4K UHD Blu Ray Playback Question?.

My Windows Home version is 21H2 OS build 19044.1415 my Graphics card is a GeForce GTX 1050Ti updated with the latest drivers.

For Xmas I received the latest release from Eric Clapton on bluray. We have a 5-6 years old Panasonic SA BTT270 Home theatre in a box which works perfectly well coupled to our Samsung Smart TV. On putting the bluray disc into the player it would not read. At first I thought it was as we don't play hardly any bluray discs and that it was just needed cleaning. After cleaning the player with a cleaning disc and cleaning fluid it was no better. It reads and plays ordinary DVD's and CD's no problem just not the new bluray disc. I tried a few "solutions" found during a google search but none of them work. After a bit of reading I think this may be caused by the disc being 4K and the player not being 4K compatible. Buying a new player to play one disc is not an option but started me thinking on whether I could play it on my PC.

The optical disc on my PC is just a standard DVD writer with no bluray function but while searching around I found a link to the following program https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/p/bl...ot:overviewtab Now as well as my PC monitor I also have a 42" 4K UHD Panasonic TV connected to my PC which I use for gaming and the occasional movie. With that in mind would I be able to play the Eric Clapton bluray disc if I installed the above mentioned program?.

No DVD player can play Blu-Ray discs. The player MUST be a Blu-Ray player specifically. Note that Blu-Ray players can also play DVDs, but not the other way around.

A Blu-Ray has a totally different laser, or more accurately, it has an additional laser that allows it to read Blu-Ray discs. One laser is used for CDs and DVDs, another for Blu-ray discs. Data on a Blu-Ray disc is packed far denser than on a DVD and requires a different wavelength of light to read. Thus the name "Blu-ray", because it uses a blue laser rather than red.

As for the dedicated Blu-Ray player, the issue with 4K discs is simply that they have different encoding which your player does not understand.

The software that you were looking at is simply a software application that allows you to play a Blu-Ray disc, but it still requires a physical Blu-Ray player. Windows has no built-in Blu-ray player software, so even if you have a Blu-ray drive, you will also need a Blu-ray player software application to play the discs.

EDIT: One more point - On a PC, you don't need a 4K Blu-ray player specifically. The physical data is stored the same on a standard Blu-ray disc and a 4K disc. The Blu-ray player software that you use simply needs to be 4k capable. In other words, it needs to understand how to handle the data it is reading from the disc. On a dedicated Blu-ray player for your TV, the software is built into that device, so if that software is not able to understand the information on a 4k disc, it won't know what to do with what it is reading, although there is no physical reason it should not be able to read that disc.

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MisterEd said:

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Isn't this a similar type program to the one in my OP?, but as hsehestedt says I would still need to buy a bluray reader/writer to play my disc, so at present I am researching whether to buy an internal BD Optical drive for my PC or an extra BD player for our main tv in the living room, but thank you for the reply.

saltyseadog said:

I am researching whether to buy an internal BD Optical drive for my PC or an extra BD player for our main tv in the living room, but thank you for the reply.

If your plan is to collect a pile of BD movies, the best option IMO would be to get an internal BD reader for your current PC, and, build your own silent HTPC (mini-ITX form factor) for the living room (or use a laptop that you can hook up to the TV via HDMI... even the old ones can do 4K─and these days HDR support is pretty common also). Use RedFox for ripping on the current PC. There exist tutorials explaining how you can remux the main movie title and the audio stream format that best matches your audio setup's hardware capabilities, to write them to an MKV file leaving the quality untouched. For playing such files on any PC, use the free K-Lite Mega Codec Pack Full available from Codec Guide: K-Lite Codec Pack - For Windows 11 / 10 / 8.1 / 7 (choose MPC-HC as the player, madVR as the renderer). In LAV Audio Decoder settings, enable audio bitstreaming over HDMI.

I use ThrottleStop to disable Tubo Boost on my CPU. Using powercfg to set POCFREQMAX to 2.4GHz did not solve my problem of the cooling fan kicking in while watching a movie. AFAIK this is because on modern Intel CPUs the TDP-Down value is still a tad higher than the watts you get when you disable Turbo Boost. In ThrottleStop, simply clicking on the Turbo Boost checkbox again will immediately re-enable Turbo Boost. And it works.

Your problem is worse than needing a new BluRay drive, if you want to play a 4k disk on your PC.

Because of DRM (digital rights management) requirements, the only officially supported CPU and graphics are Intel processors that support Intel SGX, with their integrated graphics. Customer Support - Why can’t I play Ultra HD Blu-ray movies on my new Intel CPU (11th generation or above) platform that does not support Intel SGX feature? Why are Ultra HD Blu-ray discs no longer playable after related Intel drivers and the Windows OS were updated on older platforms that support the Intel SGX feature? | CyberLink

There's another path to playing UHD disks. Some optical drives permit it, but only if they are flashed back to an older firmware than they usually ship with at this time. The modification is the same as required for ripping UHD disks. See the forums here: MakeMKV - Make MKV from Blu-ray and DVD

Then, you'd still need to come up with player software that would work with the modified drive. Example: DVDFab Player Ultra. DVDFab Player 6 – The Best Free Video Player to Enhance Your Viewing Experience on PC and TV (Chinese site.)

(Editorial comment: I have no idea why the industry has made such a big deal over UHD disks. I'd bet that they are a vanishing breed, due to streaming. Some makers of UHD players for TV sets have exited the business. Others still make them, but haven't issued new models in a couple of years.)

Would all that be worthwhile to you?

Regular HD BluRay discs don't require all that. Regular drives should work, and you'd just need a graphics card and monitor that are HDCP compliant (not at version 2.2 or higher, which is needed for UHD).

bobkn said:

Your problem is worse than needing a new BluRay drive, if you want to play a 4k disk on your PC.

Because of DRM (digital rights management) requirements, the only officially supported CPU and graphics are Intel processors that support Intel SGX, with their integrated graphics. Customer Support - Why can’t I play Ultra HD Blu-ray movies on my new Intel CPU (11th generation or above) platform that does not support Intel SGX feature? Why are Ultra HD Blu-ray discs no longer playable after related Intel drivers and the Windows OS were updated on older platforms that support the Intel SGX feature? | CyberLink

There's another path to playing UHD disks. Some optical drives permit it, but only if they are flashed back to an older firmware than they usually ship with at this time. The modification is the same as required for ripping UHD disks. See the forums here: MakeMKV - Make MKV from Blu-ray and DVD

Then, you'd still need to come up with player software that would work with the modified drive. Example: DVDFab Player Ultra. DVDFab Player 6 – The Best Free Video Player to Enhance Your Viewing Experience on PC and TV (Chinese site.)

(Editorial comment: I have no idea why the industry has made such a big deal over UHD disks. I'd bet that they are a vanishing breed, due to streaming. Some makers of UHD players for TV sets have exited the business. Others still make them, but haven't issued new models in a couple of years.)

Would all that be worthwhile to you?

Regular HD BluRay discs don't require all that. Regular drives should work, and you'd just need a graphics card and monitor that are HDCP compliant (not at version 2.2 or higher, which is needed for UHD).

News flash.
New (UHD): Added support for non-friendly drives with the help of MakeMKV "Libre Drive" | RedFox Forum

@bobkn, thanks for the information that you shared. Was not aware of some of the DRM issues you noted. Of course I not long ago put together an 11th gen Intel based system.

hsehestedt said:

@bobkn, thanks for the information that you shared. Was not aware of some of the DRM issues you noted. Of course I not long ago put together an 11th gen Intel based system.

Those issues no longer matter now anyway.

hdmi said:

News flash.
New (UHD): Added support for non-friendly drives with the help of MakeMKV "Libre Drive" | RedFox Forum

I'd forgotten about that, if I ever knew. I went with a drive that could be modified by flashing with an old firmware. (Mostly pointless, as I have little interest in ripping UHD disks or playing them on my PC. I like the capability, though.)

There's a list of drives (Custom firmware pack with LibreDrive patches - www.makemkv.com) It may be a larger selection than those drives with firmware mods available.

Doesn't change things much, although it may be easier for some than following the available recipes for installing a modded firmware. (That's pretty simple, though. Even I could do it.)