Blu Ray playback for pc?

[Kalmado]

I purchased an oem blu ray player and need to find some free software. So far the only ones I have found is iDeer and PotPlayer. While this is petty, the names are so terrible I do not want to use them! Any suggestions on free software?

[Niya]

Um... Interesting that you found any at all. As far as i'm aware of, the decryption part for BDs is (obviously) closed source and hasn't been hacked yet, so there should be no players available that can play BDs without getting officially licensed. And being licensed means: pay for it.

Oh, and btw, iDeer is shareware.

€dit: just tried out PotPlayer, it does NOT play BDs, at least not "normal" (= protected) ones. So it's probably just another player that knows how to handle the BD format, but only when it's not encrypted.

[Kalmado]

Thanks for the reply. Interesting indeed. This player is for a rig I'm selling, but I wouldn't have bothered buying the player if I had known. It was a rushed purchase because of price ($22.99). Any idea on cheapest then?

[Omniyoji]

I thought I heard a while back about a version of VLC w/ Blu-ray support? No?

[Niya]

BD yes, encryption no. I think there was a plugin that allowed playback of encrypted discs, but they had to remove it (or never officially offered it) because of legal reasons.

Correction: libaacs is freely available and open source, but to work it needs a key database and/or certificates, and those are illegal to offer.

Aside from buying BD-ready players like PowerDVD, getting AnyDVD might be an option. It decrypts the disc "on the fly" and enables playback in any player that can handle (unencrypted) BDs.

[Oreth]

Must be completely out of the loop on this but basically if you use a Blue Ray Disc and put it in a Blue Ray DVD Drive on the PC you need specialised licensed software player to play the disc? Never even realised.

[Egon]

I remember this being a problem when DVD first came out. I was was so angry as a kid when my DVD player came in and I couldn't play DVD's. I use PowerDVD to play BD's and it works well enough.