in this thread. AnyDVD DOES work for me when I boot up like that. That, however, completely sucks as a solution for me, since most of what I do is in the Mac partition.
You wouldn't get mad at DVD manufacturers because they don't make DVDs that play in your toaster.
If my toaster happened to play DVDs anyway, all except the most recent DVDs put out by one company, and that company's earlier titles play in my toaster as well, I'd have good reason to suspect that their DVDs, and not my toaster, was at fault, even if my toaster were being put to a non-traditional use.
So likewise, just realize that having a PC is a necessary piece of getting AnyDVD HD to work, just like getting petrol is a necessary piece of getting a car to run.
Another bad analogy based on a misunderstanding of what the virtual PC is. I have a "car" that drives fine using everybody else's "petrol", and it works with the petrol Slysoft used to sell, just not the petrol coming out of the pumps right now.
