www.makemkv.com

Hi there, let me begin by saying I'm aware that this was a feature in the past, but I have a particular use case for its return.

As far as I understand, the feature was removed due to MakeMKV's ability to integrate with VLC:

• MakeMKV v1.14.0 (5.11.2018)
  • Obsolete features:
    • Removed UPNP streaming (Use VLC or Kodi with libmmbd instead)

And this is great for watching discs on your computer, but streaming to other devices is neglected in this affair; in order to achieve this, one needs to open the disc in VLC and enable a streaming setup, then open the resultant stream URL in another player (like VLC for iOS).

• This requires remuxing the stream - you have to know how to configure VLC's sout and make sure to include all the audio & subtitle streams you want.
• To control the stream (pause/seek), you must be able to control the VLC server from your client device.
• VLC does not currently allow you to play exactly one title from a disc.

The solution in my eyes is to reintroduce a direct streaming solution, where MakeMKV will decrypt the requested playlist file/VOB on demand over a simple HTTP server. This would also make it easier to see which title is which before ripping, which is currently somewhat difficult because VLC title numbers for Blu-rays do not line up with MakeMKV's.

Also, I'm not sure if this was in the original implementation (1.10.0 can't be downloaded anymore), but the ability to start the streaming server via the command line would be great!

shayy wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 18, 2025 8:04 pm

... over a simple HTTP server.

Using TCP/IP is a matter of packet forwarding, but I thought VLC could kind of already do this. I know way back in the VLS days, Video Lan SERVER, one of the gimmicks it could pull off was authenticating a DVD in an optical drive so you could read the disc over a network. Although I have not done this since VLS was a thing (~20yrs) so I don't know if it can still do that or if it can do that with any encryption library.

flojo wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 19, 2025 5:12 pm

Video Lan SERVER, one of the gimmicks it could pull off was authenticating a DVD in an optical drive so you could read the disc over a network.

Unfortunately, to my knowledge, modern VLC can't do this. The only option is streaming the disc's contents via sout as a video stream. Client VLCs (i.e. those without the disc drive physically attached) have no way to read the disc as though it was connected to the machine since, as I understand it, libdvd requires a local device/mount address (/dev/diskN, /Volumes/X, ...). One could perhaps use Samba to expose their server's disc drive and then mount it on the client machine, but that's not so easy with smartphones and TVs, if possible at all. And anyway, that solution forgoes MakeMKV and VLC entirely so it's a bit off topic.

I realized that 1.12.2 still included a functional streaming server, so I downloaded it a few days ago and started playing with it. It's fantastic and exactly what I need, even controllable from makemkvcon. Unfortunately, I'm having trouble getting it to handle most Blu-rays (even for info, not only stream), including discs using older AACS versions, whereas the current MakeMKV doesn't struggle at all, as expected. Once again, bringing this feature back with the new versions' amenities would be incredible!

The only other issue is that, when you start the streaming server, MakeMKV must first "parse" the entire disc for all its titles, even if you only want to stream one title, which can take quite a while. I don't quite understand why it can't selectively parse on demand like libmmbd does when VLC begins a stream - maybe using VLC skips a step since it doesn't list the titles with their sizes and durations? Anyway, that's minor all things considered.