Blu-ray

Media Center supports playback and ripping of Blu-ray.

Requirements

MC supports unencrypted Blu-Ray playback (eg from Video Authoring packages). To playback encrypted Blu-ray Discs (which includes most commercially released discs), a 3rd Party Blu-ray decrypter is required AnyDVD HD is a good option.

Playback

Insert a disc and the program will offer to play it. If you have a ripped copy of the Blu-Ray disc, you can Import it and Media Center will play them.

Media Center supports title selection, chapters, audio stream selection, subtitle selection, and a variety of other playback options.

Ripping

You can rip Blu-Ray using Action Window > Rip Disc inside the program.

More information is available here: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=66347.0

HD Audio

MC is capable of both bitstreaming and decoding the full range of audio codecs supplied on commercial Blu-ray Discs, including HD codecs Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD, with full bitrate and depth preserved.

It is recommended that you use MC to decode HD audio as this allows the full power of MC's audio processing, including Videoclock, to be applied to the decoded sound. However, if you wish, enabling bitstreaming via HDMI in audio settings will pass untouched HD audio to your AV receiver, with no need for other special configuration. Note: it is not possible to send HD audio via S/PDIF.

If you do not enable bitstreaming MC will automatically decode TrueHD soundtracks with no other configuration required. However, to decode DTS-HD you need to copy the "dtsdecoderdll.dll" from an installation of Arcsoft TMT installation to one of the following folders:

• Windows 32-bit: %WINDIR%\System32\
• Windows 64-bit: %WINDIR%\SysWOW64\

If you prefer, you can also use:

• %APPDATA%\J River\Media Center <VERSION>\Plugins\lav\
• %APPDATA%\J River\Media Center <VERSION>\

(Be sure to replace the text <VERSION> above with the major version number of your copy of Media Center.)

The Windows system folder locations are preferable as these will survive updates, upgrades, and reinstallation of Media Center, but you may use whichever you prefer. If you do not have a copy of the Arcsoft TMT DTS decoder you will still get sound, but MC will decode the regular (non-HD) DTS track instead of DTS-HD.

You can check that TrueHD or DTS-HD is being decoded properly using Audio Path.

Menus

MC uses it own OSD to provide access the to the content on BD Discs such as Titles, Stream Selection (Audio, Video, Subtitles). However, MC does not support the Java or BDMV menus included with many commercial discs, as there is no currently available open decoder required for this support. To watch your movies in the highest quality, you don't need them, though! To access the menu press the Up/Down arrow keys or right click on the playing video.

Forced Subtitles

MC will automatically display any subtitle track that is was marked as "forced" when the disk was authored. Forced subtitles are often used for bits of non-native language which audience isn't be expected to understand, in a movie that is otherwise in their native tongue (elven or alien speech, a little Spanish in an English language movie, etc). Unfortunately, many disks are authored with these subtitles in a separate track and in these cases the user will need to select the correct track (normally towards the bottom of the subtitle list). MC will remember this selection for the next time the BD is played.

3D BD

Most commercial 3D BD disks use a version of AVC encoding called "multiview video coding (MVC)". MC does not support MVC and all such 3D BD disks will play as 2D. For more information on how to use a 3rd party player for these disks refer to this thread on Interact.

More

• Refer to Audio Setup for information on configuring your sound output.
• Please see Matt's description of Blu-ray support in MC16. MC 16 and later can play Blu-ray discs or rips.
• Blu-ray support of encrypted discs requires AnyDVD HD or equivalent to read the disc.
• For older versions, please read these threads on Interact:
  • Blu-ray Dolby, DTS, TrueHD
  • Blu-ray -- just works?
  • Importing Blu-ray (BDMV) Folders

• Mojave on audio mixing for Blu-ray: "JRiver does anything AC3Filter does, but better. JRiver does everything in its 64-bit audio path and makes sure that the highest quality is maintained. I removed AC3Filter a long time ago."