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hsendyk50 · 2018-07-13, 02:42

Hello,
I am new to Kodi. When I was using Win-7 I used Media center. It did everything.
I have upgraded to Win-10 and WMC is no more. I installed Kodi about 2 weeks ago and when I rent a DVD everything works.
I decided to try Blu-Ray. I rented a Blu-ray video. My dvd player is a Blu-Ray / DVD RW.
DO I need some sort of Drivers for Blu-ray or an add on to Kodi so that It would play a Blu-Ray Disk?

Thank you
H

**Karellen** · 2018-07-13, 03:09

Hello @hsendyk50

Windows 10 does not play encrypted Bluray disks without the use of a commercial program. The reason for this is the expensive cost for a bluray licence.

Searching something like... why wont my computer play blu-ray discs on google will return at least thousands of articles about it.

You will need to first decrypt the disks before Kodi can play them. Either installing an on-the-fly decrypter, or simply ripping the disks to hard disk as most kodi users do.

hsendyk50 · (This post was last modified: 2018-07-13, 07:47 by hsendyk50.)

Thanks for explaining. Is ripping the same or different than copying the files from the Disk to a folder on my hard drive?
I have copied the three folders that are on the disk to my hard drive.
Kodi shows me the folders and some data in one of the folders, but nothing plays.
The disk is on loan from my local library. The library has a very large DVD and Blu-Ray collection
If I can't get the Blu-Ray to work, I can always return the disk and take out the DVD version.
DVD's work fine.
One more thing. If I buy a commercial piece of software, Would I still need KODI?

mattshaw · 2018-07-13, 11:25

So a free beta program MakeMKV is available, it will unencrypt dvd and blu-ray discs to mkv files on your pc, which will then be playable in Kodi

Matt

**Karellen** · 2018-07-13, 12:13

(2018-07-13, 07:37)hsendyk50 Wrote: Is ripping the same or different than copying the files from the Disk to a folder on my hard drive?

Yes, ripping is like copying, but usually indicates it is coming from a different format of media. Like Bluray to hard disk.

(2018-07-13, 07:37)hsendyk50 Wrote: Kodi shows me the folders and some data in one of the folders, but nothing plays.

Simply copying the encrypted bluray folders from the disk to the hard drive won't allow you to play the media as the encryption has not been removed. For that you need software to remove the encryption. What mattshaw mentions is one that is popular and free. A quick search on google should guide you.

Sure, using the older style DVD's is an option, but you will see a reduction in picture quality depending upon your TV.

(2018-07-13, 07:37)hsendyk50 Wrote: One more thing. If I buy a commercial piece of software, Would I still need KODI?

It depends on what you goal is. The commercial software you might purchase will most likely be just a player. This is different to Kodi which is a Media Centre. Kodi is designed to collate and maintain all your media in one central location, with many benefits such as metadata, artwork, trailers as well as the extended functions from add-ons. A simple player does not offer those enhancements.

hsendyk50 · 2018-07-15, 20:50

My goal is to rent Blu-Ray disks from my local Library or from RedBox which is located at my local supermarket.
Watch the movie and return it the next day. I am not interested in copying and using up space on my Hard drive.
Just want to place Blu-ray into my Blu-ray player (a drive on my computer) and use Kodi to watch the movie.

Mnementh · (This post was last modified: 2018-07-15, 21:03 by Mnementh.)

Then to be honest Kodi isn't really the software you're after, it's meant to be used as a media centre with a 10 foot interface on a TV (for the most part).

If all you want to do is play rented Blurays then you're better off with either a standalone player if you're playing on a TV or a commercial bluray playing application if you're viewing on a PC monitor.

Vanilla Kodi can't play encrypted blurays and even if you decrypted them to your HDD first then the majority of them don't play well with kodi if you want full menu support.

Kodi is brilliant at many things but this isn't really it's purpose and unless a totally open source implementation ever gets granted a license it likely never will be if you don't want to get down and dirty with compiling the code yourself with certain libraries included to allow limited bluray support.

**jjd-uk** · 2018-07-15, 21:12

Using Kodi to playback blu-ray straight from the disc is possible if you have something doing on the fly decryption in the background, however that makes most sense if you already have a Kodi install for ripped media or PVR. If the intention is to use Kodi to only play the rental discs then yes there are probably better apps.

hsendyk50 · 2018-07-16, 03:54

So I downloaded MakeMKV. It works in that it copies the video to my Hard drive and then Kodi sees the video and plays it.
Since I am not interested in building up a library of copied videos, my question is, has anyone written an add-on to Kodi so it can read and play a Blu-Ray disk ?

Thanks,
Howard

**Karellen** · 2018-07-16, 04:41

No, for the reasons stated in Post #2 & #5

Yearofthegoat · 2018-08-08, 18:09

My 17.6 Krypton plays blu-ray discs, but with a limited menu. Is that due to my HTPC running Windows 8.1, as opposed to Windows 10?

**jjd-uk** · 2018-08-08, 18:21

If you want the full java menus then that is a v18 Leia feature.

Yearofthegoat · 2018-08-08, 18:35

No that's fine but thanks for tip. I usually use my Panasonic UB400 for disc playback.

Only noticed that Kodi does play blu-ray discs when I tried an out of region disc, which played fine (couldn't play it in the Panasonic). Just wondered whether it was Windows 10 preventing playback for the OP.

Am sticking with Win8.1 for now.

cdoublejj · 2019-04-12, 20:04

(2018-07-15, 21:03)Mnementh Wrote: Then to be honest Kodi isn't really the software you're after, it's meant to be used as a media centre with a 10 foot interface on a TV (for the most part).

If all you want to do is play rented Blurays then you're better off with either a standalone player if you're playing on a TV or a commercial bluray playing application if you're viewing on a PC monitor.

Vanilla Kodi can't play encrypted blurays and even if you decrypted them to your HDD first then the majority of them don't play well with kodi if you want full menu support.

Kodi is brilliant at many things but this isn't really it's purpose and unless a totally open source implementation ever gets granted a license it likely never will be if you don't want to get down and dirty with compiling the code yourself with certain libraries included to allow limited bluray support.

So in the year 2019 none of the commercial pay for programs offer a plugin or tie in to watch the discs in kodi but, decrypt and play via said commercial app?

**jjd-uk** · 2019-04-13, 10:19

See https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=189402 read the last few posts as how to get working has slightly changed.