Breaking News: Free BD/DVD player software

[Ponmayilal]

Hmmm.................for those folks looking for a free Bluray Disc/DVD player here is Digiarty's DA player.

"DAPlayer is a Powerful, Simple to use and All-in-one video/audio player software for windows that plays most audio/video multimedias easily and smoothly. It is designed to give users a complete free solution for playing High-definition videos, which include Bluray, AVCHD, TS, MKV, MPEG4, H264 video formats as well as DVD video and music CD.​

It comes with more than 320 video codecs and 130 audio codecs, builds in numerous customizable controls, fully supports Multi-track video/audio and subtitles, TrueColor System, compatible with almost all multimedia formats and owns fast launch speed. DAPlayer is guaranteed to deliver the highest quality viewing and listening experience on Windows PC."

Download from here .

( Since I do not have any BDs here, I have not tried it. Others may try it and post their comments here. It may be useful for those looking for a free BD player. Thanks.)

 

[Zepher]

Well, it works pretty good. i'll be using this on my PC since PowerDVD and Total Media Theater are giving me grief.

 

[Zoloft]

as their forums are down for maintenance, any clue if/how their software handles HDCP? I'm currently using ArcSoft with AnyDVD, but, would be nice to simply have just the one app to play my legally purchased BluRay discs :|

 

[MrNeeds]

windows 7 has full support to play these media types, you don't need any extra codecs installed...

 

[Ponmayilal]

as their forums are down for maintenance, any clue if/how their software handles HDCP? I'm currently using ArcSoft with AnyDVD, but, would be nice to simply have just the one app to play my legally purchased BluRay discs :|

I am not sure whether the player software itself can defeat the HDCP factor. Most probably not, if one goes by the other BD player software like Power DVD, Total Media Theater, Nero etc.

 

[Zepher]

as their forums are down for maintenance, any clue if/how their software handles HDCP? I'm currently using ArcSoft with AnyDVD, but, would be nice to simply have just the one app to play my legally purchased BluRay discs :|

I am not sure whether the player software itself can defeat the HDCP factor. Most probably not, if one goes by the other BD player software like Power DVD, Total Media Theater, Nero etc.

It played fine on my my PC.
Only thing is is that I can't find a way to play any of the extras on the disc. All it plays is the main movie file.

 

[Ponmayilal]

The trial

Since I do not have any BD movie, I decided to try the Digiarty DA player with a home movie BD.

This trial will check out the BD conversion capability of the Freemake Video Converter as also the DA player's capability to play the Home movie on BD.

So the story goes on with the twists and turns of any such trial.

Added 19 short 720p .mov video clips (total duration 10 minutes) shot with my Kodak Zi8 Pocket HD Camcorder to Freemake Video Converter, joined them, clicked on "to Blu-ray" button at the bottom ribbon and then on "Convert". Within about 20 minutes the BD ISO was ready to drive the DA Player.




Mounted the ISO on Elby's Virtual Clone Drive and played on with DA Player.

What a disappointment ! While the BD opened, I was only greeted with a still picture. As the navigation bar button moved in steps every 4 or so seconds, the still picture changed to another still picture every 2 or so minutes. The playback was a total failure.

Is something wrong with the BD ISO created by the Freemake Converter? My task is now getting extended. I extracted the .m2ts file from the BD ISO and then played the video file with the DA Player. Results ditto. Only changing still images. No movie!



The .m2ts file played true on WMP12 and also on MPC-Home Cinema. So nothing wrong with the conversion or the BD ISO too most probably - but let me confirm it more precisely.

So out came my ASUS SBW-06C1S-U External Slim Blu-ray writer (a $129 purchase from newegg ) and my only Verbatim 50GB BD-RE DL disk ( a $17 buy from Amazon). These will also be on trial now.

After some initial hiccups - due to some mix-up on my part -
Windows Disc Image burner successfully burnt the BD ISO on to the disk. ( Even Freemake Converter would have directly wriiten to the BD but at that point of time I did not want to tax my new ASUS BD writer and 50GB Verbatim BD-RE DL for a 3GB 10' movie. )

Now back to the DA Player and it failed to play the BD. The same slide show.

WMP12 will not play BDs - even with Shark 007 codecs. A known fact.

Opened the BD on MPC-Home Cinema and it failed to open. But I knew why. Shark 007 had written in an earlier post on the how-to. For the first time I am gonna try it. ( And so this trial has many firsts - for me atleast )



In the Settings application "SWAP" tab check "Use FFDshow for VC1" (Disable Windows Media Foundation will automatically get checked)

Now MPC - Home Cinema opened the BD effortlessly and played the movie grand.



So the Freemake Video converter did a good job, the Windows Disc Image Burner did a good job, the ASUS BD writer and Verbatim did a good job and the BD played true on MPC-Home Cinema + Shark 007 codecs. DA Player failed miserably.

Even a .mov file did not play satisfactorily on DA Player. Digiarty now has its task cut - to improve and bring it upto the mark.

Note: Industry-mastered BD is a different beast altogether when compared to the dye-based consumer BDs. Mate Zepher has reported that he has no problems playing the BD movies. So the DA Player can still be a viable option provided the ever evolving new protection algorithms are taken care of by timely updates.

But as a total media player, it has miles to go.

Signing off.

 

[Zoloft]

It's free, so figured I'd give it a go. Sadly, doesn't have any effect on HDCP, have to run AnyDVD in the background just like I do with ArcSoft. As ArcSoft has served me faithfully for a while now, I'll just stick with that.

 

[Zepher]

It's free, so figured I'd give it a go. Sadly, doesn't have any effect on HDCP, have to run AnyDVD in the background just like I do with ArcSoft. As ArcSoft has served me faithfully for a while now, I'll just stick with that.

Why do you need to run AnyDVD? what happens when you try and play a disc and it's not running?

 

[Zoloft]

Some sort of copy protection, HDCP kicks in, preventing the disc from playing. I guess it's meant to prevent piracy, by preventing people from playing (their legally purchased?!?) BluRays on a computer (which is my only television. I can't recall the specific error, Windows Media Center, ArcSoft and DaPlayer all give a different dialog, but it all boils down to the damn copy protection.

High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Zepher]

That is strange. Both of my PC's play BD's without the need of AnyDVD.
I do have Total Media Theater and PowerDVD installed on both and tried the DA Player on my main rig the other night.
I guess all of my connections are HDCP enabled.

 

[FuturDreamz]

Yeah TMT did not like my VGA connection (though it didn't give ANY error), but it plays fine over HDMI.

Too bad my TV automatically overscans over HDMI. who the hell does that in this day and age???