Overview

MediaPortal (as of 1.3.0 Alpha) can now play most (not all, see limitations below) of your Blu-ray discs, including the menus, extras, etc! Development will still be ongoing because BD-J (Blu-ray Java discs) aren't supported (yet...) but for now you can enjoy the best video & audio quality right within MediaPortal, without the need of an external video player (like PowerDVD or TotalMedia Theatre) or a separate Blu-ray player.

Limitations:

• BD-J based menus aren't supported - all BD-J based Blu-ray discs need to be played in title based mode.
• Text based subtitles aren't supported - only a small minority of Blu-ray discs seems to use text-based subtitles.
• MediaPortal now fully supports playing unencrypted Blu-ray discs (with the exception of BD-J discs using Java menus - for which MediaPortal will display a list of Titles for the user to access instead of displaying the Java menus). If the user wishes to play a commercial disc, then they will need to use a 3rd party on-the-fly decrypter such as AnyDVD HD or DVDFab Passkey Lite.
• Windows Vista (or above) is needed for this feature to work. This is because the EVR Renderer is used, which only works software based in XP.
• LAV Video + VC-1 interlaced video does not work with Software Decoding.
• 3D Blu-ray movies aren't supported (yet). Libbluray needs to fully support this before it will work with MediaPortal's internal player.

Feature

So what does this feature actually do? Well, it replaces your stand-alone Blu-ray player, since (if your Blu-ray disc is supported) you can simply play it from inside MediaPortal (using a Blu-ray drive connected to your computer). When you play the disc, you'll see the same menu as if you were playing the disc with a separate Blu-ray player. It will show you the Root Menu on start-up, you can select a chapter to watch, you can set your preferred Audio and Subtitle language and it even supports the Popup Menu!

As soon as you play the disc, you'll get the Select play mode window (see screenshot below). Here you select if you want the disc to start with the Menu (option 1), or play the Title (option 2, which is the Main Movie on the disc). Additionally you can choose option 3 to select a specific Title/Chapter from the Main Movie on the disc. Normally you start the disc with option 1, but if your Blu-ray has a Java Menu (BD-J disc) then this won't work (as stated in the limitations above). BD-J discs can still play the movie (by selecting option 2 or 3) but you won't have Menus.

So let's continue and select option 1 here, because we want to see the Menu!

And there it is! Just as on a normal Blu-ray player, you can select any option here. In case of this Blu-ray disc (Music Concert), you can play the entire Concert (Play Program), play a specific part from the concert (Act One or Two), check the Extra's (What Happens in Vegas...) or select SetUp, which let's you select the Audio and Subtitle Language for this disc.

Selecting Act One shows all songs of that part.

Selecting Set Up shows the Audio and Subtitle Language for this disc.

While playing the disc, you can bring up the Context Menu (F9 on keyboard). Here you can change the usual settings, select option 5 to go to the Root Menu of the disc... 

... or select option 6 to bring up the Popup Menu, a Blu-ray Menu that can be accessed without interrupting the playback of the Blu-ray disc.

You can also select a chapter (in Menu option 7) from this Menu (the Music Blu-ray disc from this example has a chapter for every song), which is especially handy when you have a BD-J disc.

So, to sum it all up: Just start playback, select Menu (unless you have a BD-J disc, then you select the Title) and enjoy the highest quality of Video & Audio on your MediaPortal system!

During testing of this new Feature, the Blu-ray Compatibility List was populated. This list (if your disc is on it) should tell you if the Menu will work or not.

If you have a problem with a disc, and it's not on the Blu-ray Compatibility List, then you can report it to the team in the Native Blu-ray Support thread. To investigate the problem, the team might need you to provide a sample of your disc.

Related

References

• Configuration