Best Blu-Ray player software for PC

Am I the only who rips his own blu rays with both lossless audio (converted to FLAC for MPC-HC playback) and uncompressed video? Sure the size can range from 14 to 32gb but at least I can put my old HDDs to good use (thanks to a SATA/USB adaptor)

Anydvd + eac3to + mkvtools and then MPC-HC for playback.

Takes about 30-40mins to copy the content on the HDD and then about 20-30mins to create the .mkv with the FLAC audio (no SSD and no quad core btw).

Playing back directly from the disk has sometimes given me troubles (slight hiccups for example) so I don't bother with PowerDVD or TMT now. TMT was decent though, but you can hardly configure anything in it and hardware acceleration isn't quite as good as CoreAVC+madVR (on my rig at least).

Edit : to cut the size down I do remove all the useless bonuses and secondary soundtracks etc I only keep the subs if the film has an original audio in a language I don't speak.
 
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I actually do full copies of the movies as the movies that I enjoy I like to see extras and such, storage space is cheap and they are more energy efficient these days. I have had a media server for so long now that as newer higher capacity drives come out I have been slowly swapping out my original 250-500gb drives to 2TB drives and migrating data then putting the 250-500gb drives in various other pcs for friends.
 
kalston said:
Am I the only who rips his own blu rays with both lossless audio (converted to FLAC for MPC-HC playback) and uncompressed video?
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I just rip with AnyDVD and use TotalMedia Theater for playback straight from the AnyDVD rip.
 
While space is cheap these days I still like to compress my BRs using Handbrake.

As mentioned earlier in the thread HandBrake doesn't do DTS-HD or TrueHD, however you can still compress the video and then remux the original HD audio back in afterward. It obviously adds in a couple of extra gigs back in. But it saves me a ton of space vs uncompressed, and I still get the great 1080p picture and untouched audio :D
 
Personally, I don't rip Blu Rays. The HDD space isn't there yet. I rip my DVDs using AnyDVD and compress using Handbrake. For playing Blu Rays I've used Power DVD which was crap, Total media Theater 3 which was great, and Total Media Theater 5 is going on shortly.

Total Media Theater 5 is the only one I would consider. Power DVD pissed me off in a special way.
 
PolygonGTC said:
Personally, I don't rip Blu Rays. The HDD space isn't there yet. I rip my DVDs using AnyDVD and compress using Handbrake. For playing Blu Rays I've used Power DVD which was crap, Total media Theater 3 which was great, and Total Media Theater 5 is going on shortly.

Total Media Theater 5 is the only one I would consider. Power DVD pissed me off in a special way.
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PowerDVD was terrible for me and made me believe that my BR were damaged because it would stutter/go out of sync at very specific points in the film for absolutely no reason. The same disk played perfectly in other players, doh. Sound was a bit weird too compared to TMT, not sure why.
I've been thinking of putting my flawless BR rip back on disks since I got a BR writer but those are still far too expensive, HDDs end up being much cheaper, especially when you keep the ones from older computers like I do :D
 
Wow I dont get it guys most of you bash on Power DVD 10 and I can safely say I have never had issues with it, If anything I love it. Only negative was that I hate the home screen with movies you love or might love. Besides that it was wicked easy to lead and play any blu ray. Quickness it takes less than 2 seconds for the movie to load and play. Never had issues with skipping or audio going off.

Makes me wonder if your guys system is messed up or have other junk running in the background that conflicts with power dvd 10.

I have power dvd 10 ultra full version and have been very happy with it, it also send my audio to my receiver and the cool light shows up and says DTS Master Audio and so on.

I actually was the other way around tried TMT and it crashed on me multiple times and didnt like some movies and found the guy on it not to appealing to me. Again that last statement was preference.

weird abotu power dvd not getting any love, its ok I love power dvd 10. Just wished it could stretch image so i can use my projector and panoramic lens to have the wide movie experience again.

before anyone says MPC yes i do like it but its a pain to use with XBMC and wife hates the fact that not idiot friendly. Also to get DTS Master Audio is a pain and not stable with MPC. But I do use it when i want some animation movies to fill my tv. I know it make the pic ugly but you cant tell from 20 ft way when your cooking.
 
ltcharles said:
Wow I dont get it guys most of you bash on Power DVD 10 and I can safely say I have never had issues with it, If anything I love it. Only negative was that I hate the home screen with movies you love or might love. Besides that it was wicked easy to lead and play any blu ray. Quickness it takes less than 2 seconds for the movie to load and play. Never had issues with skipping or audio going off.

Makes me wonder if your guys system is messed up or have other junk running in the background that conflicts with power dvd 10.

I have power dvd 10 ultra full version and have been very happy with it, it also send my audio to my receiver and the cool light shows up and says DTS Master Audio and so on.

I actually was the other way around tried TMT and it crashed on me multiple times and didnt like some movies and found the guy on it not to appealing to me. Again that last statement was preference.

weird abotu power dvd not getting any love, its ok I love power dvd 10. Just wished it could stretch image so i can use my projector and panoramic lens to have the wide movie experience again.

before anyone says MPC yes i do like it but its a pain to use with XBMC and wife hates the fact that not idiot friendly. Also to get DTS Master Audio is a pain and not stable with MPC. But I do use it when i want some animation movies to fill my tv. I know it make the pic ugly but you cant tell from 20 ft way when your cooking.
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As far as I'm concerned the only things running in the background were the retarded crapware and services PowerDVD installs itself.
At least with TMT all the Arcsoft processes shut down along with the program itself and it didn't need to have services starting with windows (in TMT3 that is, older versions seemed a bit crap).

PowerDVD caused me trouble in both 7 and XP with diff GPUs, CPUs and mobos, and seeing how the other BR playback programs work flawlessly I dare say it has issues.

What do you mean with "make the pic ugly" btw? MPC can be configured to enhance the PQ of SD material greatly if that's what you were referring to (and it's not that hard at all)
 
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MakeMKV and done. Pulls the Video and your choice of audio out and puts it into an MKV container, no encoding or downsampling. Nice and clean, oh yea and FREE in beta. reg edit to allow MKV's to play in WMC7 along with a couple codecs and enjoy. Oh and it's just as fast as your BD drive will allow it to be.
 
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Omegas said:
MakeMKV and done. Pulls the Video and your choice of audio out and puts it into an MKV container, no encoding or downsampling. Nice and clean, oh yea and FREE in beta. reg edit to allow MKV's to play in WMC7 along with a couple codecs and enjoy. Oh and it's just as fast as your BD drive will allow it to be.
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This seems too good to be true. It can bypass BR protections while remaining free and legal? wtf

Edit : ok, it's a beta but then that means we don't know for how long it will remain free.
 
I"ve been using it for over a year. Every month he puts out another key that's good for a month and updates are simple and quick
 
Looks allright as an alternative to renewing Anydvd trials :p But I'm not sure how often it is updated though, even with Anydvd I've managed to buy a BR that wasn't supported yet and had to wait a bit for them to fix it.
 
kalston said:
PowerDVD was terrible for me and made me believe that my BR were damaged because it would stutter/go out of sync at very specific points in the film for absolutely no reason. The same disk played perfectly in other players, doh. Sound was a bit weird too compared to TMT, not sure why.
I've been thinking of putting my flawless BR rip back on disks since I got a BR writer but those are still far too expensive, HDDs end up being much cheaper, especially when you keep the ones from older computers like I do :D
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That was the same exact problem I was having with PDVD.

kalston said:
Looks allright as an alternative to renewing Anydvd trials :p But I'm not sure how often it is updated though, even with Anydvd I've managed to buy a BR that wasn't supported yet and had to wait a bit for them to fix it.
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Which is why I just bought a lifetime license for AnyDVD.
 
PolygonGTC said:
Which is why I just bought a lifetime license for AnyDVD.
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I did as well. AnyDVD is a must for anyone serious about Blu Ray, I cannot stress just how much easier it has made my life. If you're going to invest in expensive Blu Ray media just buy it, you won't regret it.
 
I have (3) Bluray players installed on my computers and each one has Arcsoft TotalMedia 5. The user interface is nice and intergrates well with Windows 7. The rest of the family enjoys the ease of use and watch bluray movies all the time (and often invite their friends over for movie watching parties).
 
Are there any software players that could get around a lack of HDCP on a display?
 
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