Does Windoze 7 handle Blu-Ray out of the box?

[mkenyon2]

If I upgraded to Windows 7 and a Blu-Ray drive, would it be easy to get working?

[ilovejedd]

Blu-ray out of the box, no. You'd need additional software such PowerDVD or Total Media Theatre to handle Blu-ray playback.

[BigMoose]

Or AnyDVDHD, SAF codec pack (or install the required codecs yourself, details of how to do this on the documentation forum) and whurlston's movie plug in and away you go.

[InVermont]

I would assume that if you buy a computer based Blu-Ray player, it will have the required software to play them, regardless of what version of Windows you are using.
Kind of like XP didn't have the correct DVD support, but every drive came with it.

[ilovejedd]

I would assume that if you buy a computer based Blu-Ray player, it will have the required software to play them, regardless of what version of Windows you are using.

Not if he buys OEM.

Note, with AnyDVD HD and SAF codec pack, you lose Blu-ray menus, etc. You could only do playback of the main movie (and probably other video streams). Actually, if you have Windows 7, you don't even need the SAF codec pack as it already has built-in support for .m2ts, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 and VC-1. Well, you might need SAF for the audio, but all video codecs used in Blu-ray are already supported natively in Win7.

It's been rumoured that Slysoft is going to come out with a free Blu-ray player (to be used in conjunction with AnyDVD HD), but up until now, there's been no concrete evidence of if and when it'll be released.