www.makemkv.com

My interest is purely to backup my 3D Blu-rays to my HTPC and play them off the harddisk. Due to the Cinavia protection on recent discs I can no longer use PowerDVD to play them back in 3D. Why would I pay 50 EUR for MakeMKV when I can directly play back 3D SSIFs using Stereoscopic Player for 39 EUR? Even if I used MakeMKV to rip them to MVC MKVs I'd still be lacking a player. Am I missing something?

You are experiencing the "value judgement" every product goes through. For me, the judgement call was a bit less severe (50 USD instead of Euros), but I still would have registered at the higher price.... It just would have taken me a bit longer to decide.

For me, it is one tool that does what I need on all the disks I have and buy. I don't need one tool to do DVDs, another tool to do BDs, and a third tool to do 3D content.

If Stereoscopic Player fulfills your needs, it may be a better choice for you.

It's actually pretty damn UNDER-priced.

Let's take a look at what the competition is, shall we?

AnyDVD - Lets you rip straight to ISO to send through MKVMerge. Lifetime license? (MakeMKV's is desribed as such) $160.
Blu-Ray Playback Software - I've never seen anything under $90 new.
MakeMKV - $50 (Maybe something like $75 out-of-country)

Over-priced compared to what? Pirating AnyDVD? Downloading bootlegs? Stereoscopic player can't play encrypted content, so for you to even GET your SSIF's to it you'd need software more expensive than MakeMKV by a sizable margin.

I can't think of any other software that has MakeMKV's feature set for a comparable price (and NO ONE has an option for ripping MVC-encoded 3D content to MKV; sadly this also means there isn't much out there for PLAYING those files).

As far as Stereoscopic Player is even concerned, I think the main problem we have is there the biggest open source libraries/apps have no plans really in place to play this kind of 3D content. There's been a variety of topics raised in XBMC, VLC, and FFMPEG, along with some GSoC entries, but going on 3 years now, there's been just about ZERO progress. In XBMC the only way to play 3DBD content is literally to use external playback software (such as PowerDVD).

Wish it were $50 in EU, when I go for purchase it tells 60.50€ which translates currently into $81.

For current pricing, I'm just going to stick with the free version and see what happens in the future.. I'm not telling $81 would be too much for this product, I'm telling it's not really fair at all to charge almost double for people in europe..

I would say that I have to agree with the original poster on this.

I think creators of MakeMKV should consider the marketing concept of price elasticity." The lower the price, the more units sold. If the price is too low you approach infinity (or a lot of units) sold. On the very high end, zero units sold. The relationship is a curve and there is a sweet-spot where the margin (profit) and units sold is optimized.

I have successfully be updating the trial version for about a year. I don't rip a lot of disks. I think I have done maybe 6 in the past year. So, $50 seems pricey. That is $8.33 per disc for me. For that price, I might as well just buy the digital version and not deal with the hassle. For a lower price, say $30, I would could rationalize the investment.

Seems to me that a lower price for MakeMKV yields a lot more units sold and hopefully more profit. I know that I would signup in a heartbeat if someone offered a 50% discount.

Eric

A lifetime of support for $50 still seems like a good deal to me.

SC

@Eric714

Hi!

I think I have done maybe 6 in the past year.

I'd suggest that your EXTREMELY limited use of this fine multi-cross-platform product would limit:

A) Your mathematical interpretation of "unit cost"

B) The amount of beta testing input that the author(s) might expect from you

I was thinking of buying it today but when I went to the order page, it was €60.50 incl vat. That's the equivalent of $80.

I have to agree, that seems kind of pricey, especially when Americans can get it for $50.

Also regarding the VAT charge, where is MakeMKV based? Is it based inside or outside the EU?

smashey wrote:Also regarding the VAT charge, where is MakeMKV based? Is it based inside or outside the EU?

This is nothing to do with where MakeMKV is based, it's down to the payment processor and your location.

Of course it also depends on what you do with your movies.
If you play once and then file in the dustbin, Makemkv is probably not that useful.
But there are a lot of people out there (I guess me included) that keep video libraries of some size (certainly several TB's of storage), and providing that you are not one of the must have an ISO rip so I can keep everything on the disk (including menu's which are getting harder every day to play due to protection), then Makemkv is a great asset. Cuts out the crap, keeps the main film at original quality and does this pretty quickly.

When you also take into account the hardware cost, I have 3 media players spread around the house (not unusual) accessing 3 NAS boxes, then Makemkv for me makes a great deal of sense. )To me anyway )

... and if you really want to play 3D well, then the best hardware solution plays MVC MKV's, overcoming many ISO issues, in which case Makemkv is a no brainer.

And without wishing to hurt Mikes well earned financial contributions, if you are really hurt by the non-US cost, you can always use a US VPN.

I agree. I want to buy but ?52.73 is too steep.

matt198t wrote:I agree. I want to buy but ?52.73 is too steep.

Then you'll have to wait for the beta key to update each time and not complain when it expires for a few days.

crowfax wrote: This is nothing to do with where MakeMKV is based, it's down to the payment processor and your location.

Of course where they are based is relevant.

For example small companies in the US rarely charge vat on software sales into the EU. US and EU do not have trading or taxation agreements, nobody can force them to do it.

And if the company is based in the EU, the rate of vat charged to customers in other member states depends on whether the company has exceeded threshold sales into that country.

I just want to know that everything is on the up and up and i am not paying VAT unnecessarily. Because it pushes the price up considerably.

smashey wrote:nobody can force them to do it.

Except Avangate are the payment processor and they get to decide how much in extra fees and tax you pay. The developer has stated before that he sets the price of the software at $50 and Avangate are the ones who are adding on the extra fees as part of their geo-location stuff. I'd hypothesize that Avangate run a local entity in large countries, and your money is processed locally thus avoiding them having to pay conversion fees for changing currency, which in turn necessitates the need for local taxes to be applied depending where the payment is being processed.

So you're right, no one can force anyone to do it. But if you want a key, you need to buy it through Avangate.