Has anybody plugged a Blu-Ray drive into PVRX2?

[mkenyon2]

That's it, have you put a Blue-Ray drive in your system yet?

If so, what challenges, difficulties, or quirks have you seen?

[wannabepvr]

The protection may be an issue.

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...hlight=blu

Unlike DVD playback, Microsoft has specified that application providers like Cyberlink dont provide reusable playback components for HD-DVD or BluRay, so there is no way for GB-PVR play either of these formats.

You best options is creating a custom menu task that runs PowerDVD or WinDVD, or ripping them to your hard drive and converting them to high def x264 mkv files so that they can be played easily from the Video Library.

[mkenyon2]

How about HDCP enabled video cards, would they handle BluRay? And if so, how would that work?

[nitrogen_widget]

The protection may be an issue.

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...hlight=blu

Maybe it's just me, but it seems the protection is what will make people want to crack it.

If HD discs could just be played in non MS media apps like GBPVR most people wouldn't need to rip the movie to their computer & convert it.

Just my opinion.

[adspence]

I've been making some progress with Bluray playback, but still have a couple of things (well lots actually) to iron out.

I have an LG Bluray/HD player, and dual monitors (24" LCD 1920x1200 on Display 1, Pioneer 504 on Display 2). In order to playback disc direct from the drive, rather than rips on HDD, had to do a couple of things.

0. Install AnyDVDHD (needed to remove Region coding, HDCP and all the other rubbish that the studios put in there to stop us buying disc from wherever we like nad playing them back however we like).

1. First problem was to get PowerDVD Ultra to play on 2nd monitor...very trick. Nvidia's nview didn't cut it, PowerDVD just refused to start on the 2nd display no matter what I did (dragging and dropping works, but isn't really user friendly). I found an app called UltraMon. Its similar to Nview in its functionality...except it actually works and moved PDVD to the 2nd display (I'm on a 30 day trial so I'll have to stump up $39.95 when I'm happy with it).

2. Next thing was to get PVRX2 to start it up. This is a custom menu item which points at a special Ultramon shortcut exe with the PowerDVD shortcut config. Easy...though I did need to drop out of VMR9 Full Screen Exclusive that I'd been running on for some time...on VMR9 Custom right now. This change needs a bit of testing to make sure nothing else is broken, but its looking good so far. Set PVRX2 to hide itself as well.

3. Put Bluray into player, press play...hey presto, Bluray playback.

However, I had no joy with HD-DVDs. This isn't a problem with PVRX2 as PDVD doesn't want to playback HD-DVDs on the 2nd display in fullscreen, regardless of whether its spawned from PVRX2 or not.

So, it is possible with a little effort. (elsewhere in the thread linked above, I have said I can playback m2ts files directly in PVRX2, and this does work, it is just tricky to know which of the dozens of m2ts files to pick - not very user friendly and you don't get any menus). Of course, it is not free. PowerDVD Ultra is about $80+ depending if you can get an upgrade price, AnyDVD HD was about 60 Euros, and UltraMon is $40...though you won't need the latter if you don't have 2nd display issues.

PowerDVD does also playback an ISO file containing a Bluray, but I have to mount it with Daemon tools outside of PVRX2.

Is there any way to get PVRX2 to just to the mount of an ISO file rather than trying, and failing, to play it back internally. If this was possible then it would just be two steps...mount ISO, go to custom menu and start PowerDVD.

Another problem I do have is how to close down PDVD after I'm done and get back to PVRX2. Anyone know the keyboard shortcuts or remote cmds to do this?