bluray. im sure its been answered.

[gnomie]

ok. im SURE this has been answered somewhere so im willing to sacrifice the trolling to get an answer :D just built a new htpc.
c2d 2.66ghz
3 gb of ddr2 667 ram
ati x1950 pro gpu (xbmc doesnt use gpu acceleration amirite?)
LG multi blu drive, blu-ray, hdd, etc.
encore enltv-fm tuner card (trying to use IR)
250gb hdd
connected to receiver via dvi/hdmi and dig audio.

got xp sp3 on there, ffdshow/matroska/ac3 (my usual play any video pack), dvdfab 5, anydvd 6.9, powerdvd 8. and of course xbmc 8.10 atlantis. xbmc is setup and running great. plays videos from the hdd, shoutcast, good stuff. would like an auto script installer similar to xbmc for the xbox but well get there. the problem is bluray...insert sd DVD, plays fine with menus. great. insert bluray dvd? consecutive errors, quits trying. ok. installed the UDF or whatever hddvd drivers, lets me explore the bluray and shows up fine. good. got the bluray to play with cyberlink bundled software but still no go in xbmc. now the anydvd throws a fit as its a prince of persia bonus disk (i know, wtf, that is only bluray on hand). would it play if anydvd worked and thus decoded for xbmc? i am aware that xbmc does not officially support bluray because no open source menu decode deal. any help on this would be awesome as ive been dealing with this for two days, had a few issues with rdc (ultra vnc is the answer to that one) and the like. if the admins want to just trash this fine, also any help on the ir adapter deal would be great, good machine do not want mouse and kb tho. have harmony remote so would like some solution...thanks guys. keep up the good work, been using a modded xbox for years fyi.

[LolitaRainking]

Oh, you've missed soooo many things about xbmc. You think that an open source-project will allow you to playback blueraydiscs? My very young padawan, you're in for a treat!

[timdog82001]

you should be able to use the launchplayer extension or plugin or hack or whatever it is (sorry, don't know much about it, never used it myself). It allows you to use an external app to display fullscreen video. Supposedly you can't even tell its not xbmc unless you bring up the osd.

[gnomie]

ha yes. well the argument could be made about dvds but weve had enough time to write libdvdnav etc. i am aware of the drm etc that comes with bluray discs but i have heard conflicting reports about hd playback. files yes. discs, not sure. anydvd could work, etc.

@timdog82001 thanks for the info, ill google it and see where it takes me.

[gnomie]

launchplayer or now known as externalplayer is doing an alrite job. trying to get it to only play for bluray DISCS as everything else i want to be handled in xbmc. i have it set to use powerdvd8 to play the bluray disc which seems to be doing the trick. glad to have some semblance of help and resolution. not the perfect answer but it DOES seem to work. now for IR support......

[rainmaker002]

If you've got a universal remote, such as a Harmony 880, or even a Media Centre Remote, I find the cleanest solution is to run Eventghost to control xbmc, and have a separate command line to quit XBMC, open TMT (or in your case, PowerDVD [blech]) and control it via remote. Eventghost has a nice little plugin for TMT that lets you control it all from your couch with the remote (any MCE remote should do the trick). A couple of key strokes and you've quit TMT/PDVD and gone back into XBMC. Voila.

There will never be blu-ray disc support within xbmc. Same can be said for any open source media centre, and even MS has expressed doubt about bundling it with Vista Media Centre.

[natethomas]

I don't know about never, but I do agree that using XBMC exclusively will not currently play an unbroken blu-ray disc.

However, if you are willing to go through the time and effort, there are solutions to your problem. For example, using certain ripping programs, you can defeat the DRM and pull key files onto your harddrive. Those files or "streams" will be gigantic, we're talking anywhere from 20 to 45 gigs. They end in m2ts.

XBMC can play m2ts files.

So there are your current options. Use a separate program such as PowerDVD or be willing to use a lot of disk space.

[gnomie]

thanks for the responses and yeah that is what i am getting. im not attached to powerdvd by any means, just trying to make it seemless on the playback front. externalplayer works but only if it is set to default player as you cant select play using from the dvd source...durrr...i am thinking that anydvd might jailbreak the bluray enough for me to play it thru xbmc? maybe? that would be fantastic but im not banking on it...ripping the blurays just to watch is not an option, its a 250 gb hdd and cant afford to keep them in that size. will backup some blurays but as a 10 gb ish file. what is this TMT?

[gnomie]

total media theatre. few minutes of google solved that. i have interesting news. i was able to get a movie to play in xbmc straight from the bluray disc. anydvd did the decrypt i think and xbmc picked up on the .mts streams. was WAR INC on bluray, was playing fine. had to give it a sec at the beg i think to build a proper buffer but seemed fine. anyone else seeing similar results? using newest joker build.

[moonracer]

I don't know about never, but I do agree that using XBMC exclusively will not currently play an unbroken blu-ray disc.

However, if you are willing to go through the time and effort, there are solutions to your problem. For example, using certain ripping programs, you can defeat the DRM and pull key files onto your harddrive. Those files or "streams" will be gigantic, we're talking anywhere from 20 to 45 gigs. They end in m2ts.

XBMC can play m2ts files.

So there are your current options. Use a separate program such as PowerDVD or be willing to use a lot of disk space.

Nate,
I don't mind using up the hard drive space for a few blu-ray movies. So is my thinking correct in that I could use AnyDVD to rip the BR movie to the hard drive without compressing, etc and play it back in xbmc? Would I have to rip just the blu-ray movie without chapters, etc for this option to work?

I want to place a few of my son's BR's onto an external TB hard drive (ones he watches over and over again) and be able to play them without an external player but using xbmc itself.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

[natethomas]

You know, I'm honestly not sure about the chapter thing. AnyDVD is the program to use though. Essentially what'll happen is it'll rip the entire disc onto the drive, then you open the folder it puts the disc in and look for a folder that says "streams." Then you just open that and look for the biggest stream. Once again, all the streams should have the extension "m2ts." You'll have to rename the stream, but you can copy and paste that where ever you want, once it's been decrypted.

This, of course, is out of the province of XBMC. If I were you, I'd probably do a quick google search on the topic for a guide of some kind.

[BLKMGK]

If you are willing to use some disk space then lookup eac3to to rip it with AnyDVD-HD providing the decryption. Done right that will leave you with a MKV containing the video uncompressed and an audio file. MKVmerge from MKVtoolnix will then allow you to mux those together. It will be a FAT file but compressing it down as I do takes hours on a fast machine - but saves 40% or more disk space.

Strongly suggest you look into building a NAS like unRAID (lime-technology.com) to store your movies on....

P.S. BD are NOT always just one stream and disks with multiple versions can be quite chopped up. Close Encounters is a terrific example of this. eac3to will take care of that if used properly.

[moonracer]

Very valuable info. Thank you kindly!

m

Before I spend the cash on a new machine to store my DVD's I also wanted to purchase what I need now to play blu-ray. I just want to store a hand full of BD's...for now anyway. I'll do more reading as you both have suggested. I just wanted to make sure that there weren't too many steps involved to rip and play BD's...play them fairly easily with xbmc as well.

Thanks again,

[xanataus]

launchplayer or now known as externalplayer is doing an alrite job. trying to get it to only play for bluray DISCS as everything else i want to be handled in xbmc. i have it set to use powerdvd8 to play the bluray disc which seems to be doing the trick. glad to have some semblance of help and resolution. not the perfect answer but it DOES seem to work. now for IR support......

hi gnomie,

can you please explain how you have configured XBMC for Windows to ONLY use POwerDVD8 to play BluRay discs. Am assuming everythingthing else is played via XBMC.

If you good paste your config here that would be GREAT !!!

Thanks in advance
X

[dbldown768]

If you are willing to use some disk space then lookup eac3to to rip it with AnyDVD-HD providing the decryption. Done right that will leave you with a MKV containing the video uncompressed and an audio file. MKVmerge from MKVtoolnix will then allow you to mux those together. It will be a FAT file but compressing it down as I do takes hours on a fast machine - but saves 40% or more disk space.

Strongly suggest you look into building a NAS like unRAID (lime-technology.com) to store your movies on....

P.S. BD are NOT always just one stream and disks with multiple versions can be quite chopped up. Close Encounters is a terrific example of this. eac3to will take care of that if used properly.
BLKMGK, just wondering how long it takes for you to compress your files? I have a Q9450 quad core and I am hoping it should be powerful enough. What is the average size of your movies after you compress them?

[gyrene2083]

db,
Just so you know I have, with the help of BLKMGK pointing me in the right direction, been able to compress The Dark Knight blu-ray from about 38 gigs down to 9 gigs. It looks pretty damn good, and sounds great to me. I don't exactly do it like BLKMGK does, I just use RipBot, and it pretty much does all the hard work with a few clicks.