Is it posable to play Blu-ray Discs from WMC (I'm running Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition)? I have CyberLink PowerDVD Ultra installed. When I tell WMC to play the disc it says "CANNOT PLAY DISC No program is installed to play Blu-ray Disc in Windows Media Center." I seam to recall (correct me is I'm wrong, it was a while ago) that back in the days of Windows XP, when you installed a DVD player program (I'm referring to SD DVDs) like PowerDVD XP, it meant you could play it though the program OR through any other program such as Windows Media Player - because it had installed a codec that other apps could use. It seams as if CyberLink PowerDVD Ultra hogs the decoding algorithm to itself and wont co-operate with Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center.. this doesn't seem right to me, what about people who have Windows Media Center-based HTPCs? They'd have to switch to PowerDVD to play a Blu-ray disc, then back again to WMC when they want to say.. watch TV or view their photo collection. In short, is there a plug-in which tells CyberLink PowerDVD Ultra to talk to Windows Media Center? The way the error message is phrased, seams to imply such a plug-in exists somewhere out there. (it says "no program installed.." not "no program can posably exist..")

Hint - use Google.

 

http://blog.mediacentersandbox.com/PermaLink,guid,d3e0afea-17a6-479f-88b1-0369670fe1ff.aspx

 

I use exactly this technique to play HD-DVD from Media Center Vista, through PowerDVD Ultra.

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Author of 'EMUCenter' to play arcade classics 'MoreWithMyMusic' to sing with and normalize your Music, 'Yougle Vista' to watch YouTube, DivX & More and 'BlindTimer' to time your poker game.

This isn't exactly the behviour I wanted. I've folled these steps and now when I select Play DVD from WMC, it minimises WMC and opens PowerDVD. I then have to press play manually to get it to start. When I want to close PowerDVD I have to manually close the program, I can't just hit back on the remote control. Then PowerDVD closes and WMC is left minimised, so I have to restore it manually.

Isn't there any way to embed support for Blu-ray Discs in to WMC so that they play in the same way DVDs do?

No.

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Chris Lanier
The Green Button Forum Moderator

Chris tells it like it is :)

You CAN add the drive letter to your command in that XML file. What that does is tells PowerDVD to launch the video from the specified drive.

However, there's one catch - if you do that, it WILL play automatically. However, Media Center will NOT minimise itself! So you've got to 'Alt-F4' on your Media Center keyboard (assuming you have one) to get to PowerDVD.

I've been meaning to write something small to take care of this problem, but I've been busy. I'll see what I can do on Monday night.

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Author of 'EMUCenter' to play arcade classics 'MoreWithMyMusic' to sing with and normalize your Music, 'Yougle Vista' to watch YouTube, DivX & More and 'BlindTimer' to time your poker game.

Ok, it doesn't win the beauty contest, but there is a workaround:

• Install Haali Media Splitter (http://haali.cs.msu.ru/mkv/MatroskaSplitter.exe).
• Install an AVCHD/H.264 codec (if you've installed PowerDVD Deluxe 7.3 or newer, one is already installed; another good option is the CoreAVC H.264 codec, see http://www.coreavc.com/)
• Make sure that files with MTS and M2TS extensions are recognized by Media Center as valid video files, by adding the following registry keys:
  • [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.mts]
    "PerceivedType"="video" (string value)
    "Content Type"="video/mpeg" (string value)
  • [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.m2ts]
    "PerceivedType"="video" (string value)
    "Content Type"="video/mpeg" (string value)
• Add the folder that contains the actual video files on your blu ray disc (e.g. X:\BDMV\STREAM) to your "My videos" library.
  The way I like to do this, is by adding a shortcut to that folder in the default "Desktop\<username>\Videos" folder.
• Now start Media Center and go to the Videos page.
  Select the shortcutted STREAM folder and you'll see a bunch of videos with names like "00000", "00001", etc.
  The largest M2TS file is the main movie (in most cases, anyway). Select it to play it!

Small Problem with this solution is LC3 is on X64.... Haali etc are not very stable at the moment on the platform. I would think however that Microsoft will have a solution for this soon enough. Also PowerDVD is an X86 program, and due to this will not decode anything (even if it could) inside X64 VMC even if you could get it to.

Sorry for that...

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Ashleigh

My Blog and my My F1 Blog and Blogcritics

The Vista Codec Pack http://www.jtow.net/users/triess/ has a 64bit version and I believe supports HDDVD, and maybe BR (not sure about BR:-(.

When I use this method I get a message that the file cannot be found after selecting it. My Sony Blu0Ray drive is housed in an external case and attached using a usb cable. Might this make a difference? Any help appreciated.

oebele:

Ok, it doesn't win the beauty contest, but there is a workaround:

• Install Haali Media Splitter (http://haali.cs.msu.ru/mkv/MatroskaSplitter.exe).
• Install an AVCHD/H.264 codec (if you've installed PowerDVD Deluxe 7.3 or newer, one is already installed; another good option is the CoreAVC H.264 codec, see http://www.coreavc.com/)
• Make sure that files with MTS and M2TS extensions are recognized by Media Center as valid video files, by adding the following registry keys:
  • [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.mts]
    "PerceivedType"="video" (string value)
    "Content Type"="video/mpeg" (string value)
  • [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.m2ts]
    "PerceivedType"="video" (string value)
    "Content Type"="video/mpeg" (string value)
• Add the folder that contains the actual video files on your blu ray disc (e.g. X:\BDMV\STREAM) to your "My videos" library.
  The way I like to do this, is by adding a shortcut to that folder in the default "Desktop\<username>\Videos" folder.
• Now start Media Center and go to the Videos page.
  Select the shortcutted STREAM folder and you'll see a bunch of videos with names like "00000", "00001", etc.
  The largest M2TS file is the main movie (in most cases, anyway). Select it to play it!

Why not just copy the single m2ts file to the videos section.  Why do you need that folder structure?  it plays fine for me without all that.  am i missing something?

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WHS Quad Core, 3GB RAM, 2 HD PVRs, 3.5TB Storage and growing. 42 inch LCD and 92" Projector.

Use ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre... it fixed all my issues with getting Blu-ray to work...

It doesn't work for me.

Could be my Media center is MCE2005 ?

Could be my m2ts files are all VC-1 video and one AC3 DD audio ?

Thanks

 

Hi, I use MyMovies from www.mymovies.dk it's an integrated plugin for WMC that also gives that option to play BD / HD titles from the interface. It adds another strip to the WMC front end. A fantastic bit of free software, it loads PowerDVD and allows full interaction with Media Centre remote, and when you're done, just hit the green button and it unloads PowerDVD and puts you back to the WMC interface! Hope this helps? Nick

NickRackham:

Hi, I use MyMovies from www.mymovies.dk it's an integrated plugin for WMC that also gives that option to play BD / HD titles from the interface. It adds another strip to the WMC front end. A fantastic bit of free software, it loads PowerDVD and allows full interaction with Media Centre remote, and when you're done, just hit the green button and it unloads PowerDVD and puts you back to the WMC interface! Hope this helps? Nick

Too bad MyMovies uses the old MCE interface and installs SQL Server Lite.  It makes it a non-option for me.  I'm just using my PS3 to play Blu-Ray until a nicely designed, integrated option is available.