Win Physical Bluray Disk Playback
#1
Hi

I am evaluating several different Bluray players (for physical disks only, I don't rip).

Cyberlink is comprehensive, but BOY is it bloated and slow.

At the moment I'm testing the (now completely free apparently) Leawo BR Player, with the following playercorefactory.xml:

Code:
<playercorefactory>
    <players>
        <player name="Leawo Bluray Player" type="ExternalPlayer" audio="false" video="true">
            <filename>C:\Kodi\Apps\Leawo\Leawo Blu-ray Player.exe</filename>
            <args>"{1}"</args>
            <forceontop>true</forceontop>
            <hidexbmc>false</hidexbmc>
            <hidecursor>true</hidecursor>
            <warpcursor>none</warpcursor>
        </player>
    </players>
    <rules action="prepend">
        <!-- Bluray files -->
        <rule filetypes="bdmv" filename="index.bdmv" player="Leawo Bluray Player"/>
        <!-- Bluray Disc -->
        <rule protocols="bd|ifo" player="Leawo Bluray Player"/>
        <rule dvd="true" player="Leawo Bluray Player" />
        <rule bd="true" player="Leawo Bluray Player" />
    </rules>
</playercorefactory>

If I create a desktop shortcut which points to the EXE and specifies the drive letter, e.g.

"C:\Kodi\Apps\Leawo\Leawo Blu-ray Player.exe" G:\

then any disk will autoplay, skip the intro, and a double-click will put it into fullscreen mode.

Unfortunately it doesn't do that if launched directly from inside Kodi, and it also appears the only command line argument their player accepts is the path/drive letter. But for now I can live with the additional mouse clicks.

The footprint is small, so for now I'm tempted to go with this option instead of paying for Cyberlink but would appreciate any thoughts from the community.

Also, Leawo seems to have "powered by XBMC", so I'm wondering, if this is a sort-of official thing, can it be integrated more natively into Kodi?
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#2
I believe that powered by xmbc means that it is actually based on the same source code. ..so basically it is the same as kodi
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#3
Yes, that's what I thought so I was surprised to see that even though Leawo made their player free last year and it is based on the same source code, there is barely any mention of it at all in these community forums.

I have fired off some messages to its developers to find out what they're doing with it.

My view is, I can understand why the Kodi community would not want to promote any one commercial alternative over any other, but given Leawo no longer has a price tag to it, and it's already powered by xbmc, then shouldn't we be treating it the same as VLC?

People on Windows 10 are crying out for a free BluRay player and are quite happy for it to be a very basic player so long as it works. If they want ripping capabilities or 3D playback they''ll pay money for it. But if all they ever want to do is stick a disk in a drive and play it back then it's completely nuts that they're being pushed to pay for an all-singing-all-dancing commercial app suite with ripping and recoding whizz-bang stuff.

And frankly, even though Cyberlink currently have an offer on, their software STILL costs more than the SATA Blu-Ray drive I just bought. Retail. Without a discount. Which is even more nuts.
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#4
Interesting: http://www.leawo.com/blu-ray-player/

It does indeed claim to be based on XBMC. Probably with their own external player? I think DVBfab did this as well.
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#5
Yes, it is a standalone player. Most recent build of their BR player is 1.9.3.0 from 31st May 2016 so it is still being developed.

As far as I can tell it uses dvdplayer and ffmpeg, QtCore libs, libFLAC.dll from paplayer, and libbluray.jar. It contains a playercorefactory.xml. It passes every malware and AV check I've thrown at it, so on that level it seems legit. The company's based in Tainan (Taiwan) and has been around for a couple of years now.
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#6
Bringing this old thread back to life...anyone care to share their experiences w/Leawo?
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