Blu Ray Reader For Mac Software
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Dear Lifehacker
My laptop came with a Blu-ray drive, but I can't seem to play Blu-rays with it, and everyone says I need to buy extra expensive software to use it. Even VLC can't play them. (I thought it played everything!) Is paying $50 my only option?
Sincerely
Miffed Movie Lover
Dear Miffed,
Everyone you've talked to is half right. Sony's licensing on Blu-ray is obnoxious, and it means it's pretty difficult to play Blu-rays on your computer—in fact, Windows is the only operating system that can play them back natively. However, there are a few workarounds. Here are the best ways we've found for easily playing Blu-ray on a PC. Note that Windows users can use all three methods, while Mac or Linux users will need to go with the more complicated methods two or three.
5 Best Blu-ray Ripper Software for Mac & Windows. Which makes it easy to view any protected Blu-ray UHD movies on UHD media players and playback software. This Blu-ray ripper tool is a bit more expensive than other rippers mentioned above, but you will have a free trial to use for 10 minutes with your Blu-ray disk and it's user-friendly. MCE Technologies sells a USB Super-BluDrive for $79, which includes software that can play Blu-ray movies (the same program I’m going to look at below, Mac Blu-ray Player).
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The Default Method: Blu-ray Software
The only officially supported way to play Blu-rays on Windows is to, as you say, use a commercial program like CyberLink PowerDVD. Usually this retails for around $50. However, if your computer came with a Blu-ray drive, you should already have some sort of Blu-ray-capable software on your computer. Very few manufacturers will ship a computer with a Blu-ray drive without including compatible software. Check to see if a software Blu-ray player came pre-installed on your system that you just didn't know about. If you've reinstalled a clean copy of Windows, you'll either have to reinstall it from your computer's recovery DVDs, or use one of the methods below.
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If your computer didn't come with a Blu-ray drive and you added it yourself, the drive should have come with a CD that includes something like PowerDVD on it. I always, always recommend keeping the CDs that come with your computers and hardware just in case they contain important things you need later. If you threw it away by accident, you'll either have to buy the software anew or use one of the more complicated methods below.
The Easy Method: Watch Your Movie in 30 Minutes using VLC
The easiest way to watch Blu-rays without commercial software is to use a program called MakeMKV to rip the movie, and then watch it using VLC. To do this:
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- Install MakeMKV as described in our original Blu-ray how-to.
- Insert your Blu-ray disc. Make sure you have enough space on your drive (depending on the disc, this could be up to 50 GB).
- Fire up MakeMKV and head to File > Open Disc and choose your Blu-ray drive. MakeMKV will open the disc, and then present you with the titles on the disc. Hit the MakeMKV button and your movie should start ripping.
- When it's done, just double click on the resulting file and it will play in VLC.
This is definitely the easiest way to watch your Blu-ray movies, but you'll have to wait for the movie to rip. It shouldn't take long, so as long as you plan ahead at least a half hour, this is definitely the method to go with.
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The Complicated Method: Watch Your Movie Now with XBMC
Alternatively, the XBMC media center software has a Blu-ray plugin that works similarly to the above. You'll still need MakeMKV, but it's pretty easy to set up:
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- Install MakeMKV as described in our original Blu-ray how-to.
- Install the Blu-ray pluginas described in our feature on plugins in XBMC 10.
- Insert your Blu-ray disc. Make sure you have enough space on your drive (depending on the disc, this could be up to 50 GB).
- Open up XBMC and go to Videos > Video Add-Ons > BluRay Player with MakeMKV. From there you should be able to play the main movie on the disc. It might take a few moments to buffer, but I've found that it works pretty well.
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Mac Blu Ray Player Software
That's it! Whenever you want to watch a Blu-ray movie, you should be able to just open up XBMC and fire up the Blu-ray plugin to watch your movie. It should stream pretty nicely, but note that streaming is an experimental feature of MakeMKV, so you might have a buffering issue once in a while. In my experience I've found it to work quite well, though.
Note that if you'd prefer not to use XBMC, you can also stream Blu-rays from MakeMKV to VLC as described here. I chose to feature the XBMC method since it only requires manual work the first time you do it, after which it becomes easy, while the VLC method requires you to manually set up the stream every time.
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As you can see, the licensing issues surrounding Blu-ray make it a bit more difficult to play them on your computer than DVDs. Hopefully, though, one of these methods works for your needs, and will help you watch those high definition movies on your computer or home theater PC.
Sincerely,
Lifehacker.
Mac Blu Ray Player Free
P.S. Got any of your own favored methods for playing Blu-ray discs? Share them with us in the comments.
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Best Mac Blu Ray Software
You can contact Whitson Gordon, the author of this post, at whitson@lifehacker.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
Best Computer Blu Ray Software
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