posted
...forking over extra dough for blu-ray software?
I can buy a blu-ray burner/player pc drive for the same price as a regular blu-ray player, however, it appears Windows 7 does not natively support blu-ray discs and that third party software is required to watch blu-ray discs. It seems absurd that I'd essentially have to pay three times as much as someone who simply gets a blu-ray player for their TV if I want to watch blu-rays on my pc.
Any simple and free workaround? Or are simple and free workarounds illegal?
I'm interested in this because I feel Netflix's streaming service is kind of limited and I'd like to start getting discs again, but there's no going back to DVDs for me. At this point doing that would be like going back to VHS tapes.
Posts: 668 | Registered: Aug 2010
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posted
I am not an expert on the subject but from what I have read, the blu-ray codec is proprietary to Sony. Sony licenses this to other parties for $20. Microsoft does not include it with Windows since that would instantly add $20 to its cost. This is also why legal software to play them is not free.
I have seen a few free players, for example there is apparently a way to enable it in VLC player. From what I understand though, any free version would violate Sony's patents.
I have also read that many PC blu-ray drives come with the software to play blu-ray movies. The only problem is that frequent software updates result in very unstable performance. Crashes and other problems are quite common.
It sounds like your best options are to either not do it, just get a portable blu-ray player or to convert them to .mkv or .avi or something for play on your computer.
Posts: 891 | Registered: Feb 2010
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Obama
unregistered
posted
Or put on your pirate hat. Certainly seems like the easiest solution to me.
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quote:Originally posted by Kwea: I watch it all the time on my computer, which has a blu-ray drive in it...
...and how do you manage this. Come on, I'm ready to order a blu-ray drive or walk over to Microcenter.
Posts: 668 | Registered: Aug 2010
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posted
I think that there are some open source linux programs on linux forums might be able to help you.
Posts: 134 | Registered: Dec 2000
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