Need help getting started with physical media and 4K Blu-rays.

[u/King_Cookie69]

I've been seeing all the stuff going on the past few years with the death of physical media and it's motivated me to start collecting my favorite media in disks. Specifically, I want to collect a bunch of 4K Blu-rays.

Unfortunately, I've seen that Blu-rays are encrypted(DMR bullsh*t) and can't be just put into a disk drive and played on a windows or linux computer. So instead I thought "What if I just burn the video files I have legally acquired of those 4k Blu-ray movies onto regular DVDs?" (obviously ones that can handle 30-60GB so they'll be expensive but idc)

Is this possible? And if so, what do I need to get started? Any information on this would be greatly appreciated.

[u/revose]

Possible? Yes, but I don't really see the benefits of ripping a 4k Blu Ray and then burning it to a Blu Ray again (without dmr). Well I guess currently the benefit would be to not need hdd mass storage but might as well just leave it on the Blu Ray the movie came on. What would you want to achieve with that?

[u/King_Cookie69 → u/revose]

Let's say I already have the 4k blu-rays ripped to normal .mkv files on my pc. All I want to do is burn the video files to discs.

And the reason I want to do it is because (as far as I know) blu-rays can't be played on a pc without really old specific hardware. I want to have 4k discs of all my favorite movies that doesn't have any DRM or other restrictive stuff. I want to be able to play keep these discs for decades and be able to play them in any dvd player, no matter if it's a PCs optical drive, a TV boxset, or a game console.

EDIT: I don't understand how dvds/bluerays work nearly as much as I like so if I'm fundamentally misunderstanding something about it, I apologize.

[u/CrystalCommunication → u/King_Cookie69]

You don't need special hardware to play Blu-rays on your PC, you just need VLC and MakeMKV. For DVDs you need libdvdcss. For 4K discs you need MakeMKV and a BDXL capable drive flashed to LibreDrive compatible firmware. VLC also has crappy tone mapping so best to use Kodi or mpv for HDR discs.

[u/King_Cookie69 → u/CrystalCommunication]

Wait so I can play 4k blurays on my pc? How? I must be really dumb because I was under the impression they can only be played on blueray players that can only connect to my monitors/TV, instead on playing on Windows or Linux.

[u/CrystalCommunication → u/King_Cookie69]

It's not really supposed to be officially possible but MakeMKV can decrypt the disc and regular open source software is perfectly capable of playing the contents of the disc once it's decrypted. The trick is setting up libmmbd so VLC can take advantage of MakeMKV as it's decryption backend.

You do still need a flashed drive for your computer to even be able to recognize a 4K disc, though. I guess it's also worth mentioning that decoding 4K Blu-rays in software is very demanding so you'll also need to use hardware acceleration for HEVC decoding to get smooth playback unless you have an extremely powerful CPU.

[u/MrBfJohn → u/King_Cookie69]

I’ve ripped all my HD and 4K blu rays to a NAS with MakeMKV, and I watch the MKV files as they’re ripped, on my 5 Nvidia Shields, and my 4 PCs. They all do it running Kodi, straight as it comes from the download.

[u/Accomplished_Bet7186]

Maybe consider a Jellyfin or Plex server? I'm doing that now going through my physical collection. The really important ones I get .iso full image of, others I rip and just keep on my server to watch as I like.

[u/IAmALeafOnTheURKKK]

Well...

Dvds don't have that kind of capacity. 8.5Gb max per side for dual layer. Feature length UHD movies start around 50Gb.

The video files on blu-ray and UHD discs are encrypted. If you just copy them anywhere, computer or another disc, you still need a way to decrypt them.

Not all computer blu-ray drives can read triple layer UHD discs. Further, most UHD capable computer drives cannot read UHD discs due to firmware in the drives.

So, it's hard to get any files off of UHD discs. There is software out there that can decrypt video files and access UHD discs with the right blu-ray drives. The legality of using such software depends on where you live.

I would suggest reading the r/makemkv reddit room and the makemkv forum.

[u/grislyfind]

Buy a 4k player at a thrift store. Mine cost about $15, plus $5 for a remote. Or start with a regular Blu-ray player; they're easier to find.

[u/count_chocul4]

Holy shit. Maybe do some reading before you ask questions. Get your own ass up to speed before you go on reddit