Free or pay software that will play blu-ray disk?

[mlong30]

Hi All,

I just purchased a new HP laptop, that has a Blu-Ray disk. When I tried testing it for the first time, it appears I have to use the installed Cyberlink PowerDVD9, which appears to be just adware. For some reason, it doesn't play. What's the best software I can get free or pay, to play back blu-ray disk on laptop or desktop computers?

Thanks!

[Baldrick]

Read https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/298420-Free-Blu-ray-playing-software

[jman98]

Cyberlink's PowerDVD USED to be a great program. But around version 6 in my opinion it began to get worse. Cyberlink always gives in to their Sith Lords in Hollywood so PowerDVD isn't very good or even very functional now. If you can believe this, and I wish it was a joke but it's not, some versions ago they took the ability to do still captures out of the product because Hollywood thought that such might be used for copying. Now keep in mind that at the time there was no way at all to defeat BluRay copy protection and doing a bazillion screen captures of every single frame in the film would in no way copy the audio, but Hollywood still asked them to take it away and they complied. Geez, if Hollywood asked them to make a product that couldn't play anything, they'd do it.

The best pay product for BD playback is Arcsoft's Total Media Theater. At least Arcsoft still cares about their customer base, unlike PowerDVD and WinDVD.

[handyguy]

VLC plays anything. Free.

[Baldrick]

No, it doesn't play commercial blu-rays. It can play the blu-ray m2ts if you have ripped the blu-ray or if you are running anydvd in the background.

[WinDVD_5_platinum_fan]

---- prologue ----

If you don't need the BD menu to be played, a freeware player is "almost" sufficient.

("almost": There are BDs on which a movie is divided into several files but we all like the movie to be played in one piece. And getting a single movie file by glueing the several file parts together - before watching the movie - is inconvenient.)

Pay software play a lot of BDs including their menu but not all, and it will take weeks or months or years (or never) that the software company makes its software (via update) to play a BD reported as not playable.

---- pay software ----

I have tested "PowerDVD 9 Ultra" and a pre-installed WinDVD (unknown Version) with success (more or less, see "prologue"). I haven't tested the "TotalMedia Theatre" but regarding the comments of its users it works somehow.

If you want to play a BD ripped to a harddisk you have to rip the BD as a .iso image and you have to load the .iso image into a virtual drive (e.g. Virtual CloneDrive or daemon tools, both freeware as far as I know it). After that, you can read the .iso-image in the virtual drive like the BD in your BD drive with e.g. PowerDVD 9 Ultra.

---- freeware software ----

The freeware software (VLC media player, Potplayer, Media Player Classic Home Cinema) is "usually" not able to play the menu. But it can play the single .m2ts files in the BDMV\STREAM\ folder of the BD. (Oh, I forgot: At first you have to rip the BD in the BD folder structure format to the harddisk.) Drag one .m2ts file on the icon of e. g. the VLC media player and have fun ... (if the cpu and/or graphic card power of your system is sufficient).

You may create for each film (main, interviews in the bonus features etc.) a proper BD folder structure on the harddisk so that you can play each proper BD folder structure with e. g. the VLC media player. - For creating a BD folder structure I use the tsMuxeR. And for finding out which .m2ts files have to be joined to result in the whole movie I use BrHdStreamExtractor. The BrHdStreamExtractor I use only for getting information since its demultiplexing is buggy.

---- epilogue ----

In general, BDs are annoying because on quite every new BD is a new mechanism which prevents it from being played. So it is very likely that a BD newly bought cannot be played by the standalone hardware BD player or by the BD player software.

That's depressing.

[fritzi93]

Many Blu-Rays have the main movie split into numerous *.m2ts files. Yes, *but*...the playlist file (*.mpls) lists all the *.m2ts files in the titleset. What that means is, you can identify the main movie and its associated playlist file with BDinfo.

Associate video files with MPCHC, then simply click on the correct playlist file. Hey presto! The movie will play right through in MPCHC.

You must either rip it first or, as mentioned, have AnyDVDHD running. DVDFabPasskey works the same way. And the free DVDFabPasskey "Lite" should work with most movies, i.e. ones without recent protection schemes.

Good luck.