Students from the university of Aarhus, Danmark and St. Petersburg State Electrotechnical University "LETI", Russia yesterday released a new Compression format specifically geared towards the compression of complete DVDs without loss of any features or noticeable quality called ratDVD.

After a DVD is compressed to one much smaller file, it can be played back on your PC like you would play a normal DVD or you can convert it back to DVD to burn to disc and watch it with a stand-alone DVD player.

Currently it requires users to have Microsoft Windows XP, DirectX 9.0, and Windows Media Player 10. "This new format makes sharing DVDs possible like MP3 did for Audio-CDs. Comparing ratDVD with conventional compression methods like MPEG-4, H264, DivX or XviD is like comparing DVD with VHS. Unless you use ratDVD, you get only parts of the video but loose everything that makes DVD special." says Peter Jensen, project team leader.

ratDVD can preserve all the features of the original DVD such as:

# Full Anamorphic picture, seamless branching, multiple video angles, multiple audio channels, subpictures, etc.
# Keep movie versions (Directors Cut, Theatrical version, etc.), Alternate story endings, making of, video commentary , cut scenes, etc..
# Keep complete menus, navigation and features
# Reliable high quality, valid check-summed Container.

ratDVD website: ratdvd.dk.