Playing UHD discs directly via libmmbd

[Chewi]

Hello. Sorry if this is a stupid question. I'm a bit behind the times and have just bought my first 4K HDR TV. I tend to only watch Blu-rays once (by renting them) so I've never had much interest in ripping them. Instead, I've used MakeMKV libmmbd to play them directly from disc with VLC. Since the vast majority of users are more interested in ripping, I haven't been able to work out from reading around whether playing discs directly will work with UHD discs, particularly those with Dolby Vision. My drive is not UHD-capable so if direct playback is not possible then I may just throw in the towel and buy a regular Blu-ray player instead, sad as that may be.

I've always dreamed of having a nice Kodi-based media centre running on some fancy ARM board. Even ignoring the fact that MakeMKV isn't currently supported on ARM, it's always been an uphill struggle and it looks even steeper up ahead.

[Billycar11]

yes direct playback is possible with UHD but no player supports dolby vision but you will get the regular HDR

[hansolo]

How is libmmbd decrypting supposed to work? I read instructions and one thread here where it was stated "it just works" when it's enabled. I have understood that is supposed to work in the background on-the-fly? I have enabled settings in the configuration page of makeMKV. Both win system level and also for MPC-HC and VLC, which are the two players I mostly use. In spite of this on-the-fly decrypting does not work for me. I cannot directly play m2ts files from Blu-ray or UHD Blu-ray discs. I'm using latest makeMKV and Win10 x64 (20H2).

[Chewi]

Thanks for replying, Billycar11, that's really good to know. I'm not sure if that means I can stream from MakeMKV to the TV but I guess I'll find out soon enough.

hansolo, I've only done this on Linux with VLC and mpv but I gather it's supposed to work on Windows too. I don't play specific m2ts files though, I just tell them to play the disc as a whole.

[hansolo]

Thanks alot for excellent tip Chewi! I tried again with MPC-HC and this time used its "Open DVD/BD" functionality. Now it works, even for UHD BD. Of course MPC-HC cannot do full menus but it allows easily to check certain playlists/titles containing the actual feature. Actually very nice as you can by-pass all the pre-menu warnings etc.