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321 Studios

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321 Studios was a privately held company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri with a sales office in Berkeley, California. The company was a leading provider of DVD authoring software, including the highly controversial DVD X Copy product line of DVD copy software. The DVDXCopy family of products enabled novice computer users to quickly and easily copy any DVD movie, including DVD movies protected with the Content Scrambling System (CSS). 321 Studios' products were sold through most major North American and International retailers and worldwide through the company's website.

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In February 2004, after a three year legal battle with several of the major Hollywood studios, the DVDXCopy products were deemed by a California court to be in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the case 321 Studios v. Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios, Inc. and were banned from selling DVD Content Scrambling System circumvention software. The company was shut down on August 2004.

DVD cloning software

  • DVD Copy Plus: the original product that copies DVD source materials onto CDs by splitting the source DVD to multiple CDs.
  • DVD X Copy: the flagship product that started the controversy relating to copying CSS protected DVD movies. This DVD copy software makes exact lossless copies of DVD9 movies (8.4 gigabytes of DVD video) by splitting the source DVD to any two (DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW and DVD-RW formats) blank 4.7 gigabyte DVDs.
  • DVD X Copy Xpress: a "1-Click DVD Copy" application that compresses a DVD9 source disc to one single blank DVD. The resulting copy is a lossy backup of the original, although the loss in quality minimal visually and is generally not noticeable when viewed on standard televisions.
  • DVD X Copy Gold: a two product suite that includes DVD X Copy and DVD X Copy Xpress. The two products are not integrated into one, but rather sold as a money saving software bundle.
  • DVD X Copy Platinum: a three product suite that includes DVD X Copy Xpress and a more advanced version onf DVD X Copy that enabled users to customize a DVD backup session by including or deleting specific "TitleSets" and the setting of compression ratios for individual tracks. DVD X Copy Platinum also includes DVD X Rescue recovery software. DVD X Copy Platinum became 321 Studios' best-selling product.

    • Other digital media products

  • DVD X Rescue: recovers data from unreadable, scratched, corrupt or defective CDs and DVDs
  • GamesXCopy: an application for copying copy-protected PC games.
  • CDXRescue: recovers data from unreadable, scratched, corrupt or defective CDs
  • DVDXPoint: converts PowerPoint presentations into DVD movies and saves them on recordable DVDs
  • DVDXMaker: DVD authoring software for converting home videos into a DVD movie format
  • DVDXShow: DVD authoring software for converting digital images in a DVD movie format
  • AudioXtools: an MP3 and CD burning program for organizing and burning MP3 files to CD-R discs
  • DVDXtreme: software bundle including DVDXCopy Xpress, AudioXTools, DVDXShow, DVDXMaker, CDXRescue, SnapshotXpress, ImageXRescue, BurnXpress and LabelXPert

    • References

    321 Studios Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA