looking for a bluray player

[ricoman]

I am about to buy a bluray burner but I don't want to pay $50 for PowerDVD. What is a good bluray player, preferbably free though I would pay a little for something good. Thanks.

[Baldrick]

There are no free blu-ray player software. PowerDVD and ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre are probably best...but they cost $100 if you want blu-ray support. WinDVD and Nero also supports blu-ray but I have not tried them.

But some blu-ray burners are bundled with a blu-ray player software. Mine LG came with PowerDVD 7 and it works just fine.

[Colindale]

You get what you pay for, TMT 3 will do everything you need including high definition audio, if you have the right gear!.

[ricoman]

Newegg only has an OEM Pioneer bdr-205 with no software. PowerDVD 7 plays bluray? I was under the impression that for bd support you needed PowerDVD 9.
Thanks for the quick response.

[jman98]

Newegg only has an OEM Pioneer bdr-205 with no software. PowerDVD 7 plays bluray?

Yep.

I was under the impression that for bd support you needed PowerDVD 9.
Thanks for the quick response.

Version 9 is actually LESS functional than version 7. Version 10, whenever it comes out, will probably be much worse than version 9 is now. Each release of PowerDVD is worse than the one before it, starting with version 7. It's not much of an exaggeration for me to say that Cyberlink has crippled PowerDVD to the point where about the only thing left for them to take away is the ability to play any file at all. I wouldn't advise anybody to actually buy PowerDVD or WinDVD for BD playback. If you get them for free I suppose you could try them, but I sure wouldn't buy them. Both suck. Only TMT is any good.

[cal_tony]

Maybe I'm missing something, but I downloaded all the players from this site and the Power DVD player(ver8) that came with my bluray drive is awful on my system. I've isolated all it's startups and have not deleted because I figured sooner or later I might find a use for it. But I don't think so.

However, my system is slow by modern standards and that might be the problem. Yet, Mpc-hc, KMPlayer and Gom in the order listed seem to always work for me and they're free.

Tony

[fritzi93]

PowerDVD8 came bundled with my BD-ROM. I too think it's barely usable. Luckily, TME came with my Hauppauge HD-PVR, and it's a lot better. TME and TMT3 are from Arcsoft. (I was a bit surprised, as I didn't much like TMT2.)

If you rip your Blu-Rays, I believe you can play the rips and backups with Splash (free).

Good luck.