[rjenkinson]

I'm considering buying a BD-ROM drive, putting it into an external case and using Windows 7 via Bootcamp to watch the movies on my Core i7 iMac. What I'd like to know is whether I'm likely to run into any HDCP issues by going this route. Can I use any drive and any case to do this? I'm also wondering about the software side of things. What can I use to watch the movies? Any advice would be appreciated.

[imitchellg5]

One of these threads needs to be stickied. These questions have been repeated over and over.

I don't think you'll have any HDCP issues playing the BR disc, at least through the iMac's built in display. There are a plethora of Windows 7 apps that will play BR discs, but the OS itself won't. Note that there are also apps that will playback BR 3D discs.

[besson3c]

Will VLC playback BluRay disks from an external BluRay drive, or does it only handle H.264 video files?

[mduell]

Any drive/enclosure is fine: $60 internal drive + $40 enclosure

On the software side the officially sanctioned way is to suck up the whole DRM bag of hurt and buy an app like PowerDVD ($70) that will require a PVP with HDCP and make you run Windows on bare metal.

An alternative to avoid the bag of hurt is an app like AnyDVD HD ($70) that strips off the encryption. Then you can play the files in Windows with your favorite media player (VLC, even WMP on W7). I don't know if the performance is good enough these days to play the video in virtualization, so you'll probably still need to run Windows on bare metal.

A slightly less convenient option is to rip the BR to disk with something like MakeMKV (free). Then play the MKV in whatever media player you like on OS X (VLC, Mplayer OS X Extended, even QT although it may need Perian). It uses about 30GB of disk space, but you can do this from a virtual machine so you don't have to reboot.

With either of the latter two ways you can also use an app like HandBrake to reencode the content for your iPhone/AppleTV/etc.

[rjenkinson]

Originally Posted by mduell 

An alternative to avoid the bag of hurt is an app like AnyDVD HD ($70) that strips off the encryption. Then you can play the files in Windows with your favorite media player (VLC, even WMP on W7). I don't know if the performance is good enough these days to play the video in virtualization, so you'll probably still need to run Windows on bare metal.

A slightly less convenient option is to rip the BR to disk with something like MakeMKV (free). Then play the MKV in whatever media player you like on OS X (VLC, Mplayer OS X Extended, even QT although it may need Perian). It uses about 30GB of disk space, but you can do this from a virtual machine so you don't have to reboot.

So, what advantage would AnyDVD HD have over MakeMKV? Does it require you rip the movie to a large file before playing it in another program? If so, why would I pay $70, instead of using the free MakeMKV?

[mduell]

AnyDVD HD offers the passthrough mode (it can also do ripping if you want) so you can play the video without ripping. Based on my experience with their DVD product, I'd guess it's also probably more up to date with the latest/"greatest" protection schemes.

[rjenkinson]

Thanks. I was wondering if that's what it did, but their website wasn't clear about that.

[The Godfather]

MKMKV works great. I tried it in Windows because that's where my BD drive is in, but the developers maintain version parity in Win,Lin and Mac. I already have two BD movies backed up. 25-30GB per feature, but it will shrink to 1-2GB with H.263.

I tested one of them in a $250 1.6GHz netbook, so I bet it would play in my Macbook Core Duo 2GHz.

[mduell]

Oh damn, I forgot MakeMKV was available for OS X. That makes it by far the easiest way to go.

[drnkn_stylz]

Originally Posted by mduell 

Oh damn, I forgot MakeMKV was available for OS X. That makes it by far the easiest way to go.

I was just checking out the site. So if I have a BD drive and use it on my Mac, I can use MakeMKV to rip my BD discs into .mkv files to playback in VLC? If so that is awesome! I don't usually bring discs with me to watch while travelling (better battery life) so now I could finally include my ever growing BD collection!

[mduell]

Yes.

[The Godfather]

Does it work well?

[is not]

What about these LiteOn internal sata drives?

[Big Mac]

Whether the drive is internal or external shouldn't matter.

[is not]

Thanks Big Mac.

[treemme96]

Originally Posted by rjenkinson 

I'm considering buying a BD-ROM drive, putting it into an external case and using Windows 7 via Bootcamp to watch the movies on my Core i7 iMac. What I'd like to know is whether I'm likely to run into any HDCP issues by going this route. Can I use any drive and any case to do this? I'm also wondering about the software side of things. What can I use to watch the movies? Any advice would be appreciated.

I am really excited that you have released the Blu-Ray Ripper for Apple. It has been really annoying and frustrating going in to Windows to rip Blu-Rays. I was pretty satisfied to find Pavtube mac bluray ripper. The quality of the conversion was very satisfying. The compressed video still gave the high definition quality as the Blu-Ray video.

[hyteckit]

Just tested out PavTube. Seem to work well, but Video Quality sucks big time.

In terms of quality ranging from best to worst:

1. Handbrake
2. Turbo H.264
3. Pavtube

Handbrake might be slow, but it's almost in terms of quality and filesize.

[angelmb]

hyteckit, have you tried the MacBlurayRipper Pro?.

[hyteckit]

Originally Posted by angelmb 

hyteckit, have you tried the MacBlurayRipper Pro?.

No, but I have tried MakeMKV. It's still really buggy software, but the quality of MakeMKV is really good.

You might want to download MakeMKV and give it a try. There's a 30 day trial.

If you are looking for a bluray ripper, AnyDVD HD still seems the best. Although it's not cheap and runs only on windows.

[mduell]

I think you guys just got trolled by a spammer.

[reader50]

treemme96 was a sig spammer pushing the pavtube solution. Which gets spammed around a lot - it runs on Windows and x86 Macs. I'd have unbanned him if pavtube ran on PPC.