Best software for watching blu ray?

[KAC]

What's the best program for watching blu ray on PC? Also how can I watch 3D movies on my nVidia hardware? Would appreciate help in this matter.

Thanks.

[Munkus]

I like PowerDVD Ultra, but it's a bit pricey.

[andino]

http://www.arcsoft.com/totalmedia-theatre/

[KAC]

Holy crap these are expensive. Time to hit some torrent sites lol.

[Dr. Zhivago]

http://www.arcsoft.com/totalmedia-theatre/

This is what I've been using for the last 4 years. PDVD didn't work in a trial version and it didn't integrate into WMC7, so they didn't get my money.

[aviphysics]

I have had bad experiences with both those programs. My recommendation is to get a BR player if you can or rip your BR discs.

DVD FAB has a free application to rip the discs. I forgot what I used to convert them to normal video files. Edit: I think I used Handbrake to transcode.

[Dr. Zhivago]

I used DVDFAB to rip to m2ts and a CODEC pack to play them in WMC7. I kept the original size and bit-rate and did not convert them.

[caveman-jim]

Seagate and Western Digital thank you.

[KAC]

Seagate and Western Digital thank you.

What do you mean?

[DigitalDemon]

What do you mean?

I just passed 12TB for my Handbrake compressed BR rips, which doesn't count the backup. That's what he means...

[Dr. Zhivago]

Seagate and Western Digital thank you.

I can't stand h.264. It is a shitty CODEC. And, I don't feel like transcoding anything to a smaller file/lower bit rate because I hate compression artifacts. HDD's are cheap.

[caveman-jim]

I can see that PoV. H264 is great for streaming over slow networks. If you've got a decent home network, why not use the b/w?

What do you think of HEVC/H265?

[Dr. Zhivago]

I'm not a fan of H.264 for a variety of reasons, due to the way the files are encoded. I hope that H.265 will be better. But I haven't seen anything about it other than the initial information about the spec. It isn't finalized yet, is it?

[caveman-jim]

Final draft was Jan 2013, I expect hardware to support it soon.

[DeathKnight]

I can't stand h.264. It is a shitty CODEC.

Most Blu-ray's are H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC). m2ts is just a container file format, it's not a codec. It's a standard for Blu-ray discs. So if all you're doing is basically ripping it without re-encoding then I'm not sure I understand the hate for H.264. It might be shitty for low-bitrate stuff, but at higher bitrates (like on Blu-ray) there's nothing really wrong with it.

[Dr. Zhivago]

We've run into a LOT of issues at work with stable playback of H.264 in presentation programs. It pretty much needs to be played with a dedicated player, one file at a time and with hardware acceleration.

Frame locking multiple files for playback in edge-blended, multi-screen shows doesn't work due to the way H.264 files are encoded. This is due to the fact that each frame of video doesn't contain the information about the current frame, but instead carries information about other frames. Setting up a loop of multiple videos doesn't work either since the files drift with regards to frame lock.

I think that high bit-rate MPEG 2 files look much better and they can also be played in multiples with frame lock and no drift.

I've looked at literally thousands and thousands of videos created by professionals and most H.264 files look like crap with blocky compression artifacts, even with high bit rates, usually @30MBps or higher and the blacks never look that good to my eye. MPEG 2 files at the same bit rate look far better in terms of color, contrast and compression artifacts. They also have extremely miniscule resource needs for playback.

So, after years of dealing with crappy H.264 files which cause all kinds of problems in high-end presentation work, I've come to hate the codec.

Blu-Rays look really good most of the time, so I'll give you that. I'll have to look at my rips and see which codecs are in the m2ts files. VC-1 seems to be the most common from memory.

I'm guessing most of the reason I've seen so many shitty H.264 videos is because a lot of video professionals use Apple's Compressor: http://notesonvideo.blogspot.com/201...dec-sucks.html

I can tell you that Episode, while better than Compressor, doesn't seem to work all that well in actual practice. At least, from what I've seen. I don't use Apple products. But I work directly with a lot of people who do and who also use Episode. There's a ton of problems getting it to turn out useable video.

There are many more articles saying the same things about H.264. It's really a crappy codec for a lot of reasons.

[caveman-jim]

H.264 done right is quite good. The only people who do it right are the major studios, and even they will admit to compromises on quality vs. other codecs. H.264 isn't simple at all, even thinks you just select H.264 profile and boom done and it's way, way more complicated than that. I tried doing the BR rip and recode and was never happy with it so I just leave it on the disc, I can't support my rip habit with 4TB's disks yet

[Dr. Zhivago]

I tried the rip and recode method as well and never liked what it looked like, either.

[Payne3d]

If you are using TMT, could you tell me what the difference is between mixing audio to DD or DTS first and sending that signal to the receiver compared to bitstreaming the PCM signal to the receiver? The movie I was testing had multichannel PCM audio track.

It was kinda cool to see TMT convert PCM to DTS and the DTS symbol lighting up on the receiver compared to "DIG/PCM" but I didn't do any extensive audio quality testing...should the sound quality be similar?

[martinF]

I like PowerDVD Ultra, but it's a bit pricey.

I've used this program for quite some time and absolutely satisfied with it. I think it worth every penny spent.

[Dr. Zhivago]

If you are using TMT, could you tell me what the difference is between mixing audio to DD or DTS first and sending that signal to the receiver compared to bitstreaming the PCM signal to the receiver? The movie I was testing had multichannel PCM audio track.

It was kinda cool to see TMT convert PCM to DTS and the DTS symbol lighting up on the receiver compared to "DIG/PCM" but I didn't do any extensive audio quality testing...should the sound quality be similar?

Yes, the sound quality should be the same, with caveats. The difference being with the encoded formats, you sometimes get different options on the receiver concerning how you can manipulate the audio versus straight up PCM. So, that difference could affect how your particular receiver "sounds" because it may be doing something to the DTS stream that it can't do with Multichannel PCM.

[Payne3d]

Yes, the sound quality should be the same, with caveats. The difference being with the encoded formats, you sometimes get different options on the receiver concerning how you can manipulate the audio versus straight up PCM. So, that difference could affect how your particular receiver "sounds" because it may be doing something to the DTS stream that it can't do with Multichannel PCM.

I gotcha..thanks.

[Dr. Zhivago]

I should clarify that I was referring to the HD version of DTS, ie; DTS-MA. Regular DTS has a lower sample and bit rate, so technically, it is inferior to uncompressed PCM.

[aviphysics]

If you are using TMT, could you tell me what the difference is between mixing audio to DD or DTS first and sending that signal to the receiver compared to bitstreaming the PCM signal to the receiver? The movie I was testing had multichannel PCM audio track.

It was kinda cool to see TMT convert PCM to DTS and the DTS symbol lighting up on the receiver compared to "DIG/PCM" but I didn't do any extensive audio quality testing...should the sound quality be similar?

I can definitely hear a difference on my system. I think it is mostly a difference in how the software interprets the HD-audio into PCM and how my receiver handles it. I don't think it is a matter of audio quality as much as it is about fidelity.

[KAC]

Does Bluray run in default WMP10 or some crap like that? So I don't purchase additional software? Also how I run 3D bluray on my desktop with nVidia?

[Munkus]

Does Bluray run in default WMP10 or some crap like that? So I don't purchase additional software? Also how I run 3D bluray on my desktop with nVidia?

Nope, WMP doesn't support blu-ray. Though there are codecs out there you can download that supposedly give it basic playback functionality from what I've heard. Haven't tried them.

[Dr. Zhivago]

KAC: You can rip Blu-Ray's to .m2ts files with AnyDVD HD and using Shark007 codecs with the x64 components, watch them in Windows Media Center. You need dedicated software to watch a Blu-Ray disc. Arcsoft TMT 5/6 is what I use. I never had a good experience with PowerDVD when it came to Blu-Ray when I tried it 4 years ago. It may be fine now.

[nrs421]

try zoom player.

http://www.inmatrix.com/products.shtml

[mullet]

http://www.arcsoft.com/totalmedia-theatre/

+1 works great for me, still plays my old HD-DVD's

[Redeemed]

And this is why I don't have an extensive BD collection. I'll stick to my digital copies.

[Munkus]

And this is why I don't have an extensive BD collection. I'll stick to my digital copies.

I haven't bought a physical disc in a couple of years. Mostly because I only watch movies once, but the ones I do want to keep I buy off iTunes or Amazon. Ain't nobody got room for discs nowadays!

[Higgy10]

I haven't bought a physical disc in a couple of years. Mostly because I only watch movies once, but the ones I do want to keep I buy off iTunes or Amazon. Ain't nobody got room for discs nowadays!

Tbh as much as i like digital copies there not as good quality wise as a retail disc and losing dts ma or truehd hurts also. I have a high end home theatre setup so lower bitrate and lossy audio can be quite noticeable.

[Munkus]

Tbh as much as i like digital copies there not as good quality wise as a retail disc and losing dts ma or truehd hurts also. I have a high end home theatre setup so lower bitrate and lossy audio can be quite noticeable.

Yeah, I can see that. I don't have a high end system so I don't really notice, but I'm sure discs are preferred by audio/videophiles.