Doing it the way me and WishMaster has presented this it is good for all
even the Quality of Video would be 10x better then a bit torrent that supposedly has HD type quality plus you have the options of the whole menu which some people like to have
you can easily add a menu with most burning programs (in the rare cases you need it), and yes, cd/DVD rips from trusted sources have full HD quality and/or 3D if applicable even for tv series (yeah, it's a truckload of GB to download, but the quality is there). The only thing you usually lose is special content like actor interviews and whatever. There is the very real risk some joker did upload the wrong film though. Quite a few friends ended up torrenting a porn movie called (makeshift translation) "Snowwhite
under the dwarves" or similar puke-causing stuff.
The main reason to have a HTPC or anyway using a computer or a digital box instead of a dvd player is that you can skip the middlemen (disks) entirely.
Doing it legally is only a matter of personal integrity.
I personally don't care as I only watch movies at multiplex and remember them for the rest of my life.
High quality music rather than compressed mp3's you can get these via electronic download (LEGAL !!) from a lot of sites
The same for movies. As long as you have a decent broadband anyway.
I know of some places that charge you 10 $ a month and you can watch anything, legally. At least in theory.
in some countries the threat of prosecution for removing the regional encoding on a DVD or copy protection can carry a HIGHER penalty than for actually downloading an entire Pirated copy from a torrent site.
yeah, a high penalty for something none gives a
flying *cough* to enforce.
Seriously, checking the regional encoding of DVD players is not something I see even german police doing.