free software player still a fantasy?

[MilesAhead]

Not to

but is a free Windows software player that plays Blu-Ray discs right from the optical drive still a fantasy?

Just wondering if the state of the art has improved lately.

[admin]

There are free AVCHD players, and with certain tools I won't mention, you'll at least get out of the copy protection. But if there is a free player, it will be too much of a work in progress to work effectively.

So it's the commercial trio of WinDVD Pro, PowerDVD Ultra or Arcsoft TMT for now.

[MilesAhead]

Thanks for the info. I'm late to the Blu-Ray party but I'm picking up a tidbit here and there.

[admin]

Have you already got a Blu-ray drive? Many of these come with some free playback software (although usually limited to 2 channels output), as do branded notebook/PCs with Blu-ray drives.

[UncasMS]

so far i have only seen powerdvd bundled with bd drives and powerdvd refuses to play files from harddrive so it's worthless

i like ArcSoft's TotalMedia Theatre Platinum best

[MilesAhead]

Have you already got a Blu-ray drive? Many of these come with some free playback software (although usually limited to 2 channels output), as do branded notebook/PCs with Blu-ray drives.

Yes, the burner can also read BluRay. It's not that big a deal since my PC is not hooked up to an HDTV. It's more or less just a convenience if I could look at the content right off the optical drive, if you know what I mean.

[dr_ml422]

I'm a lil lost here. Can't you watch a brand new Blu-ray flic on your PC if you have the optical drive to read it? why would they block a legally owned Blu-ray movie? If I missed something please tell me. Also even though the PC isn't Hi-def ready you can still view Hi-Def if it's playable no? Or just a downloaded file?

I'm new to the party too until those drives come down a bit. Only thing needed PC wise is a 5.1 or 7.1 system, as mom's just got a Sony Bravia from Sis for her B-day/X-mas gift. I could easily hook up that set to any of my builds. Thnx.

[admin]

I'm a lil lost here. Can't you watch a brand new Blu-ray flic on your PC if you have the optical drive to read it? why would they block a legally owned Blu-ray movie? If I missed something please tell me. Also even though the PC isn't Hi-def ready you can still view Hi-Def if it's playable no? Or just a downloaded file?

I'm new to the party too until those drives come down a bit. Only thing needed PC wise is a 5.1 or 7.1 system, as mom's just got a Sony Bravia from Sis for her B-day/X-mas gift. I could easily hook up that set to any of my builds. Thnx.

I think UncasMS was talking about ArcSoft's TotalMedia Theatre being able to play Blu-ray movies off the hard-drive, as opposed to PowerDVD, which only allows Blu-ray discs to be read from the optical drive.

Not sure what you mean by having a "hi-def ready" PC. All you really need is a Blu-ray drive, the Blu-ray player software and a PC powerful enough to decode the movie.

To get the best out of Blu-ray, you'll need a monitor that is at least 1920x1080 that supports HDCP input (most, if not all, that support this resolution should support HDCP as well, especially if it has an HDMI input). Blu-ray movies will still play if HDCP is not present via the VGA output, but resolution will be reduced. The audio is a different matter and it is quite complicated, and the "best" may require a HDMI audio capable receiver, although the on-board 7.1 audio in most motherboards these days will be "good enough" for PC viewing.

[dr_ml422]

By decode you simply mean being able to play back the movie correct? You know what decode means in it's other connotation. So the PC has to have some extra puppy power to just play a disc from the optical drive? How much more standard playback does Blu-ray need to just be seen on the PC monitor? Why all the decoding if the Blu-ray drive will read it?

[admin]

By decode I mean playback, not decrypting.

For the monitor, basically if it supports HDCP, then you'll be able to watch Blu-ray at the highest resolution of the monitor. The monitor will have to be 1920x1080 (Full HD) or better in order be able to display all the pixels in the Blu-ray movie, although on a smallish monitor, it's questionable if you're able to see a huge difference even if your monitor is of the 1280x720 (or 1366x768) variety. If you monitor doesn't support HDCP, you're limited to VGA input, and the movie will play back at a reduced resolution. Your graphics card also has to support HDCP. Pretty much any monitor and graphics card purchased in the last two years should support HDCP, especially those that supports HDMI (since HDMI must support HDCP).

[MilesAhead]

I was just talking about a free software player that can play a Blu-Ray disc in the Blu-Ray optical drive on the PC. I've heard that Media Player Classic Home Theater is supposed to work, but I can't get it to work on my machine. Just gives "cannot render" errors. I tried all the settings. I'm using Shark's Codecs but I'm not sure what all the settings should be afa the Shark configuration program. Maybe they have some setting I don''t.

It seems other people have gotten MPCHT to work. They must know something I don't. Afaik that's the only free player I've seen where people have claimed they use it to watch Blu-Ray right from the optical drive.

I'm using an old CRT monitor with VGA connection. I don't know if that's the fly in the ointment. At any rate I'm not trying to set up as a PC Home Theater. Just thought it would be a convenience to take a quick look at a movie on the PC to get an idea how it looks. I don't want to sit at the PC for 2 hours watching a movie or network it over to the HDTV. Just wanted to be able to peek and see if the video looks good.

[dr_ml422]

I got you now Admin. It's just that in different posts on the web they use the word decode to mean decrypt sometimes so I was thrown off. By hd-Ready I was just going by your guide in the main forum of how to know if your PC is hi-def ready etc...

Yes, both my monitor, and GPU are HDCP compliant.

@ Miles I could never get any of those freeware to work consistently. I don't even bother anymore. Matter of fact WMP seems to be lil stable on 7 x64.

Soup has Sharks Codecs, maybe he can drop in, and share his settings. Bottom line though is they're a pita.

I'm now going to have to figure out how to kill explorer, or find a fix for it eating my memory alive. Just a lil while on, and windows closes on me. Gotta say this whole genre actually keeps me on my toes while frustrating me at the same time.

[admin]

There's always the possibility to repackage the Blu-ray movie by demuxing and then muxing the various streams into something that has free players like AVCHD or just MKV/MP4.

[MilesAhead]

I hear you admin. Right now for checking out the video I'm using Splash Lite. It can handle .mkv .mp4 etc.. Also it seems to have more tolerance than VLC with .mkv files. On files that cause VLC to crash when you advance the slider, Splash Lite doesn't seem to hiccup. Only thing is on Vista64 I found out on the support forum is if you open the Options Menu it will crash right away with some TV Tuner Cards. The work-around is to disable the TV Tuner in device manager(I'm not using it for anything yet anyway.) The next release is supposed to fix that bug.

So far I haven't been able to detect any difference with hardware acceleration disabled/enabled, so there's probably no reason to open the Options.

For watching HD content on the HDTV I got the WD USB player. So far I'd say it's worth the $100. I got another docking station so that I can just swap internal drives without plugging and unplugging wires etc.. I hit the power switch on the docking station instead of pulling the USB connection.

[MilesAhead]

Just a comment in case people are considering WD HDTV player for USB drives. I bought the "1st generation" model(not the "live" the one without networking) and since the "2nd generation" has come out I've read some of the user comments on that one. My WD player has some issues if you have large .mkv files. I'm starting to think USB 2.0 isn't fast enough. The ideal would be a USB 3.0 interface.

Seems like on some large .mkv with high bit rates you can get stuttering playback, and drop out of the audio. Sometimes you can "fix" it by ff and rewind playing around until it decides to start playing well again(I don't know how much memory they use to buffer content but it's not enough.)

I've seen a user comment from a guy who owns both the 1st and 2nd generation that the 2nd generation fixed a lot of problems, but SD content isn't upscaled nearly as well as with the 1st gen. player. Looks like 3rd time may be the charm. Hopefully WD will come out with 3rd gen. player with USB 3.0 interface.

Other than avoiding purchase of a Blu-Ray DVD player the main advantage of owning the WD player is supposed to be playback without having to encode to DVD. Well, some files with high bitrates I think it will require a 3 or 4 hour session with Handbrake to compress it down to where WD can handle it smoothly. The annoying part is it seems unpredictable. It probably has something to do with pulling other streams out of the file or something. Some files if there are too many audio streams it doesn't want to give you any audio at all. Trial and error seems to be it at this point.

The AviHD type files I've played so far look great. If you can get the .mkv and .mp4 to play smoothly they look great on my HDTV also. It's just a matter of getting the best quality without going past the point where the player can deliver. That's why I think USB 2.0 where you can sequential read around 23 MB/sec just isn't fast enough.