Alright, I have been searching my ass off and come up with nothing. I went through the sticky guide as well, and everything is working great, EXCEPT Blu-Ray discs. I get the "No CODEC found" message when I try to play them. How or what codec do I need to get this rolling???
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Playing Blu Ray Discs In Windows 7 Media Center
- Thread starter REDYOUCH
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CrimandEvil
Dick with a heart of gold
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You don't. The only way is to either rip them (the movie file is playable natively) or use a third party like Total Media Theater or PowerDVD and have it auto launch or something. The state of Blu ray playback on the PC is kind of crappy.
Hmm, this is very disappointing. How easy is it to get an option in media center that will auto-launch a suitable program for playing blu ray discs? Rather, a shortcut that is selectable from Media Center would probably be best.
TMT intgrates nicely with VMC, or W7MC, not sure about PowerDVD.
rhansen5_99
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I think I tried Power DVD with Win7 beta, and once it was installed media center was able to play blurays. I think that you just need the codec there and then media center can handle the discs. I will try on the rc when I get home.
no_control
[H]ard|Gawd
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PDVD9 integrates with WMC just like TMT does. I can confirm in the RTM I can play BD using either PDVD9 or WMC(with PDVD installed)
no_control
[H]ard|Gawd
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I don't know about the hdcp. I have anydvd. So I don't have to put up with that nonsense.
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Posted via [H] Mobile Device
dugn
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Both because of the licensing costs MSFT has to pay to 3rd parties and the fact that in-box tools, DLLs and applications from 3rd parties are becoming the newest targets for malware and trojans, MSFT has reduced costs and attack area by severely restricting the 'in-box' offerings - especially of 3rd party components.
Don't forget that MS also doesn't get 'a pass' like Apple when it wants to add additional functionality to the OS. MSFT has to go through legal reviews and deal with outcry of competitors and even other countries. Which is why Movie Maker, Messenger, basic POP email (Outlook Express/Windows Mail) and Photo Viewer are absent from Win7. Sure, you can add them back with a free download. But that's tpart of what factors into their decisions.
As for Blu-ray integration into WMC: it's easy and a number of 3rd parties are doing it very nicely (see replies above). But no, MSFT's lack of Blu-Ray wasn't an oversight or a way to cheapen Windows 7. But rather a way to keep costs low, avoid riling competition and enhance an active 3rd-party developer ecosystem.
CrimandEvil
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Uh, this is only true of Europe who is trying to force MS into removing all kinds of features from it's OS.
That's why we have all these half assed solutions to a basic problem: no native support for Blu ray playback in Media Center. Thankfully PowerDVD and TMT have fixed that slightly but their solution is far from excellent or even acceptable.
The reason why MS didn't add any kind of blu ray playback support into Win7 is because they don't want too. They've said this is numerous interviews. They see the future as downloadable/streaming content while physical media like Blu Ray are already dead to them (MS was also a part of the HD DVD group). They added support for third parties to do what they themselves are refusing to do. That's why it was left out.
That's why we have all these half assed solutions to a basic problem: no native support for Blu ray playback in Media Center. Thankfully PowerDVD and TMT have fixed that slightly but their solution is far from excellent or even acceptable.
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Snowknight26
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No. Only programs such as AnyDVD HD will strip the AACS keys, bypassing the need for HDCP altogether.
Diablo2K
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Its more than they just don't want to, it has more to do with they dont want to have to pay for the Blu-ray liscensing fees. this is why Blue-ray players cost so much, they have to pay the fees plus the cost of deveopment of the software players.
This is the same issue windows had when DVD first came out. there was no native windows support for DVD movies, you had to download/buy a software player to get them to work. After a while the fees are no longer ineffect and you can get free codecs to get DVD to work. The same should be true for Blu-ray, as soon as the fees are no longer in effect you can simply get the correct codec and have native support for Blu-ray.
There has been a rumor of iTunes offering Blu-ray playback, but I have not heard of any details or any more info on it as of yet.
w1retap
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Blu-ray just sucks to deal with anyway. Be glad it's not part of your HTPC experience. Ripping the disks and removing the encryption, then throwing it into a MKV container is the way to go. One click play, no bs drm shit and player updates that ruin your night when you have a group of friends over who want to watch a new movie and it ends up not playing. I don't know how many times I had to sit and fiddle with player updates for 20 minutes because a disk refused to play. Fuck that, I'm done with it.. never again.
QFT.
BluRay discs are a pain to deal with. Files stored on your media PC so much easier to deal with. And you can play them in Win7 media centre without problems. So if you copy the BluRay to your HardDrive, you can play it in Win7 or any other O/S.
Only issue is there are limitations on the subtitles, but if you're playing this on a proper cinema like home theater system, that may not be an issue.
CrimandEvil
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Only ripped Blu rays are playable in W7. It doesn't support disc playback.
heatlesssun
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TotalMedia Theater Platinum 3 + AnyDVD HD = AWESOME!
Really I don't know what's up with some people but this solution works great. The only thing I can't do is play ripped BD's from TMT in Windows Media Center but it works fine from the standalone TMT.
Really I don't know what's up with some people but this solution works great. The only thing I can't do is play ripped BD's from TMT in Windows Media Center but it works fine from the standalone TMT.
no_control
[H]ard|Gawd
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FYI - Playing ripped bd from PDVD9 in WMC is no issue
MrGuvernment
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No different then XP not being able to natively play DVD's.
They need to pay for licensing fee's and other crap to be able to play it, BR has been out for years, but it only took out HD what , a year ago? and has only just began becoming popular.
Considering windows 7 can play pretty much every other file around, i would say they did just fine, sure if they did allow Windows 7 or Vista to play HD, they would be getting sued for including more of their stuff in the OS
Eaxctly what the other above have said already
CrimandEvil
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No different then XP not being able to natively play DVD's.
They need to pay for licensing fee's and other crap to be able to play it, BR has been out for years, but it only took out HD what , a year ago? and has only just began becoming popular.
Considering windows 7 can play pretty much every other file around, i would say they did just fine, sure if they did allow Windows 7 or Vista to play HD, they would be getting sued for including more of their stuff in the OS
Eaxctly what the other above have said already
Well, the big difference is that XP MCE allowed you to play back DVDs with a codec installed. No version of Windows does that. That's the point. MS has said several times that they're not going to "waste their time" coding Media Center for Blu ray playback and instead are leaving up to third parties to add that feature through plug ins. That only means we're stuck with an app launcher if we want to add BR to our HTPCs. That's the whole point.
MS doesn't want to add native BR disc playback, even with a codec installed, because they see the future as DLC. That's the whole fucking point. It has nothing to do with licensing fees. It has nothing to do with "getting sued." It's because they don't want too.
They would have to rewrite their video player's code to add in support for BR and they just don't care enough about physical media to do that.
kent
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I love this attitude. If more hardware makers and software developers would talk to people like w1retap, we'd all have a much much better computing experience.
Using software players such as powerdvd and arcsoft will downsample the truehd and DTS-HD MA audio.
As has been said, just rip it, audio into lossless flac and get 100% of the audio and none of the DRM nonsense.
You don't even need to install powerdvd or arcsoft. Play them straight from media center and organize it all via mediabrowser.
As has been said, just rip it, audio into lossless flac and get 100% of the audio and none of the DRM nonsense.
You don't even need to install powerdvd or arcsoft. Play them straight from media center and organize it all via mediabrowser.
The easiest way to play bloooray in W7 is to rip the movie to HDD using AnyDVd HD and a very nice app called ClownBD that enables conversion to .TS files that MC plays no problems
Clown BD also lets you keep any sub titles you may want and also allows untouched/lossless audio
Clown BD also lets you keep any sub titles you may want and also allows untouched/lossless audio
Does clown HD rip audio to flac? It's the only way you are getting lossless audio out of your HTPC that is untouched. I get the impression that clownBD is just a front end to eac3to. Of which there are many.
And the ONLY decoder you can use for DTS-HD MA without any loss of audio is the one in arcsoft totalmedia theater 2. That must be installed when making rips of disc with that audio.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=125966
The Sonic (E-)AC3 decoder forcefully applies DRC. As a result I do not recommend to use the Sonic (E-)AC3 decoder. The current version of the Sonic TrueHD decoder doesn't work properly at all. The Sonic DTS decoder is very good for DTS, DTS-ES, DTS-96/24, DTS-HD Master Audio and DTS-HD High Resolution tracks. The only problem is that it decodes DTS-HD 7.1 tracks only as 5.1. Most DTS-ES and DTS-HD Master Audio 6.1 tracks are fully decoded as 6.1, though. The Nero (E-)AC3 and Nero TrueHD decoders are working perfectly fine, but are limited to 5.1 channels. The Nero DTS decoder ignores the additional DTS-HD information and only decodes the DTS core. The Cyberlink decoders always only output 16bit and can't be used outside of PowerDVD. So they currently do not make a lot of sense for eac3to. The libav/ffmpeg (E-)AC3 and DTS decoders work really well, but the output is not 100% identical to the Dolby/DTS reference decoders. I'm not sure whether there's a difference in audio quality. Decide for yourself. The libav/ffmpeg (E-)AC3 and DTS decoders are both limited to 5.1. Furthermore the DTS decoder ignores the additional DTS-HD information. The libav/ffmpeg TrueHD decoder works perfectly fine including full 7.1 decoding. The ArcSoft DTS decoder seems to be perfect for DTS and DTS-HD decoding. It supports every format and channel configuration that exists including 6.1 and 7.1. The ArcSoft TrueHD and ArcSoft (E-)AC3 decoders are currently not supported by eac3to.
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Yes TMT 2 or 3 is needed if audio is left untouched using ClownBD
To play back 100% totally untouched HD audio from a PC you still need a PAP which ATM is only possible using a Xonar HDAV1.3/slim played thru TMT that is supplied with the sound card or the new Auzen HD card (over 300AU bucks
) and on top of that you need to buy Cyberlinks PDVDTo play back 100% totally untouched HD audio from a PC you still need a PAP which ATM is only possible using a Xonar HDAV1.3/slim played thru TMT that is supplied with the sound card or the new Auzen HD card (over 300AU bucks
You probably mean untouched HD audio direct from a bluray disc?
Because from a rip you can get 100% of the audio out of your PC without the need for those cards.