Blu-ray

Overview

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 (eg most Commercially Released Discs), a 3rd Party Blu-ray decrypter is required.

AnyDVD HD or DVDFab Passkey are both good options.

Playback

Insert a disc and the program will offer to play it.

You can also import blu-ray rips and play them.

Media Center 17 adds title selection so you can play trailers, extras, and more.

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: C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 18\Plugins\lav, or C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 18, or Windows\System32 folder for Windows 7 32-bit / Windows\SysWOW64 folder for Windows 7 64 bit The Windows system folder locations are probably best as these will survive updates, upgrades and reinstallation of MC, 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). MC does not use or play the Java or BDMV Menus on the Disk itself. 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 (eg for Alien speech 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 see this thread - [1]

More Information

Please see Matt's description of Blu-ray support in MC16. MC 16 can play Blu-ray discs or rips.

Blu-ray support requires AnyDVD HD or equivalent to read the disc.

For older versions, please read these threads:

this thread on Interact.

and this thread

and this one.

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.

Go to Player > DSP Studio and make sure the Output Format is set to whatever you need. That is where you set the number of channels. The JRSS mixing is a very high quality matrixing system that I think is better than Dolby ProLogic IIx. If you want to use a subwoofer and bass management, set the Subwoofer to Silent in Output Format and use the Room Correction DSP for advanced Bass Management. You also set the speaker distances and levels in Room Correction. The DSP has to be checked in order for it to be active. http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=66593.msg446939#msg446939