PTravel

Okay, there are a number of considerations here.

First, it is illegal to distribute or use copy-protection defeating software. This isn't to say that there isn't a lot of it around, but some is better than others. I like AnyDVD, which is a painless way of ripping anything, whether DVD or Blu-Ray, and is well supported by its manufacturer. It's the only product I've found that works transparently on everything and it's a single click to rip. It does, however, cost money. There are shareware products around, but they are either obsolete and unsupported, or rather complex to use. How long it takes to rip depends on CPU power. On my media computer, a standard DVD takes around 10 minutes, a Blu-Ray up to 80 minutes.

The problem with AnyDVD is that all it does is rip content and remove copy protection. Shrinking the file size is another issue. DVDShrink is an unsupported free shareware product that, like the name implies, can shrink DVDs (it can also rip-and-shrink but, as I noted, it is obsolete and there are newer copy protection schemes that it, by itself, cannot defeat). It does this in two ways. First, it lets you remove unwanted material, e.g. foreign-language audio, previews, extra features, etc. Second, it can recompress the material at a higher compression rate. This, of course, results in some degradation of quality -- the higher the compression rate, the less the quality.

Another option is to transcode the video into another format. DVDs use mpeg, but there are more efficient codecs available, e.g. mp4, divx, etc. I don't bother doing this, so I can't direct you to anything specific, but a Google search should reveal many options.

Finally, you'll need a player that is compatible with the codec you've chosen. Microsoft Media Player will handle most things, but I prefer a product by Arcsoft called Total Media Theater. It's the most versatile player I've found, offers lots of tweaks and control to maximize the viewing experience, and can handle anything I've thrown at it, including Blu-Ray. There's a nice free player called Video LAN that offers a similar amount of control. It has, however, some minor bugs and doesn't play Blu-Ray.

Note that it is not a foregone conclusion that your netbook will be able to play full-screen videos. The primary concern is the built-in graphics card. I have an Asus Aspire 1 that can do this very well. On the other hand, I have another Asus (I don't recall the model number at the moment) that cannot.

I find the easiest solution is either to rip directly to my laptop's hard drive without recompression or ripping to a portable USB drive without recompression.