Blu-ray software that will run in a VM

[essential]

My friend has a Mac, and got an external Blu-ray drive for Christmas from his girlfriend, but she didn't know it wouldn't work on a Mac.

Last weekend we finally installed Windows XP via a Virtual Machine (VM Fusion). Windows installed fine and was working well. The Blu-ray drive came with a copy of Cyberlink PowerDVD. We installed that, and it seemed fine, but after the install when you double clicked on the icon, nothing happened, even after a restart.

We then uninstalled it, restarted, and installed the newest trial version from Cyberlink, same problem, nothing happened when we double clicked the icon.

Then we tried the Corel WinDVD trial, that errored when you double clicked the icon after install. Then we tried the ArcSoft TotalMedia Theater trial, and when we double clicked that icon after install, i'm paraphrasing, but it said, "Sorry, but this software cannot run in a Virtual Machine." So now i'm assuming none of them worked because it was a Virtual Machine, for whatever reason.

My main question:
Is there any Blu-ray software that will work in a Virtual Machine that will allow him to watch Blu-rays?

Thanks.

 

[vailr]

Use Bootcamp to dual-boot: OSX & WinXP, installed on a separate NTFS partition.
Did you try: VLC media player 1.0.5 ?
There's versions for OSX & Windows.
http://mac.majorgeeks.com/download4622.html

 

[essential]

Use Bootcamp to dual-boot: OSX & WinXP, installed on a separate NTFS partition.
Did you try: VLC media player 1.0.5 ?
There's versions for OSX & Windows.
http://mac.majorgeeks.com/download4622.html

he didn't want to have to reboot and be limited to Windows only to watch a movie, which is why he went the VM route.

as far as VLC, it can handle .mt2s files, but it can't open a blu-ray disc itself, which means he would almost have to rip the movie to his computer in order to watch it, which isn't really an option since blu-ray discs can get up to 30-50gigs.

 

[Nothinman]

If Fusion lets you give the VM as a raw block device it might work, but I have no idea if Fusion lets you do that or not.

 

[somethingsketchy]

I think the main problem is how the host OS will handle the external blu-ray device. If the Apple hardware does not officially support such hardware, you'll be hard-pressed to make a VM use the device. That said, did your friend try the full VMware Workstation or even VirtualBox? Sometimes a "VM player" may not be sufficient in some applications. Perhaps using a more "full featured" application such as Workstation could eliminate the problem of the error messages.

Worth a shot...

 

[essential]

I think the main problem is how the host OS will handle the external blu-ray device. If the Apple hardware does not officially support such hardware, you'll be hard-pressed to make a VM use the device. That said, did your friend try the full VMware Workstation or even VirtualBox? Sometimes a "VM player" may not be sufficient in some applications. Perhaps using a more "full featured" application such as Workstation could eliminate the problem of the error messages.

Worth a shot...

He used the full VM Ware Fusion, not just a virtualbox, the newest version, he bought it.

Apple/Mac does recognize the Blu-ray drive, it just only reads dvds, it does not load the Blu-ray disc when it is inserted. The Virtual Machine recognizes the Blu-ray drive, and even loads the Blu-ray disc name, we can open the disc and view what's on it, it just he can't play them.

It's all good I guess, just have to wait for VLC to support playing Blu-ray discs.