[Photo Credit: http://martenvandijk.com/]
I have to begin this post by saying that breaking copy protection on Blu-rays or DVDs is a violation of the DMCA and is strictly forbidden and against the law, and I am not advocating or endorsing such behaviors. Now, enough of that.
Blu-ray is awesome. And for those of you, like me, adventurous enough to get a Blu-ray drive for their PC, you want to be able to actually use the darn thing! Luckily, I think you’ll find that it’s easier than ever these days.
The majority of software I’m going to tell you about is not open-source. Take this guide for what it is. I’m writing this to be helpful, and to show you that you can still use Ubuntu and watch Blu-ray movies.
There are about a billion things to be found on the internet claiming to solve all your problems. To be fair to our Windows brothers and sisters, I must begin by saying that AnyDVD HD is the perfect solution if you have a hundred bucks to shell out. You simply throw in a BD disc, it does its thing super fast, and you can play it instantly, no problemo. But, if you’re like me, you have to find alternative means.
The best tool is simply MakeMKV. You can say what you want, but I have yet to find a comparable piece of software out there. It works on Linux, Windows, and Mac. It’s free for 30 days, but then it’s only 50 bucks for a lifetime license (and you can work around the expiration easily, if you feel like being cheap). Really, that’s not a bad deal. Just pop in your Blu-ray disc, click MakeMKV, and viola- it decrypts the disc and makes an MKV file (over 25 Gigs, in most cases, so make sure you have a decent-sized HDD).
Here are your options from this point: you can simply play the MKV file with any video player (the open-source VLC has advanced performance features for Blu-ray videos), or you can convert it to another format and shrink the file down a bit (reducing quality, of course). I know what you’re thinking: ripping the video into an MKV file is a major pain. I couldn’t agree more, but there isn’t any other solution that doesn’t make you want to hang yourself at the moment.
For all your video encoding needs, even Blu-ray video files, your one-stop-source is Handbrake. It’s not open-source either, but there’s nothing as powerful or well-designed as Handbrake.
I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you about lxbdplayer. The idea is that it works as an acutal player, without having to rip the video. Unfortunately, the way it goes about doing that is by using MakeMKV to stream the video over your network right back to you, and I never could get it to playback without constant stuttering and dropped frame rates (but I am on WiFi, so take that for what it’s worth). So until that is perfected, you’re out of luck. Sorry.
But don’t let this discourage you from experimenting with Blu-ray. In the end, I think you’ll find that it’s worth your time and money. Blu-ray is awesome, and will only become less troublesome over time.
Happy lossless 1080p video trails, my open source friends.
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