Blu-Ray in LMDE

[msm]

I'm getting an Asrock Ion desktop PC and plan to install LMDE on it. There's a choice between the Asrock with or without a blu-ray drive. I'd like to go for the blu-ray drive but not sure if it's possible to watch blu-ray films in LMDE. Does anybody have experience with blu-ray in LMDE? Any specific drivers needed in order to watch films?

[Kimiko_0]

Short answer: Yes, you can, but not without some hassle and a lot of harddisk space.

Blu-Ray discs can be read by some programs if you have the libbluray library installed. Check your favorite media players' websites and documentation for more details on that.

However, most commercial BDs have a content scrambling/encryption system applied that requires a registered media player to work. Check Wikipedia for more details. Obviously, open-source players won't be able to register with the authorities concerned because that would expose the encryption keys, so there are currently none (AFAIK) that can play commercial BDs. All you'll be able to play is non-commercial BDs. BD-ROMs probably wouldn't be encrypted, so those you can use.

There are some programs that can read the data from commercial (i.e. encrypted) BDs directly, decrypt it if the disc is older than half a year or so, and convert the result to a video file that you can play from your harddisk afterwards. This works because BD encryption keys are continuously being cracked. The movie industry will change the keys on newly produced discs, but of course they can't rewrite discs already released. One such program that I know of is called MakeMKV, but there are others. Search the web for them if you want.

[DrHu]

The other option is to play through a supported meida, such as Xbox or Sony playstation

http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/2007/04/05/how-to-play-blu-ray-and-hd-dvd-movie-discs-in-linux/

--from above link
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Restr ... ayAndHDDVD

Requirements
None of the software below is supplied or endorsed by Ubuntu.
An HD DVD drive. The Xbox 360 HD-DVD player works well. Log into Gnome and then plug in the player. DVDs and CDs will work out of the box, HD-DVDs require the additional steps below. OR
A Blu-ray drive.

That might be the best method, pick up video blu ray player or video game system that includes blu ray disk and make it the media delivery system for the Linux OS..
--it certainly would eliminate most of the hacks needed to make it (Blu Ray) work directly on the Linux OS

[msm]

Thanks for the replies. I was thinking that the lxbdplayer might work but do not have the possibility of trying it as I currently do not have a br player: http://sourceforge.net/projects/lxbdplayer/