Any free Blu-Ray Players & Ripper Software available out there?

I just built a new system, the specs of which are in my signature and installed a Bluray burner - LG WH12LS30 as well as a DVD burner - Lite On IHAS424!

My OS is Win 7 - Home Premium 64 bit!

I have a 3 question about playing Bluray media - unfortunately windows for whatever reason has chosen not to support blu ray media in their Media Player, which is a shame! Tried VLC and they also does not support it, yet! So I right now use Power DVD 11 - trail version to play Blu Ray media, but I really don't want to spend another $30 bucks on software to play Blu ray's when the trial expires.

Q 1) Hence are there any free Blu Ray media players out there or codec's I can install to make it play on any of my existing players!

Q 2) Also for Blu Ray ripping software - are there any free rippers available that can rip Blu-ray's? I use Handbrake for my DVD's and it is excellent, but it doesn't recognize Blu Ray discs!

Q 3) What is the best format to convert DVD's to - high quality is what I'm looking for, conversion time and size, I'm not so particular about, I don't convert a lot, but when I do, I'd like to retain the highest quality possible! I use Format Factory for these format conversions!

I also have format factory and Nero 9 essentials installed! I read else where that the Media Player Classic - Home Cinema does support Blu ray's haven't tried it yet, does any one know whether it does for sure, nothing about Blu-ray is mentioned on their site?

Any suggestions or advice on these are welcome! Thanks in advance!

Blu Ray movies are encoded in a close format and the only legal way to gain access is by paying a license fee. This is of course because the MPAA wants to fight piracy, and is used for much the same purpose as HDCP.

search the forums, plenty of threads covering how to rip BR and other stuff should help you along.

lasserith said:

Blu Ray movies are encoded in a close format and the only legal way to gain access is by paying a license fee. This is of course because the MPAA wants to fight piracy, and is used for much the same purpose as HDCP.

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100% wrong.

MrGuvernment said:

search the forums, plenty of threads covering how to rip BR and other stuff should help you along.

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What he said. Either look in this section or the HTPC forum. Heck, a few threads down is this.

I could have sworn when the Blu Ray format came out everyone was raging over the lock on the Blu Ray content. I guess I was mistaken never had Blu Ray myself.

Thanks MrGuvernment - I did search the forums on multiple places before I posted this - no freeware to be found anywhere, and I wasn't ready to pay for it - which is why I wanted the opinion of the forum users - like yourself, who might have come across the same situation personally or while helping someone else out!

Waiting for some one to point me in the right direction regarding any freeware out there or is it that there aren't any, not even on open source, I find that hard to believe ???

If so then, I would rather return my OEM LG Blu-ray Drive and buy a new one in a box, which should come with a player/software, right?

Either look in this section or the HTPC forum. Heck, a few threads down is this.

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I did see that thread, but it did not answer the questions I had, hence posting it here. I guess I'll wait for someone who has a real solution/answer!

@ lasserith - Thanks for the post but you are absolutely and completely wrong as the other guy said! There are 100's of software manufacturers who SELL software which does exactly that and even decrypts protected media, which is all completely legal and legit, my question was about any freeware (without outright purchasing the software) that anyone knows of which does the same thing!

As far as piracy and MPAA goes read this about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) http://chillingeffects.org/anticircumvention/faq.cgi#QID118

Blu Ray movies are encoded in a close format and the only legal way to gain access is by paying a license fee.

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- think a little harder about this before you post something like that! So according to you the regulating agencies and copyright protectors does not care about DVD/CD/Streaming/VHS etc just this tough encoding for Blu-rays (which only has 19% market share)!

Please understand that copying or ripping media (Blu-ray or any other) for private, non-commercial use is absolutely legal in the USA as clearly mentioned in the link above - read the answer to the question "What is fair use?" - so you can get to the system and start ripping & copying to your hearts content or till you run out of disk space and as long as you don't distribute it with commercial intent (mainly meaning making money from it) you are not breaking any laws!

This is what I intend to do - I'm part of the media industry and has fought this battle multiple times before, so I will try to stay on the legal side!

I didn't mean to imply in any way that what you were doing was illegal I had just been told in the past the reason no free option existed is because any program written to read the blu-ray movie format had to pay a licensing fee, and that a program which opened the format without paying this fee was illegal. Thus preventing any freeware to play blu-ray. Just trying to clarify I was never attacking you, it's hard to get tone across on the internet.

@lasserith - never took it as an attack, just wanted to clear the wrong impression you had about ripping movies that you owned!

Found a great free Blu-ray player - has played everything that I have thrown at it so far, including Blu-rays!

I guess it has been around for quite sometime now, surprised no one had heard about it! It was suggested by another forum poster elsewhere!

Here is the link for anyone looking for the same answer as me - DA Player - Free Blu-Ray player, I installed it a week back and have used it extensively for testing different formats and discs and no problems so far, so I'm keeping it!

For ripping I'm using MakeMKV - , this one is the best I have come across so far, not free though, but still better than Any DVD HD's subscription plan, I did use AnyDVD HD(trial) and Handbrake as well for Blu-ray ripping, but it is much slower and the quality is not as good as the MKV! Make MKV does rip a bluray in under 1.5 hrs max on my rig, with just a couple of clicks, and this is with a simultaneous DVD rip going on! It does rip DVD's as well which is also great!

So thanks to all the good folks who tried to help! This issue has been resolved!

It is very hard to find the free printers especially for the blue ray DVDs...!

Thanks aoommen, for coming back and posting the findings you discovered on your own. +rep for contributing back to the HardForum community!

MeTaSpARKs said:

Thanks aoommen, for coming back and posting the findings you discovered on your own. +rep for contributing back to the HardForum community!

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Thank you guys for having a helpful resource to turn to when anyone is need of help regarding any issues with computers! Free tech support as I would see it!

Happy to help (drop in the ocean), hope I would be able to do more! Good day!