Best way to play bluray without all the BS?

[Muse]

What ripper(s) are best/OK/etc. with blu-rays? What do you use and why?

I use Makemkv for ripping my movies. Simple to use and works 99% of the time. I dont convert so i just keep the untouched audio/video/subtitles and toss em on my server.

I just got my first 1080p display a few weeks ago, my standalone BD player I ordered yesterday (Sony S390). At the very least in ripping a Blu-ray disk I'm going to want to discard all but English subtitles, if at all possible. Oh, and trailers, warning screens, splash screens, any dreck you can't bypass with the Next button for the most part too... It's a crime if you can't just get to the movie easily. 😎

To change the topic slightly, what happens when you stream movies? I've been reading a lot of threads (AVS Forums for the most part) with people talking a blue streak about streaming services like Netflix, Vudu, Amazon, Youtube, others, and this is HD content, presumably looking as good as playing a blu-ray movie on a stand alone player. Does that bypass the crap?

 

[NutBucket]

With Netflix anyway, the movie just plays. There's definitely no trailers; possibly and FBI warning but I'm not certain that's even there.

 

[Triumph]

Netflix just plays the movie, I can't remember ever seeing an FBI warning, or even a rating screen.

The quality is definitely not Bluray, I don't think they even have the option of sending out anything more than 720P. But if you are happy with DVD, you should be happy with Netflix assuming you have a fast connection. Netflix reduces the quality based on your speed, or so I've read.

 

[NutBucket]

Netflix quality can definitely vary; it can change based on your speed and also if their servers are seeing heavy demand.

And no, quality is not even close to blu-ray.

 

[Muse]

Well, I heard that there's 1080p Netflix streaming now and the Sony S390 (that I just ordered) and many other Blu-ray players and I believe Roku can do this with varying results I believe that my ~5mbps DSL can handle it. I'm going to give it a try. Don't know the ins and outs, have never done any kind of subscription video but I'm going to try the Netflix free trial (30 days when I went to their website a couple of weeks ago, but I wasn't ready). I don't know the tradeoffs of doing their streaming vs. disks by mail, and I think you can do either or both, but the rates are, of course, conditional on what you get.

Netflix quality can definitely vary; it can change based on your speed and also if their servers are seeing heavy demand.

And no, quality is not even close to blu-ray.

Are you sure the quality isn't as good as blu-ray? I mean 1080p should be the same as long as you aren't experiencing problems. Some players have had problems, such as the Panasonic 210. The 220 and 320 fixed those, but some people have experienced audio/video synch issues with them. I haven't seen similar complaints with the Sony S390 and S590, one reason I went with Sony (returned my Panasonic 220 a couple of weeks ago, because it didn't have a subtitle button on the remote).

 

[JoeBleed]

Some disks have quite a few subtitle streams and to have to go sequentially through them to turn them off is a PITA. For example, Alien Anthology has 10!:

SUBTITLES: English, Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Norwegian and Swedish.

The only way around this (if you are ripping a DVD to a disk) is to rip with a ripper that does allow you to choose your preferred subtitle(s). I've been doing this for years with DVDs and I suppose it's possible with Blu-ray too.

For the subtitles, Media Player Classic Home Cenima lets you select subtitles and i think it lists the languate. The audio tracks aren't i don't think. I haven't looked at that in a while.

As for the ripper/decrypter i use AnyDVD-HD. It works well. You can either rip the files or and ISO to HDD or you can just watch it and it will decrypt it live. AnyDVD isn't free though. But it was money well spent.

Another thing to look at if you decide to go the ripping route, look for a blu-ray drive that can be un rip locked. Makes ripping at full speed, or near it, possible. otherwise it will rip at around 1-2x. fine for live viewing, sucks for ripping.

 

[sdifox]

Well, I heard that there's 1080p Netflix streaming now and the Sony S390 (that I just ordered) and many other Blu-ray players and I believe Roku can do this with varying results I believe that my ~5mbps DSL can handle it. I'm going to give it a try. Don't know the ins and outs, have never done any kind of subscription video but I'm going to try the Netflix free trial (30 days when I went to their website a couple of weeks ago, but I wasn't ready). I don't know the tradeoffs of doing their streaming vs. disks by mail, and I think you can do either or both, but the rates are, of course, conditional on what you get.



Are you sure the quality isn't as good as blu-ray? I mean 1080p should be the same as long as you aren't experiencing problems. Some players have had problems, such as the Panasonic 210. The 220 and 320 fixed those, but some people have experienced audio/video synch issues with them. I haven't seen similar complaints with the Sony S390 and S590, one reason I went with Sony (returned my Panasonic 220 a couple of weeks ago, because it didn't have a subtitle button on the remote).

resolution is not the sames as image quality.

 

[JoeBleed]

I use AnyDVDHD for this and play my BRs in PotPlayer, anydvdHD takes about 10 seconds to work its magic and then you can straight play the movie without having to see any of the BS. HOWEVER you have no menu support which you may find annoying

AnyDVD now has some kind of menu generating option. Though it only seems to work on main stream blu-ray playing software. Doesn't work with MPC-HC. My trial of tmt ran out before i noticed them offering it so i don't know how it works or what it looks like.

 

[JoeBleed]

resolution is not the sames as image quality.

Yes

compression and bitrate. I like netflix, but if i like something i like enough to watch it over and over, i'm buying the disk. DVD or Bu-ray if they have a good transfer.

Edit: when i tried streaming a full blu-ray rip, good quality transfer, 100Mb/s lan wasn't good enough. Had to use gigabit. had no N wireless router to try it on at the time. Still don't.

 

[Muse]

Yes

compression and bitrate. I like netflix, but if i like something i like enough to watch it over and over, i'm buying the disk. DVD or Bu-ray if they have a good transfer.

Edit: when i tried streaming a full blu-ray rip, good quality transfer, 100Mb/s lan wasn't good enough. Had to use gigabit. had no N wireless router to try it on at the time. Still don't.

Hmm, I was unaware that 1080p streaming would be inferior to blu-ray. I guess if I do stream Netflix 1080p (well, there's a free trial), I'll do it with my Sony S390 blu-ray player and connect it by ethernet to my router. That should be a lot faster than my wireless, which is not N.

 

[ManBearPig]

Personally, ive never seen anything that was streamed (1080p or otherwise) that could compare to blu-ray.

 

[sdifox]

Hmm, I was unaware that 1080p streaming would be inferior to blu-ray. I guess if I do stream Netflix 1080p (well, there's a free trial), I'll do it with my Sony S390 blu-ray player and connect it by ethernet to my router. That should be a lot faster than my wireless, which is not N.

lulz, there is no way they are going to stream 25GB to you. Or even 8GB.

 

[Anubis]

AnyDVD now has some kind of menu generating option. Though it only seems to work on main stream blu-ray playing software. Doesn't work with MPC-HC. My trial of tmt ran out before i noticed them offering it so i don't know how it works or what it looks like.

humm, id try this out but i really dont want to install powerdvd again

 

[Muse]

Yes

compression and bitrate. I like netflix, but if i like something i like enough to watch it over and over, i'm buying the disk. DVD or Bu-ray if they have a good transfer.

Is DVD quality actually better than 1080p Netflix? IOW, watching a DVD in a good upscaling player on a 1080p display will be a better experience than streaming 1080p Netflix to that display? Or does that depend on factors such as the speed of your network and internet connection and the ability of Netflix's servers to handle the bandwidth demands of its customers at a particular point in time?

 

[Muse]

lulz, there is no way they are going to stream 25GB to you. Or even 8GB.

Then how can they get away with calling it 1080p? :\

 

[smitbret]

Yes

compression and bitrate. I like netflix, but if i like something i like enough to watch it over and over, i'm buying the disk. DVD or Bu-ray if they have a good transfer.

Edit: when i tried streaming a full blu-ray rip, good quality transfer, 100Mb/s lan wasn't good enough. Had to use gigabit. had no N wireless router to try it on at the time. Still don't.

Odd that you've had trouble streaming through 100Mb/s LAN, though. I've been streaming via Wireless N for a couple of years now and had 0 problems with raw, uncompressed BR Rips. I don't know of any BRs that pump out more than 50Mbps. I've been streaming with a D-Link DIR-825 to a couple of wireless bridges, a Linksys 610 and D-Link DAP-1522. The Linksys doesn't even have Gigabit ports on it, to connect to my PS3 and WD Live. Never had a stutter. FF/Rew was better when I hardwired from the Router to the streaming boxes, but that was across Gigabit connections at both ends. My wireless G connections would choke at 40Mb/s (peaks) so I can't imagine any bottleneck with any 100Mbps LAN connection.

If OP is really looking for the purest way to rip BR. Then AnyDVD and TsMuxer will rip the native .m2ts stream out of the BR. AnyDVDHD will cost a decent penny, but TsMuxer is free.

Many of the newer Blu-Rays use a playlist setup, utilizing several different streams in the BDMV folder instead of a single .m2ts stream. TsMuxer allows you to rip to just a single .m2ts that is still BR compliant that you could literally just burn to a BD-R and playback in a BR player or stream with any streaming box. File's gonna be upwards of 30-40 GB in many cases, though. I only keep a handful of my favorite BR Rips on hand without compressing. A lot of movies without a lot of fast moving action or a lot of dark scenes compress VERY well. Something like Bridesmaids can be dropped to about 4-6GB (TruHD Audio track converted to AC3 or .aac 5.1) with little or no difference in perceived quality from a reasonable viewing distance. Something like the Bourne Identity struggles going that small because you end up with blocking and artifacts during dark and high action scenes. For 90% of my stuff, I downres to an .mp4 with the following guideline:

Track 1 - 720p .h264
Track 2 - 2 channel .aac Dolby Pro Logic II 160kbps
Track 3 - 6 channel .aac 320kbps
Track 4 - English subs

I usually end up at about 1.2-1.5 GB per hour and with the right .h264 settings the difference from the original is virtually undiscernable from 10ft on a 50inch display. Plus, it'll playback on just about any device out there.

 

[sdifox]

Then how can they get away with calling it 1080p? :\

it is 1080p, but like I said, resolution<>image quality.

 

[smitbret]

Is DVD quality actually better than 1080p Netflix? IOW, watching a DVD in a good upscaling player on a 1080p display will be a better experience than streaming 1080p Netflix to that display? Or does that depend on factors such as the speed of your network and internet connection and the ability of Netflix's servers to handle the bandwidth demands of its customers at a particular point in time?

The difference is the way the video is encoded. DVD uses MPEG-2, almost all HD uses MPEG-4 which is several factors more efficient. I've seen some really good 4GB 1080p files that will kill an upscaled 480p DVD. 1080p NetFlix still seems a lot better to me than DVD. I can only imagine the hardware that Netflix must be using to compress the streams, though.

 

[JoeBleed]

Is DVD quality actually better than 1080p Netflix? IOW, watching a DVD in a good upscaling player on a 1080p display will be a better experience than streaming 1080p Netflix to that display? Or does that depend on factors such as the speed of your network and internet connection and the ability of Netflix's servers to handle the bandwidth demands of its customers at a particular point in time?

For me, i'd prefer to watch it on DVD. Netflix streaming isn't bad compared to DVD, but sometimes it seems to fluctuate. That may be due to MY internet connection though. Sometimes it seems my area has heavy congestion. I have 10Mb dsl. Plus, i use a 37" 1080p TV for my computer monitor and i'm sitting 2-4 feet away from the screen depending if i'm leaning back in my chair. So i'm probably more likely to notice compression artifacts.

 

[JoeBleed]

Odd that you've had trouble streaming through 100Mb/s LAN, though. I've been streaming via Wireless N for a couple of years now and had 0 problems with raw, uncompressed BR Rips. I don't know of any BRs that pump out more than 50Mbps. I've been streaming with a D-Link DIR-825 to a couple of wireless bridges, a Linksys 610 and D-Link DAP-1522. The Linksys doesn't even have Gigabit ports on it, to connect to my PS3 and WD Live. Never had a stutter. FF/Rew was better when I hardwired from the Router to the streaming boxes, but that was across Gigabit connections at both ends. My wireless G connections would choke at 40Mb/s (peaks) so I can't imagine any bottleneck with any 100Mbps LAN connection.

I don't remember for sure, but i think it may have been the first avatar blu-ray release i tried streaming. I had an old SMC 10/100 switch. I eventually replaced it with a fanless gigabit SMC switch. If i remember, i can try it again with the nics set to 100Mb. Also, don't forget the vidoe is a high bitrate, but you also have the audio streaming with it. I'm not sure what it comes out to be.

 

[JoeBleed]

For the subtitles, Media Player Classic Home Cenima lets you select subtitles and i think it lists the languate. The audio tracks aren't i don't think. I haven't looked at that in a while.

I remembered to check this weekend when i was watching a blu-ray disk on my laptop. MPC-HC lists the language for both subtitles and audio tracks.