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  1. Member
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    I am looking for a BD player (or media center) with a USB port that will play(with Menus!) from blu-ray folders or ISO file that is stored on connected USB thumb drive.

    The WD Live boxes play it, but not with the menus. The menus are a requirement for me. Since BD players must play menus from the disc, I was thinking (hoping!!) that maybe a BD player with a USB port could play the menus from the USB drive also.

    I create my Blu-Ray folders and images using Adobe Encore, but I don't want to have to make Blu-Ray discs. The folders and images work fine, and I can play them (with Menus!) with only a few players on my PC. I want to be able to put these folders on a USB thumb drive and play them to my TV without needing a PC.

    Please let me know if know for sure a particular make and model number of a BD player or media player that can do this.

    Thank you.
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    Originally Posted by JoeKlein View Post
    I am looking for a BD player (or media center) with a USB port that will play(with Menus!) from blu-ray folders or ISO file that is stored on connected USB thumb drive.

    The WD Live boxes play it, but not with the menus. The menus are a requirement for me. Since BD players must play menus from the disc, I was thinking (hoping!!) that maybe a BD player with a USB port could play the menus from the USB drive also.

    I create my Blu-Ray folders and images using Adobe Encore, but I don't want to have to make Blu-Ray discs. The folders and images work fine, and I can play them (with Menus!) with only a few players on my PC. I want to be able to put these folders on a USB thumb drive and play them to my TV without needing a PC.

    Please let me know if know for sure a particular make and model number of a BD player or media player that can do this.

    Thank you.
    No recent Blu-Ray players are likely to support doing what you want to do. [Edit] AACS licensing (required for commercial Blu-Ray playback) probably forbids making Blu-Ray players that include this feature.[End edit]

    There is a media player that is supposed to play Blu-Ray ISOs with menus (2D only) , but it isn't cheap: http://www.duneplayer.com/dune-hd-smart-d1.html
    Last edited by usually_quiet; 12th Jun 2014 at 14:25.
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  3. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    Menus are not just pictures, they have to have links and those links have to mean something to the player (telling it to go somewhere). Your choices for menus are small:

    DVD menus (in authored DVDs and/or their ISOs)
    BD menus (in authored BDs and/or their ISOs)
    (defunct) HD DVD menus (in authored HD DVDs and their ISOs)

    Those are the only ones that are guaranteed to work in players that are compliant with them.

    Then there's:
    SMIL for use with QT MOV (embedded or separate)
    Some Divx files with menus embedded
    Some MKV files with menus embedded
    HTML web page with links to media

    But these are hit-or-miss (mainly miss) depending upon the player, and on the way the file was created. Mainly because, unlike those authored media, there is no standard for compliancy (particularly WRT hardware).

    Scott
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    Yeah, that seems to agree with what I have been reading. Too bad.
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    Any news on this? Did you find any acceptable solution?
    I've also been searching for a player that'll allow me to play my own blu-ray ISO or folder from a USB stick.

    I should add, that I actually wrote an e-mail to several companies a while back, asking them if they had such a player. They all replied no.
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    I ended up purchasing the Dune player as recommended by usually_quiet. It is a great device for playing my iso's.
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    Ok, thanks.
    Did you buy it off of eBay?
    I bid on one on eBay some time back, but not a whole lot. Thought it was rather expensive.

    As far as I've found out, there are some Oppo devices that should be able to playback blu-ray ISO files too.
    And possibly some Sharp devices too. But I'm surprised there aren't more devices that can do this.

    My brother gave me a Rasberry Pi a while back. Maybe there exists some medie-center software I could install on that, which supports playback of blu-ray ISO files. I might look into that.
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    No Ebay. I bought if from the Dune store at retail price here http://www.duneplayer.com/dune-hd-smart-series.html.

    I am very happy with the unit. I installed a 320GB laptop harddrive, and loaded all my movies to it. It plays everything fine, and the full HD is beautiful. Previously I was only burning standard def DVD's, so the step up to BluRay encoding is awesome, and I don't have to burn discs any longer.
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  9. Member netmask56's Avatar
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    Also the NMT Popcorn series. I think even my older C200 will do it, never tried.
    SONY 75" Full array 200Hz LED TV, Yamaha A1070 amp, Zidoo UHD3000, BeyonWiz PVR V2 (Enigma2 clone), Chromecast, Windows 11 Professional, QNAP NAS TS851
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    I actually wrote a mail to Dune Support Team back in April, asking if they had any devices that would playback blu-ray folders, including BD-J menus and such, since the Dune BD Prime 3.0 was discontinued.

    They replied: "Dune Base 3D & 303D has BDMV support, but not Blu-ray menu, BD-J, BonusView, BD-Live anymore."

    So I'm a bit puzzled why they didn't say: "Yes! You have to get the Dune HD Smart D1!"
    Hm, maybe the Dune HD Smart D1 wasn't yet available back then... dunno.

    Anyway, meanwhile I've bought a used Sony BDP-S1100, and a used Samsung something.
    The Samsung won't play anything via USB. The Sony one plays a blu-ray from USB fine - as long as I don't include any BD-J stuff.

    So I think I'll be getting the Dune HD Smart D1 as well. I wrote Dune Support Team again just now, asking if I can buy it from a european store.

    I'm still having difficulties believing (or accepting) that there aren't more devices available that can do this though.

    @JoeKlein, Are you messing arround with BD-J sparetime development too, or am I the only one crazy enough to do that?
    I'm planning on making a huge home-video compilation with dynamically generated playlists based on which choices the user makes, like e.g. "Show all videos where a certain person parcitipates" or "Show all birthday videos" and like that.
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    Originally Posted by JessieMay View Post
    Do you still need help with BD Player?
    I ended up buying the Dune HD Smart D1 too, and finding it absolutely great.

    I never heard back from Dune Support though. Instead, I bought the D1 off of eBay.

    It runs my Blu-ray Disc Java stuff fine, which means I can now use the Dune HD Smart D1 to test my personal blu-ray video album in development. (And other BD-J projects I'm working on).
    (I can test on my other players too of course, but that requires burning of the project onto a BD-R or BD-RE media, which becomes somewhat expensive in the long run).

    I'm still very much curious to know about other devices that'll play blu-ray disc folders and/or iso files directly from USB or harddisk though. So if you know of any, please do share.
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    It's now July 2015. Just wondering if there are any Updates to this topic?

    I have loaded my ISO files to a USB hard drive and I want to play them on my Samsung BDP-F5900 Blu-Ray player (I do not require menus, btw). I wonder if there is a way for the Blu-Ray player to recognize a Virtually Mounted DVD drive, such as the one Winx DVD Copy Pro, or Magic ISO can create on my Windows desktop machine? The problem, I suppose, is how to get the mounting software app onto the Blu-Ray player.
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    Originally Posted by Jerry22 View Post
    It's now July 2015. Just wondering if there are any Updates to this topic?
    No. AACS licensing requirements won't allow Blu-Ray players to play ISOs. That is not going to change.

    Originally Posted by Jerry22 View Post
    I have loaded my ISO files to a USB hard drive and I want to play them on my Samsung BDP-F5900 Blu-Ray player (I do not require menus, btw). I wonder if there is a way for the Blu-Ray player to recognize a Virtually Mounted DVD drive, such as the one Winx DVD Copy Pro, or Magic ISO can create on my Windows desktop machine? The problem, I suppose, is how to get the mounting software app onto the Blu-Ray player.
    No. Blu-Ray players don't run 3rd party apps, only their own firmware. Use MakeMKV to create MKV from your ISOs and use your Blu-Ray players to play those instead.
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    I know that some BD-J developers made a special disc that loaded the actual content from network. The purpose was to save money on discs when testing their creations.

    If you google for "HD Cookbook", you might be able to find this disc and read more about how it is done. Personally I found it a bit too time-consuming, so I went with the USB solution instead.

    But any networked blu-ray player should theoretically support this disc.
    What it does basically, is to use the blu-ray live technology to download the whole image of another disc.

    So it doesn't allow you to run anything off USB, but should allow you to keep your ISO's on a network drive.


    Another way to get the USB solution soon: Kodi (formerly known as XBMC).
    It's a media center that runs on various devices, like e.g. the Rasberry Pi. The developers are currently working on BD-J support, so that'll be an option too soon.
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    Originally Posted by usually_quiet View Post
    Use MakeMKV to create MKV from your ISOs and use your Blu-Ray players to play those instead.
    I tried this and it worked, the MKV files play on my Blu-Ray player from the USB hard drive. From ISO files, the conversion/extraction time is about the same (~10 min/6GB) as extracting to VOB. There really is not much advantage over VOB files, however, except with the VOB there is sometimes a warning message about "this audio format is not supported" that did not affect playback.

    MENUS
    Now, backtracking from my original statement, suppose I DO want menus in order to see, and link to, the chapters that each DVD originally contained? Is there a way to extract the menu and make it link to the corresponding content? Earlier in this thread, it was suggested by Cornucopia that MKV does support menus, but no menu appears in playback of any of the title_xx files that MakeMKV generates (I set the minimum time, in Preferences, to 5 sec., btw, so nothing was "Skipped".)

    Title #1 was added (3 cell(s), 0:00:53)
    Title #2 was added (2 cell(s), 0:02:08)
    Title #3 was added (7 cell(s), 0:30:16)
    Title #4 was added (6 cell(s), 0:30:21)
    Title #5 was added (7 cell(s), 0:30:20)
    Title #6 was added (7 cell(s), 0:30:21)
    Title #7 was added (7 cell(s), 0:30:22)
    Title #8 was added (7 cell(s), 0:30:18)
    Title #9 was added (2 cell(s), 0:00:49)
    Title #10 was added (2 cell(s), 0:00:30)
    Operation successfully completed
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    Originally Posted by Jerry22 View Post
    Originally Posted by usually_quiet View Post
    Use MakeMKV to create MKV from your ISOs and use your Blu-Ray players to play those instead.
    I tried this and it worked, the MKV files play on my Blu-Ray player from the USB hard drive. From ISO files, the conversion/extraction time is about the same (~10 min/6GB) as extracting to VOB. There really is not much advantage over VOB files, however, except with the VOB there is sometimes a warning message about "this audio format is not supported" that did not affect playback.

    MENUS
    Now, backtracking from my original statement, suppose I DO want menus in order to see, and link to, the chapters that each DVD originally contained? Is there a way to extract the menu and make it link to the corresponding content? Earlier in this thread, it was suggested by Cornucopia that MKV does support menus, but no menu appears in playback of any of the title_xx files that MakeMKV generates (I set the minimum time, in Preferences, to 5 sec., btw, so nothing was "Skipped".)

    Title #1 was added (3 cell(s), 0:00:53)
    Title #2 was added (2 cell(s), 0:02:08)
    Title #3 was added (7 cell(s), 0:30:16)
    Title #4 was added (6 cell(s), 0:30:21)
    Title #5 was added (7 cell(s), 0:30:20)
    Title #6 was added (7 cell(s), 0:30:21)
    Title #7 was added (7 cell(s), 0:30:22)
    Title #8 was added (7 cell(s), 0:30:18)
    Title #9 was added (2 cell(s), 0:00:49)
    Title #10 was added (2 cell(s), 0:00:30)
    Operation successfully completed
    No Blu-Ray players support MKV menus, and they don't currently exist in any meaningful way. Adding menu support to MKV has been on the MKV development team's "To Do" list for years, but has never been formally implemented. http://matroska.org/technical/menu/index.html
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    I realize this is an old thread, but since it comes up in search results about the topic, I thought I'd just update it with a list of devices that I've found so far that should be able to play Blu-ray ISO's (and/or folders) with full menus:

    Egreat A5 / A10 / A11
    Egreat S5A / A1080
    Dune HD Base 3.0
    Dune HD Prime 3.0
    Dune HD MAX
    Dune HD Duo
    Dune HD Smart B1
    Dune HD Smart D1
    Dune HD Smart H1
    Dune HD Solo Lite
    Dune HD Solo 4k
    Dune HD Duo 4k
    HDX-BD1
    Netgear NeoTV 550
    Popcorn Hour A-200 / A-210
    Popcorn Hour A-300
    Popcorn Hour C-200
    Popcorn Hour C-300
    QNAP NMP-1000P
    VidOn.me AV200

    VLC also has a semi-working "full menu" support, and according to rumors, Kodi v18 (Leia) will also join the ranks.

    Do you know of any additional devices that supports full Blu-ray menus? Do share.
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