However, I have no problem naming the companies that have spammed us in the last several months-and yes, this company is among them. I won’t reveal the name of that particular company in this context because I think such e-mail should be confidential. Additionally, they create shareware sites that, coincidentally enough, rave about these products in fake reviews. These companies will often first pose a question along the lines of “How do I convert my videos for the iPad?” and then, under a different identity (but using the same IP address), answer their own question with a recommendation for one of these tools. The software is advertised through forum spam-usually in the form of tutorials that show you how to use it-but there’s sock puppeting going on as well. ISkysoft’s $39 DVD Ripper ( ) and it wasn’t good-there were an overwhelming number of presets (many of which produced poor results) and regardless of which preset you used the resulting video wasn’t nearly as good as video ripped with free software such as The interfaces are invariably garish and the UI clumsy. The software’s interface is skinned differently for each brand, but is otherwise the same in terms of functionality. Invariably open-source software likeįFmpeg lies underneath this stuff, though it’s not always creditedĪs it’s supposed to be. A Chinese-based company creates these utilities-generally some kind of media converter or ripper.

Review iskysoft video converter