The Glade 4.0

Anyone watching Blu-Ray's on a PC ?

I bought a blu-ray drive for my HTPC over a year ago, and then spent the next week or two trying to find some reliable software to play back movies.

That ended in frustration and I pretty much abandoned any hope of watching blu-ray's reliably until the software became more reliable.

As I recall, the biggest issue was the DRM laden software wouldn't play back some of the movies. Also, I'm using a DVI connection, and there was some requirement to enforce a secure path from the video card to the display, and I was having a hard time getting this to work (I don't recall the specifics).

I think I messed around with Arcsoft Total Media, CyberLink power DVD, and Corel WinDVD. Not sure which versions. All of them bombed.

My sister has an HP Laptop with a blu-ray drive. It has a fairly lame HP proprietary blu-ray software package. I haven't had a chance to test it significantly for compatibility, etc...

Just curious if anyone is having good success with blu-ray play back on a PC, and if so, what software are you using?

We may be setting up a few PCs to play Blu-Ray soon at work. I'll update you on what we figure out if you're still searching.

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I've read about a lot of people using PowerDVD with good results. The biggest complaint being that the OEM version doesn't work completely, or include all the features needed for the full experience. Which forces you to purchase the "upgrade" for it. But other than that, I've heard that it was fairly good as a Blu-ray player. I've heard REALLY good things about the video decoder, itself. In fact, many users on the SageTV forums purchase the software, just for the decoder, which is then enabled as an option for playback within SageTV. This reportedly gives improved picture quality over the default decoders. That's why I'm surprised it bombed for you. I'll have to check and see what version they are recommending.



This sounds like HDCP. And unfortunately, without an HDCP compliant video card AND monitor, then you will have problems. There are ways around this, but I'm not sure the mods would want such things discussed openly.

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