If you want to use a Microsoft product for DVD playback, you have to buy Windows 8.1 Pro with Windows Media Center.For someone in Australia this software costs upwards of A$280 for the lifetime license. In fact Microsoft dropped DVD playback from Windows Media Player in the standard version of Windows 8.x, on account of the licensing costs, among other things. Microsoft is probably never going add the ability to play Blu-Ray discs to Windows Media Player. If VLC doesn't work, or isn't good enough, and you don't want to wait for improvements to be made, then yes, you have to pay to play commercial Blu-Ray discs on a PC. It is true that not everyone can make it work, and it does not yet offer full menu support, but it is the closest you will come to what you want for free. VLC (free) was suggested because it could have the ability to play and decrypt the M2TS file on Blu-Ray discs after installing the necessary (free) Blu-Ray decryption libraries available for it. All these media players either cost money or they don't play Blu-ray discs themselves. Thanks everyone but I'm talking about playing Blu-ray discs themselves, not HD video files ripped from Blu-ray. If you just want a file player that plays (unencrypted) M2TS, the following should be able to do it (with the possible need for additional codecs, depending): That means only 3 true, full-featured BD software players out there (AFAIK): Cyberlink PowerDVD, Corel WinDVD, and ArcSoft TotalMediaTheater. So there will likely not be a FOSS true-BD player for a very long time. Plus, (just like DVD-Video) and this is not a trivial thing: it is copy-protected & encrypted! And to be able to properly navigate, demux, decode & play those things in a CP/encrypted environment REQUIRES that the player be properly licensed ($$). However, just like DVD-Video, BD isn't just a simple container Multimedia experience - there are multiple streams, menus/chapters, navigation and other features to deal with. And there are a number that play them in the M2TS container that is how it is stored on BDs. There are a number of players that play the streams that Blu-ray is made up of: AVC(h.264)/MPEG2/VC-1 video & LPCM/DD/DD+/DDTHD/DTS/DTMA audio. And again, you won't have menus going this route. Even with Passkey Lite providing decryption, the free players will not let you access menus.Īnother option is to rip the movie to the hard drive with MakeMKV, as either an mkv file or as a complete backup, then play the movie with one of the free media players. So if you are insistent on using a free combination, use Passkey Lite combined with a program like Media Player Classic Home Cinema, or Potplayer. You might be able to get by using DVDFab Passkey Lite, which is free, but it is not updated as quickly as the commercial version of the program. If you want to play Blu-ray with a free player, you'll need to either decrypt the movies with a program like AnyDVD HD or DVDFab Passkey running in the background, or decrypt and rip them to the hard drive. The Arcsoft player is the best of these in my opinion. Your choices include PowerDVD, Arcsoft TMT, WinDVD and the Nero player. Only commercial programs will play encrypted discs and give you full access to the menus and extras found on Blu-ray.
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