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  1. Hi everyone I have vsx1021 linked to w1200 and I'm looking at getting a blue ray player as the configuration on htpc can be messy. What blue ray player is most compatible with playing backups and Blue rays from any region?
    I notice all this protection some have had since 2012 and I've always been fine with htpc until the hdmi cable died and since replacing it the settings go all over the place depending on disc. Blue Ray players stand alone seem to be much better at processing then htpc ones from what I've read as there is less time wasted with configuration.
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    No manufacturer is allowed to produce a player that is region free for BluRay playback. The licensing agreement forbids this.

    Having said that, a very small number of players have been hardware modified by sellers (at additional cost to you the purchaser) to support region free BluRay playback. You really need to state what country you live in. Some of the better known sellers are in the USA and it might not make sense to recommend them if you live in Australia.

    You might also wish to describe what formats you need support for as if you are some kind of anime collector and have bizarre formats like RM, there won't be any BluRay players that can play those files.
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  3. Thanks for the reply, I'm in Australia, I do play a little anime I basically watch anything and everything. Might still make sense to add a blue ray drive to htpc if there is no real way around it. I guess I'll read up more I don't want to take up space on the forums
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    Letting us know you're in Oz is helpful, but someone from that part of the world will have to suggest something. Saying you watch "anything and everything" is really NOT helpful as it's incredibly easy to construct video files that an HTPC will play flawlessly and a BluRay player will choke and die on. If you're sticking to stuff like Divx/Xvid, MKV and MP4, then maybe an LG would be good for you. Some of their players handle those formats very well. But someone with specific knowledge of what's sold in Oz will have to help you with a suggestion for a player that can be made region free and is available in your country. Again, if you're watching RM files or some other "nobody else on the planet uses it" anime bs format, no player will meet your needs.
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  5. Ok I like format compatibility in a device I'm fine with what I have I just want to get the most out of what a blue ray disc has to offer but this may be veering into the wrong forum. HTPC with blueray drive vs blue ray player, I'm concerned that the player won't play disc's cloned via the htpc (back up)and the whole point of doing it this way is to stop messing with sound so much and get a better picture, I've heard people say a pc is better with a good graphics card fed through hdmi untouched and I've heard that getting a player for blue ray is better so now I'm almost fed up and will buy a player for the hell of it. I'm just a average user just looking for less messing around with sound I'm IT savy but don't want to spend all the time trying to reconfigure the pc every time you accidently leave an auto update on such as the latest vlc which is buggy as hell
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  6. Member yoda313's Avatar
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    If you don't need a disc player why not consider a file based player instead? If you already have a bluray player and you are looking for an "extra" one to do file playback a media settop player would be the way to go.

    Something like wdtv media player would be highly recommended. While they don't play EVERYTHING they play pretty darn close to it.

    There are competitors out there but read the descriptions carefully. I'd also recommend buying a more recent model if you want to buy used. The older the model is the less likely there will be firmware upgrades for it.

    If you do anime you probably run across hi10 h264 video files from time to time. I'd check carefully if the bluray player you are looking at can handle this.

    The problem with a settop bluray player is they won't necessarily handle a lot of "tweaked" video files. When h264 is fooled around with a lot of hardware players don't like that. So a file media player would be better in that regard. Though of course no device will play absoultely everything. For that you'd have to go the htpc route.

    The only real downside of a file only media player is lack of disc playback of backup discs - be it dvdr or bdr. Though there were hacks for the first versions of the wdtv that would allow a dvd drive to be connected (from what I recall as file playback only, not a dvd video player, ie h264/divx etc). So it would not be good if you don't have a bluray player at all.

    But as with anything read carefully before buying. Make sure the unit plays the majority of the file types you have. Otherwise you'd have to reencode them and that takes time and involves quality loss. Or you'd have to go the htpc route.

    Or still you could go the streaming route but that still involves a pc for streaming and or transcoding ala tversity or something.

    You have choices to make

    Edit - and the sound issue you mention - is that in reference to cinavia? All bluray players after 2012 require cinavia so no way around that right now (not sure on the exact date it went active).

    But that's another reason to go the file player route - they don't obey the bluray rules.
    Donatello - The Shredder? Michelangelo - Maybe all that hardware is for making coleslaw?
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  7. Here is a Asus Bluray player that can be unlocked to region free http://www.avforums.com/threads/asus-o-play-bds-700.1610132/
    The Asus media players play all formats very well, MKV/MP4/H264 etc.
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  8. I'm a MEGA Super Moderator Baldrick's Avatar
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    Authoring? Nope. I'm moving you to our blu-ray player section.
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    fishavr - You may wish to go into details about your sound problems. I'm not sure how much support freeware like VLC has for DTS-MA, which has now essentially become the standard for BluRay audio. I use ArcSoft Total Media Theater (a commercial program) for all BluRay playing on my PC. VLC doesn't officially support BluRay. It sort of does and some people can get it to work, but there are no guarantees and we've had plenty of posts from people who never got it working or it didn't work all the time.
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  10. Thanks for all feedback guys basically I got best performance with media player classic , tried leowa vlc and powerdvd . I still got to figure out how to mix the 5.1s into 7.1 through the avr but that's another story, got a stand alone blue ray player which is pretty impressive for image quality but I'm becoming convinced a htpc with a blue ray drive would get pretty much same results as stand Alone and the benefit would be the copy back up factor, they can be fragile disc's. Vlc 2.0.8 worked for getting pure stream but the new version fails. MPC HOME CINEMA with codecs by klite works pretty well. Thoughts?
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  11. Member Krispy Kritter's Avatar
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    For HTPC information, take a look here: http://www.avsforum.com/f/26/home-theater-computers

    And some great guides and information: http://assassinhtpcblog.com/hardwareguide/
    Google is your Friend
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  12. I'm a Super Moderator johns0's Avatar
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    You can rip a pal/ntsc dvd/blu-ray to your hdd and mux/convert it to mkv/mp4 and it will play on a ntsc/pal player with no issues either on a usb drive or data disc burn as long as you have a newer blu-ray player.
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