Passkey or AnyDVD, Which One Outperforms the Other?

In the world of disc decrypting, there are two first class warriors which are Passkey from DVDFab and AnyDVD from Slysoft. And there has long been argument about which one is better than the other. Believe it or not, both are world class disc decrypting tools and each has its own large fan bases over the world. Of course, there are still other competitors out there on the market, but both in terms of features and market share, none out of those small contenders ever makes a bigger name than the two major players.

Maybe this is also why AACA-LA, the licensing body of the copy protections applied on commercial movie Blu-rays, choose to target AnyDVD and Passkey, resulting the former being closed since Feb. 22, 2016, and the latter survived the crackdown proximately two years ago. As we speak, AnyDVD and AnyDVD HD are still not purchasable although SlySoft has rebranded itself into RedFox just day ago, but DVDFab Passkey for DVD and Blu-ray successfully made the way to survival and are currently the only viable option to disc decrypting requires on the market.

Today we finally got enough time to do a little bit comparison of the two famous decrypting tools. Due to fact that both applications do not allow users to run the other one simultaneously, a shoulder to shoulder comparison is made not available. However, we did manage a way to compare them in a side-by-side manner, which is to put two computers together with one running Passkey and the other running AnyDVD, and here is what we get.

In terms of the decrypting ability, both perform outstandingly well. It has been rumors that Passkey uses the online decryption database that AnyDVD created. According to our tests, that rumor cannot stand on its own feet, because there are some discs that AnyDVD cannot decrypt but Passkey nails in a matter of seconds. So, our thought on this is that both set up its own database in some ways and there might be the circumstance when one cannot decrypt a disc while the other one does the job. And the question lies in which one will be updated in time to support newly released movies that come out with new protections. Considering the fact that SlySoft’s reincarnation RedFox is still not ready for purchase yet, it certainly lags behind the Passkey in regard to the decryption update.

Aside from the fundamental decrypting capacity, other features both present include the ability to rip the physical disc off onto computer hard disc drive as DVD or Blu-ray folder, or disc image files to save the cost on burning which requires expensive blank discs. Our test results show that SlySoft AnyDVD and Passkey nearly cannot outweigh the other by a large margin. Both rips a DVD to hard drive in around 15 minutes, and a Blu-ray in around 40 minutes. So we consider it a tie on this point.

Next, let’s see what really makes one stand out from the other. During our tests, we found that Passkey has several advantages which AnyDVD lacks, and which also could influence people a lot while deciding which to buy, Passkey or AnyDVD. Here below we list all the points that Passkey edges out the RedFox.

• Passkey has a built-in PathPlayer which functions as a real video player software to check all the contents on a DVD or Blu-ray disc, just to make sure that Passkey can find the correct feature length title to copy. This is especially important when there are many fake playlists on the disc to prevent users from knowing which one to back up. All of this is done automatically and invisible to users.
• Passkey for DVD and Blu-ray can also automatically check the region code of a disc, just to make sure the backup is a totally region free disc that works flawlessly on the standalone DVD or Blu-ray player.
• What’s more, Passkey even lets users to freely reset the region code and even the internal counter of a PC Blu-ray player software so that they don’t need to worry about being locked into one region anymore;
• Passkey is very small in size which asks only a tiny small amount of free disk space to run, however it performs super fast in speed, thanks to its ability to use the hardware acceleration.