Backing up DVDs is a tricky business ­ almost all shop-bought discs, whether TV shows or movies, will be both copyright and copy-protected, meaning it’s both illegal and difficult to copy them.

Programs such as X-oom Movie Clone 4 will only copy unprotected discs, as standard.

So what’s the point, then? Backups of home movies? Copies of short films you've made? In reality, Movie Clone’s makers have to be slightly coy about these things, but it’s possible to make the software copy protected discs, by downloading and installing a file from the web.

Try to copy a protected disc and a box pops up helpfully explaining which file is missing, and that you shouldn’t try to find and install it. Whether you do or not is up to you and naturally, we wouldn't endorse such behaviour.

At any level, Movie Clone works fairly well. The interface is simple, with just three main parts ­ copy to another DVD, copy to hard disk, or copy a hard disk file to a DVD. There are a few options to set and then off the program goes.

It took only 15 minutes to copy our (unprotected) test DVD to the hard disk, but it doesn’t perform any compression, which is the part that can take hours, so we were left with a 4Gb folder on the computer’s hard disk, containing the movie.

The file played fine, but without any kind of compression, you'll need another program to play it on a portable media player such as Sony PSP, Apple iPod video or mobile phone.

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Roxio Easy DVD Copy 2 Premier
Overall: Good for those who want an easy to use DVD copying package, but it lacks advanced features
Rating: 3
Price: £20