Blu-eay player instead of HTPC?

Hmmm....well I think your right. The best solution would be to have both the Blu-Ray AND another HTPC. I'm also planning on building a NAS server so I can start ripping my DVD collection and I guess eventually BR discs. So ultimately the HTPC would definitely get more use.

I currently have a Wii so I guess I could always do netflix with that now and then skip the blu ray player until I build another HTPC then get it down the road.

Decisions decisions...haha

Thanks for the input. I might also look into building a "larger" (vs. my Revo) HTPC and include (or at least leave the door open) for a Blu Ray drive.

I keep hearing you guys speak about playing your Blu rays in XBMC. Sorry to be a noob, but how are you doing this in XBMC if its not supported? Is there a guide or a link that explains how to get this setup?

Only my DVD rips are working, but not my BR's /cry. I am using AnyDVD to rip.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Been all over the forums. I will try a few suggestions from the forums. Seems everyone has a small mix of tools they use. Was kind of looking for something simple using AnyDVD.

InLovewithXBMC Wrote:I keep hearing you guys speak about playing your Blu rays in XBMC. Sorry to be a noob, but how are you doing this in XBMC if its not supported? Is there a guide or a link that explains how to get this setup?

Only my DVD rips are working, but not my BR's /cry. I am using AnyDVD to rip.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

What I do is rip the movie from the disk to a m2ts file. The key software is tsmuxer. There are front ends to tsmuxer - ClownBD and ToNMT (my preference). Some people use MakeMKV to rip the movie to a mkv format. I use anydvd hd to decrypt the disk.

These give you the movie. The disk menus/extra features/forced content aren't included.

InLovewithXBMC Wrote:I keep hearing you guys speak about playing your Blu rays in XBMC. Sorry to be a noob, but how are you doing this in XBMC if its not supported? Is there a guide or a link that explains how to get this setup?

Only my DVD rips are working, but not my BR's /cry. I am using AnyDVD to rip.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

There 2 addons for xbmc and blurays ...


1.) The first plays bluray fine with linux ( windows ?can maybe ported..)

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=67420

2.) The seound creates a ripp with linux ...

http://code.google.com/p/swiss-army-knife/

Neither are ideal. It really depends on the situation which solution(s) you should choose.

If your sources mainly consist of downloaded HD stuff (usenet, torrents) I'd strongly recommend an HTPC with XBMC or something like a Popcorn Hour. I recommend this because you should definitely not overestimate the capabilities of hardware based solutions such as BR players or TVs. With DLNA you might be able to stream everything from your NAS to your TV or you BR player, but if those devices don't know what to do with it you're basically out of luck. Most HD stuff is contained in an MKV container for example and most devices refuse to read (demux) the MKV container, rendering your entire HD collection useless.

You'd have to let you NAS do remuxing or even worse, transcoding, which will result in a huge loss of quality and uses huge amounts of resources (in terms of CPU power and in terms of time). Trust me this is not worth it so if you mainly have MKVs go with an HTPC or a Popcorn Hour.

But if you want to play BR discs or BR rips (iso's or the BR file structure) you might want to buy a separate BluRay player (and a burner in the latter case), since XBMC is not very good (yet) at handling BR discs/rips which means you'll still have to do remuxing or transcoding, but this time TO mkv.

If you have mixed sources I'd recommend both, unless XBMC gets fully featured BR support of course .

edit:
The Popcorn Hour C-200 also seems to optionally contain a BR player so I assume it knows how to handle BR discs and rips. This might be ideal if you want an integrated solution instead of 2 devices, 2 remotes and 2 interfaces. (Sorry XBMC)

InLovewithXBMC Wrote:I keep hearing you guys speak about playing your Blu rays in XBMC. Sorry to be a noob, but how are you doing this in XBMC if its not supported? Is there a guide or a link that explains how to get this setup?

Step one: Get AnyDVD HD and let it crack the disk.

Step two:

http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17002

poofyhairguy Wrote:Step one: Get AnyDVD HD and let it crack the disk.

Step two:

http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17002

Yeah remuxing to mkv is possible, but a bit tedious. Especially if you have to rip it from a physical disc first. I prefer a good 1080p encode (ESiR, CtrlHD or the likes): it saves a lot of space and somebody else has gone through the trouble of ripping and encoding for me .

I try to limit remuxing to those movies I really want in top notch quality. Or when there's no decent encode available but only a rip. Or if the rip is decent but I want the HD audio track and there's no separate flac available.

LB06 Wrote:I try to limit remuxing to those movies I really want in top notch quality. Or when there's no decent encode available but only a rip. Or if the rip is decent but I want the HD audio track and there's no separate flac available.

I agree with that.

TugboatBill Wrote:What I do is rip the movie from the disk to a m2ts file. The key software is tsmuxer. There are front ends to tsmuxer - ClownBD and ToNMT (my preference). Some people use MakeMKV to rip the movie to a mkv format. I use anydvd hd to decrypt the disk.

These give you the movie. The disk menus/extra features/forced content aren't included.

TsMuxer has a GUI of it's own (see TSMuxerGUI)

poofyhairguy Wrote:Step one: Get AnyDVD HD and let it crack the disk.

Step two:

http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17002

Or use aacskeys, I've used it on my HD-DVD and Blu-Ray collection with dumphd and it's a nice little Java program that dumps the whole disc and you can do whatever you want with it.

Regards your setup, anything you can do on your Blu-Ray player like DLNA and NetFlix/Pandora can be done on an HTPC. If you want a BD player as well just get something like Asrock which has a BD drive. If your happy with an HTPC now, get another rather adventuring into the unknown. If you do wish to get a BD player and want to stream video to it make sure your library is compatible with it's specs (codecs, bitrates and profile settings)