Corel admits: BluRays are not meant to be played on PCs

Since the beginning of this year I am trying to get WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-Ray playing my Blu-Rays. Well, they do play, but with 2 second interruption every 3 seconds. With such a stutter, they are totally unwatchable. Any yes, my PC far exceeds the requirements to play Blu-Rays. So, after trying everything I could think of (which included e-mail support that was surprisingly friendly) I finally - in my desperation - called Corel telephone support. Guess what the nice lady told me:

"Well, Blu-Rays are not DVDs, they can't be played just like that. If you even want to go so far as to connect a projector or external audio, WinDVD will most likely fail, because the companies behind Blu-Rays do everything they can to make it impossible to play Blu-Rays on customized systems. If you want to struggle with Blu-Rays instead of using regular DVDs, that's your own fault, and hence it's not our job to help you. Check the news boards instead."

Way to go! That’s what I call successful customer relationship management! They basically admit that WinDVD CANNOT play Blu-Rays, unless you watch them on your integrated system with onboard sound, PC-Speakers and on a regular screen. Great. I mean, this is the point why you want to watch Blu-Rays, to get stereo sound and a picture limited by a regular screen, right?

It is also extremely helpful that they don't mention that BEFORE you buy WinDVD and that you can't evaluate the Blu-Ray functionality of WinDVD unless you buy it.

If you haven't done so already, don't make the same mistake as I have, DO NOT buy the Blu-Ray upgrade for WinDVD - chances are high it will never work. The regular version of WinDVD is great, however, just leave your fingers off Blu-Ray!

- spitfire

 

Does your monitor and video card support HDCP? If one or both of them dont then that might be your problem. If you can, try using powerdvd 8 or 9 I have played blu-rays using both versions on my machine with zero problems.

 

Hi, thanks for your answer! Yes, projector and monitor both support HDCP. It's not like it wouldn't play at all, just extremely choppy (play a few seconds, stop a few seconds). That is, until I rip the movie to the hard drive and then open the file directly. Then, WinDVD suddenly doesn't have a problem anymore. I've already been considering switching to PowerDVD, but was a bit skeptical, "history" might repeat itself, since they don't offer a possibility to evaluate Blu-ray functionality, neither. But if you say it's working fine, I might give it a try. How is support by PowerDVD?

Thanks and best regards
- spitfire

 

The current favorite of most HTPC builders is ArcSoft Total Media Theater 3. IMO it's the best and most stable BluRay playback software available today. It's just way better than Corel or Cyberlink.

http://www.arcsoft.com/estore/software_title.asp?ProductCode=TMT3P
http://www.missingremote.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2822&Itemid=1

It seems SlySoft is also working on a user-friendly BluRay playback software. Should be very interesting:

http://www.engadgethd.com/2009/05/20/slysoft-working-on-user-friendly-blu-ray-player-software/

 

Thanx a lot for this interesting information! So there is still hope - I would have hated it to move away from my PC based solution to a standalone solution. I've already bought most of slysofts products, so these news are especially interesting. I assume then it should finally also be possible to play Blu-Ray images created with AnyDVD-HD. That's very cool, indeed. Seems, I just started to early let Corel steal some of my money. But well, lesson learned

 

In the meantime, you could try a trial version of Cyberlink PowerDVD. Don't use the later versions (I use 7.3 Ultra that came with my BD drive) because Cyberlink has prevented their codecs from being utilised by third party apps, so users are forced to use their player.

Never used WinDVD so can't comment on their programme. But you could try Graphedit to render a video just to confirm playback isn't opening something (codecs) it shouldn't.

 

Thx for the suggestion! Does the PowerDVD trial enable you to test BluRay? The WinDVD trial didn't ...

 

Good question. I have been trying to think. I believe it works but only in 2-channel audio, with below proviso.

I never really viewed discs from the drive: I usually remuxed them with TSMuxer because a number of discs won't play audio in English as the default language, & you couldn't adjust it. Remuxing it, about 20 minutes solved the issue.

 

I think the trial does let you test bluray playback but not with multichannel audio, its only stereo i believe.

I use Power DVD 8 Ultra which works quite well. Playback has no flaws. The thing to watch out for is Power DVD updates that always seem to screw something up that was working, so my advice is get it working and deny any updates.
Also, for playback from HDD, after a certain version of Power DVD (7.3 i think) it will only play the actual disk or a mounted Iso, not a file mode for Bluray movies and as mentioned previously, the filters cannot be shared with other programs if that matters to you.

 

So, if I got you right, PowerDVD CAN play a mounted iso-image of a BluRay, that was created e.g. using AnyDVD?

 

yes, I have been playing all my isos of blu-ray movies by mounting them and playing them back with powerdvd 9 with no problems whatsoever.

 

That is excellent news, thank you

What program have you used to mount them? Any luck with Nero Image Drive?

 

Also, be aware that Cyberlink has decided that all recent upgrades of their 7, 8 & 9 PowerDVD versions should not allow third party players to utilise their codecs. So, if you use Mediaplayer, then you're stuck. Once you get a working programme version, disable upgrades, or refuse updates.

 

Ive never tried Nero Image Drive. I use Virtual CloneDrive from SlySoft. Its free off of slysoft's website.

 

So, I finally installed the PwDVD9 Trial and so far everything is working really fine - much better than WinDVD9! I'll keep testing it for a little while and then will probably buy it. Thank you very much for your advisea!

 

Before you do go ahead & spent your hard-earned cash, I really would recommend to try Arcsoft Total Media, as stated by error5.

I haven't used it myself (as I haven't had to spend further money to get my system working: the free software (with the BD drive) worked out of the bag for me), but people who do use it say it produces far more stable & better results, especially if your HDTV broadcasting standard is using the latest H.264-MPEG4+Monogram AAC audio.

Most people who decide to build HTPCs will, eventually, upgrade to using it for watching liveTV.

 

Ok, I will also try that one. Thanks for the hint!

 

I mount my ISO's with Nero Image drive which works fine.

I thought about trying Daemon tools (because my DVB-S software, for HD transmissions, can auto-mount images if DT is installed) but then I remembered all the trouble people have who also play games. Securom copy protection does not like finding that you have virtual drive software and can cause all sorts of problems there on apparently.

I do play the latest games (with securom) and have had no problems with nero image drive conflicts. Therefore, i stick with what I know works.

 

Me too, out of the exact same reasons. Plus I really like the .nrg format, because it can also store audio tracks without the need of a descriptive file (such as .cue, .dvd, etc.). Unfortunately, Nero Imagedrive does not exist any more in any Nero version later than 7 But at least the .nrg format can still be mounted by other software (MagicIso alias MagicDisc, Power-Iso, but NOT Slysofts CloneDrive) less known than daemon tools or alcohol, and hence hopefully not on any blacklist.

So far, though, I haven't managed to successfully mount a BluRay-image, so that it can be played by a player software. AnyDVD-HD can rip the movies, but when I try to mount them, the software players don't recognize the image as a bluray disc. I also tried other image drives (Magic-iso, Power-iso, Alcohol, BDDecrypter), but none of them would work. Maybe it just doesn't work with all discs, depending on the copy protection used.

 

I have Nero 8 Ultra, it has Nero ImageDrive!!

Cannot understand why your images are not mounting.
Have you tried running AnyDVD HD in the background whilst creating an image from disc with Imgburn?