Convert DVD main feature to video file without transcoding/losing quality?

[King Mustard]

Is this possible?

Is it as simple as changing a file extension?

 

[ledhead11]

DVD's are almost always encoded with a Mpeg2 video stream that sometimes tops out at 10Mbps w/ anything from Mpeg Audio to Dolby/DTS 5.1/6.1 in 48/96 khz 16/24 bit audio streams. Anything that can decode these combos will play the VTS files even if the extensions are changed.

At this point in time many FHD/UHD T.V.s will decode this. The tricky part can be the audio out/stream. Some T.V.'s/devices will give a straight SPDIF out while many will demux(even on SPDIF) to a basic LPCM 2.0 or Dolby 5.1. Playing this stuff back on a PC/IOS/Android is easy but other devices sometimes take more tricks.

 

[Solandri]

Playing this stuff back on a PC/IOS/Android is easy but other devices sometimes take more tricks.

MPEG2 is so old that a lot of newer devices no longer have hardware decoders for it. Its compression is light enough that it can be decoded in software, but expect battery life and (for extremely low-end devices) performance to be better with newer codecs like MPEG4 and h.264. That's on top of the network bandwidth requirements you mentioned (which is "only" 10-15 Mbps because DVDs are such crappy resolution - 720x480 anamorphic).