Open-Source Blu-Ray Library Now Supports BD-J Java 94
An anonymous reader writes: Updates to the open-source libbluray, libaacs, and libbdplus libraries have improved the open-source Blu-ray disc support to now enable the Blu-ray Java interactivity layer (BD-J). The Blu-ray Java code is in turn executed by OpenJDK or the Oracle JDK and is working well enough to play a Blu-ray disc on the Raspberry Pi when paired with the VLC media player."
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I can't find the slot to insert the Blu-Ray disc into my Raspberry Pi.
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I bought a blue ray player 4 years ago and one blue ray disk to play on it. I played it once. That's it. Over one hundred dollars pissed away. I did rip the disk to the hard drive so now I have a 1080p mkv file of "The Sound of Music" and it looks great playing from my WDTV live. I do use blue ray for file backup and occasionally burn a blue ray movie disk for friends that just can't leave physical media behind. Trust me though, blue ray support on Linux is dismal and it's only a little better on Mac.
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I initially thought that this was a troll comment but on reflection I realise that it is valid.
Clearly 'go digital' meant dispensing with the disc and saving the data to a hard drive but this is semantics as it is merely shifting the data to another media type.
'Say "no" to offline data' is the real message with which I wholeheartedly agree. There should be no need to swap optical discs in this day and age and keeping data offline makes no sense unless you are dealing with tape backups.
I treat blu-ray
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I'm sorry for the semantics problem bud. Didn't mean to confuse you but somehow I'm sure you know what I meant. You were just waitiing for the chance to show off your brilliance. Your welcome.
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Your welcome.
*twitch*
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Oh god I love this "streaming is the future" nonsense.
Once data caps hit the US (and we know they are coming, the ISPs have already installed the backbone to make it happen, it's just a matter of pulling the switch - some have already been "testing" it, like Comcast) every ISP is going to follow suit rather quickly, and when folks who are now clogging up over half the Internet traffic streaming will suddenly drop like flies.
This is the "golden age" of streaming - it ain't gonna last long. I get it, it'
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Compression schemes may improve, but bandwidth usage for streaming continues to go up. Companies like Netflix just use better compression to deliver better quality.
GP is right (at least in the U.S.). Our bandwidth infrastructure simply isn't keeping up. The whole attitude of "Oh don't worry, the market will sort it out" is going to bite us hard in the ass soon. It would be a shame if the country that pioneered most aspects of the internet became a third-world country for actual internet access. The rest of
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> Yes... because there is no way the compression schemes of ripped files can improve over time.
Except we aren't talking about "ripped files", we're talking about STREAMING. What you can achieve with genuine ripped files will actually make the streaming services all look hopelessly pathetic.
Streaming services suffer from the same problem as cable providers. They are corporations that want to cut corners and they know that the average American will eat dirt.
The entire "download-as-you-go" concept is fatall
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I personally rarely do it because no matter what resolution you are streaming at, the compression is so high that it cannot even compare to Blu-ray. Same with the illegal downloads - if you think a two hour film in true HD quality and sound can fit in a couple of gigs, you don't know wtf you are talking about.
You are doing it wrong. Netflix at the highest bit rate is similar to BluRay, and they support 4k which is even better (and yes, the bitrate is adequate). As for downloads proper BluRay rips clock in around 10GB of an average 1.5-2 hour movie. I think you might have been downloading low quality 720p or telecine rips.
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You are doing it wrong. Netflix at the highest bit rate is similar to BluRay, and they support 4k which is even better (and yes, the bitrate is adequate). As for downloads proper BluRay rips clock in around 10GB of an average 1.5-2 hour movie.
You don't know what you're talking about. Netflix's "Super HD" 1080p is 7 Mbit/s [netflix.com]. A single-layer two-hour BluRay movie can be 18 Mbit/s and still leave room for an hour of extra material. The codecs are the same.
Sure, I don't mind the quality of a 10 GB H.264 BluRay rip; I wouldn't be able to tell the difference compared to the raw BluRay rip... which clocks in at 25 GB or more. But I can certainly tell the difference when I compare with the 6.3 GB Netflix "Super HD" version!
As for 4K, what's the point, whe
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Netflix at the highest bit rate is similar to BluRay
If you can't tell the difference between Netflix's HD streaming and bluray then you're either blind, have a really shitty TV, or you're sitting too far away. I would actually rate Netflix HD as more comparable to a good anamorphic DVD than a bluray.
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Depends where in the UK you are.
Some areas have competion between virgin meda cable and openreach FTTC. At the other extreme some areas have no cable and phone lines so long/shitty that they can't handle DSL at all. Many providers have caps or "fair usage policies", especially in areas that don't have LLU.
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I stream from my basement. Buy the discs (or, more recently, rent them from Redbox or borrow them from the library) and rip them. A NAS in the basement holds everything, and xbmc on computers in the livingroom and bedroom for the streaming.
Total cost $1000. Being able to stream whatever movie I own within 15 seconds of turning the TV on? Priceless.
Best part? The NAS accepts ssh connections from outside the home. I have a similar setup in a friend's house and my parents, both of which do a 'rsync over
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Then I spent all my TV time streaming off my media player, in my case, extremely poor resolution MST3K episodes.
I feel less special but happy to be part of a larger group of rubes fooled into buying a BR player.
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for the 5 people that own any blu rays and don't just use a regular stand-alone player or game console
FTFY.
Re:this is great news! (Score:4, Insightful)
why use a regular player? it runs unknown code, can blacklist your devices, forces menus and ads on you and takes too long to startup.
ripped files play right away and on any vlc or video software player.
the days of NEEDING a standalone video player are long gone.
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Care to explain why you didn't login to an account to say why "privacy violation is complete bullshit"?
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I'm a big fan of Anonymous Cowards in general and I'm not attacking the messenger - it's just funny considering what was said. Personally, I do use a PS3 and I'm not concerned about what code is running on it largely because Sony is too incompetent to be
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Its simple I like the menus. This library is the first to let you do menus. You can play rips with menus with only 2 non 'authorized' players out there.the neo 550 and the DUNE. Most of the others stink badly.
Many of the extras are there but scattered thru 40-50 different chunks of small video usually. Some discs 'hide' the real content in 300 other 'videos'. So you are not even sure which one to rip. Menus will take care of that.
So for when I just bought a movie and want to watch it *NOW* instead of
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This. This. This!
Media makes sense for many of us including me. It's higher fidelity, it's MINE so long as I possesses it, and I can transcode it to whatever format. Lend it? Sure! Borrow it? Yup! Watch it (nearly) right away? Can do! Yes, I hate the ads, the forced BS, but I can still watch it - media has value to me any many others. Being able to use the menus and gain access to the extra content and alternate versions of a movie without having to rip it multiple times would be awesome!
This is good news :
Re:this is great news! (Score:4, Interesting)
why use a regular player? it runs unknown code, can blacklist your devices, forces menus and ads on you and takes too long to startup.
ripped files play right away and on any vlc or video software player.
the days of NEEDING a standalone video player are long gone.
I suppose you never owned a DVD player for your TV because it forced you to sit through ads at times?
How many devices have been blacklisted in the last 10 years. And I mean blacklisted as in "too bad, you can't update the firmware on your source or display device to fix this, you have to buy new hardware, and you have no legal recourse". How many times?
Tell me about the audit you did of the code that ran the recording abilities on your last VCR.
[crickets]
Why use a regular player? Because it "just works". Blu-ray players need to have their firmware updated [i]occasionally[/i], but they don't require anywhere close to the constant stream of little patches blu-ray playback software for PCs does (or blu-ray ripping software). Sometimes it's just to get a single disc to play back properly. Keep in mind that patch had to be written by the developers. What if the disc that doesn't work isn't a popular movie? Well, they may not bother fixing the issue. Or maybe they'll only make the patches available for the latest version of their software, forcing you to upgrade. You can argue that the same thing could happen on stand-alone player -- but it doesn't. I still get a firmware update every once in awhile and my player is over three years old.
The experience is overall smoother. I don't have software incompatibilities or system resource issues effecting my playback like can happen on a PC, plus a stand-alone player is quieter than a computer. It's really the same arguments as to the ways game consoles can be better than PC gaming -- dedicated hardware and software for a consistent, assured compatibility experience.
Re:this is great news! (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose you never owned a DVD player for your TV because it forced you to sit through ads at times?
Indeed I never have. I play all my DVDs on MPlayer.
Once in a while I end up watching a DVD on a more normal player, usually as the result of watching something at someone else's house. I am astounded at how poor the experience is. One has to wade through irritating, poorly thoughtout and slow menues, and spend ages skipping (if you're allowed) a bunch of crap before starting to watch what you want.
I've used MPlayer since about 2003. I'm utterly spoiled. There's no way I would return to the user-hostile crap masquerading as normal DVD players.
And one of my favourite features is the reverse 10 seconds button. Great after unpausing or if you failed to catch an important line of dialog. I've never seen a standalone player with such a feature.
In fact some DVDs are so slathered in copy protection that even skipping around at all doesnt work.
Why use a regular player? Because it "just works".
Not only does MPlayer "just work", it "just works" a damn sight beter than "proper" DVD players.
So why would you pick the one that works worse? I can only assume you have some sort of Stockholm syndrome.
The experience is overall smoother.
Not for DVDs it isn't. I don't own a blu-ray player, but I have a hard job imagining anything doing a smoother, simplyer, more user friendly job than MPlayer, given that MPlayer (a) just works and (b) never stops me doing anything I want to do.
I don't have software incompatibilities or system resource issues effecting my playback like can happen on a PC
Get a better OS. I use Linux. It's marvellous, you should try it.
plus a stand-alone player is quieter than a computer.
Get a better computer then. Seriously, an RPi can play HD video and is silent. If you're buying a media PC in this day and age which is louder than an optical drive, then you're buying bad stuff.
dedicated hardware and software for a consistent, assured compatibility experience.
Consistent compatibility with all the latest "rights management" stuff? No thanks!
I'd rather have Linux and MPlayer which are actually compatible with my rights, thankyou very much.
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No mod points, sorry. I totally agree!
10s forward and backward jumps (with the keyboard, so no point-and-click delays), or 1 minute and 10 minutes jumps are really great.
The mandatory ads on DVDs are annoying on stand-alone players. It would be easier and faster (no waiting for mail deliveries) to just download the movies. Why do I have to watch piracy warnings on a leagally-bought DVD when I could skip them on an illegal download?
Also, as I travel between North America and Europe, region codes are a real P
Cheap DVD players (Score:1)
That used to be the advantage of cheap DVD players too.
The bigger brand names respected region encoding, un-skippable previews/warnings, etc. The cheaper ones were sometimes a bit noisy (parts movement) but generally they didn't bother to implement "features" such as region-lock or unskippable sections, which actually made them more useful.
There don't seem to be as many off-brand Blu-ray players, especially if you want one with Netflix etc. I'd love to see an android-based system which combines something li
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So I got to thinking... "surely somebody has thought of/tried this somewhere by now"
I've found this [vidon.me] thus far. It says it supports 3d blu-ray and menus... though I don't see where you would insert the discs (hopefully it's not just for rips)
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It says it supports 3d blu-ray and menus... though I don't see where you would insert the discs (hopefully it's not just for rips)
On the site it says:
The box plays Blu-ray and DVD content as ISO files and movie folders, and also plays nearly all standard format videos.
So it looks like it's rips only.
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I don't get it. Samsung, Sony, etc have Blu-ray players, they've got Android phones, why not combine both technologies into one awesome media box?
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Once in a while I end up watching a DVD on a more normal player, usually as the result of watching something at someone else's house. I am astounded at how poor the experience is. One has to wade through irritating, poorly thoughtout and slow menues, and spend ages skipping (if you're allowed) a bunch of crap before starting to watch what you want.
When I stick a disc in my player it normally will just start up to the movie for me. I've heard this problem before, part of that is player features, part of it is the specific title you're playing. Unskippable content is lame, I agree, but if I get a disc like that I can just do a direct copy of the disc contents with the protections removed and re-burn to a dual-layer blank. Now I can play it back on the player and skip content, no change in quality. Still cheaper and quieter than a second PC in the livin
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Wait, so let me get this straight. You and your SO make
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There is a significant market for region free, modified DVD players that let you skip all the crap. So significant that even supermarket 20 quid models are often region free, or very easy to "modify" with a few button presses on the remote. Clearly there is a demand for something better.
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> Why use a regular player? Because it "just works".
Kind of sort of after a fashion with lost of nonsense and bother.
I ditched my last console DVD player because "just works" doesn't really work.
> The experience is overall smoother.
No it isn't. A PC provides a much better playback experience. It's simpler, more direct, and completely under your control. You can enforce a single standard UI across multiple playback devices.
Ripping a BD can be a pain but it's usually worth the effort even for a rental.
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If you are paranoid about it you could unplug the internet cable. After all, if you're worried about what your Blu Ray disc is capable of then you should also be worried about what ALL the software on the device i
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None of the above. I have an old Denon DBP-2010CI that just plays discs (Blu-Ray, DVD, CD), but has a (at the time it was sold) spectacular scaling engine.
All of the other stuff would be handled by a WDTV, PC, Mac, ...
So far, I haven't found a 1080P, or less, disc it will not play, but the DVD players all eventually couldn't handle the menu formats of some disc, or other, so I suppose this one will, too.
I still need a good Linux BD->streamable file converter for backups, though, and I could also use the
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I have the world's slowest blu-ray player, an original Sony. BDP-S300, I think. It lacks both ethernet and performance. Sadly, the Raspberry Pi lacks SATA, which is what the unit uses to connect to the optical drive. That gives it hack value, though not with R-Pi. I'd probably have to shoehorn something Micro-ITX in there, or use a laptop motherboard, as the optical drive is smack in the center.
I've bought just one Blu-Ray movie because the player is so godawful slow and I have to use a crappy remote with i
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I have the world's slowest blu-ray player, an original Sony. BDP-S300, I think. It lacks both ethernet and performance.
You should have waited is all I can say. Reviews for blu-ray players always mention how long it takes to load discs for a model, and those times get shorter with each generation. Panasonics used to be the fastest, but I think we might be reaching a point where everyone is starting to even out. Just like how picture quality is generally the same on all players now. You can tell when the tech started to reach maturity because suddenly blu-ray players got a lot smaller front to back (this was when the BDP-S350
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You should have waited is all I can say.
Well, I'm not sure how long I would have had to wait to get a better player for $20 at a yard sale.
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I own two Panasonic blu-ray players and they have all been terribly slow at everything, from loading discs to using the "smart" features like Amazon and Netflix. One of the Panasonics quite regularly requires me to cut the power to it and cold start it to either watch Internet content ("NO NETWORK") or to watch a movie (hang up with a "Loading.." graphic).
The Amazon interface on them also seems stuck in the stone age -- you can browse titles or search, but the 'modern' Amazon interface found in Sonys or
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> Sadly, the Raspberry Pi lacks SATA, which is what the unit uses to connect to the optical drive.
There's no good reason you couldn't use a USB device which would be the usual approach for plugging an optical drive into a small low profile machine such as the PI.
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I own lots of them - all of them have been ripped to my server, compressed, and put into MKV containers. However by doing this I cannot get the "branching" that many BluRay have for alternate endings etc. and any additional content on the disk is pretty much wasted too - sometimes I like that stuff. With DVD I rip to ISO and have full access to that stuff!
Now that this is moving forward, finally, if someone can come up with a way to compress the content but allow access to menus, alternate endings, blah bla
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If you want everything on the disc, make the Blu-ray into an ISO just as you would with DVD.
It's a bigger file, sure, but disk space has been getting cheaper.
Re: this is great news! (Score:2)
Then you have to find software that will play it, nothing to this point except Windows software has been capable and many of those player packages required tricks to get them to work. All of my HTPC front-ends are Linux based XBMC and the hassle of mounting ISO and using Windows isn't something I'm interested in. ISO are indeed "larger" - about 3x bigger! Disk space is cheaper sure but not so cheap that I'm willing to triple my storage needs. Compression is the way to go!
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VLC and Mplayer can both play Blu-rays in both ISO and file folder format on Linux as long as they are decrypted.
Re: this is great news! (Score:2)
Including menus? All of the java? I know VLC will do DVD but BD is what I want although I still want them compressed too. If that's the case I wonder why XBMC has gotten this functionality because it sure would be handy.
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Those thousands of other players and programs also have forced restrictions and few options.
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what options?
you but a disc, put it into the player and it plays. worst case you go make the snacks during the crapfest before the movie
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I used to enjoy playing dvd's, but then, once I learned about 'downloading', the PB movies are cleaned, ad-free and compressed well enough to watch without wasting disk space.
I'll never buy a bluray player if I can help it (unless it comes cheap with a laptop) and I won't buy bd's since it supports sony and all those bad companies. I consider THEM to be pirates (oddly enough) since they steal too much of our money. I've paid enough to the entertainment industry. fuck them. no more paying to a corrupt gr
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I do support the corps occasionally by going to the cinema. I love the new GTX screen at the theater down the road here. Movies on the big screen are still awesome to me. I bought an external Blue Ray burner for my Mini. I love renting BDs from Redbox and ripping them. I store them on hard drive and stream to the TV. Nice, and to think I grew up with a 19" black and white Zenith watching Captain Kirk travel the galaxy. Man the changes in the last 50 years.
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And if it wasn't made we wouldn't miss it.
And nothing of value was lost.
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Perhaps, but then again perhaps costs would come down as actors would no longer be paid $52 Million/movie?
Clearly there is still a lot of money in the entertainment business if they can hand over that much money.
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Well first off, they don't always play. I have a disc never used before from a newly purchased complete "Fringe" series that my player can't be read even though the others have played just fine. Secondly, I prefer preparing my snacks before the disc goes in the machine.
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But then you get grease on the discs.
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Brand new, never before played disc. All others in the set worked fine, both newer and older. Tell me again about your "grease" theory.
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So 18 discs work with greasy fingers, and one doesn't? That is your theory? To add insult to injury I received an email from my ISP that I would be charged more for internet access because I exceeded their max after I watched the missing episodes that were available on my Amazon account. I'm really trying to stay on the right side, but the powers that be are making it very hard to do so.
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The Playstation 3 likely remains the most common blu-ray player around - and it does the job very well (though it helps to pick up the optional remote control, as managing playback via a game controller can be a touch irritating). It also, coupled with the PS3 Media Server software on a PC, makes a pretty damned good "just works" solution for playing media files off your hard drive onto the TV and - crucially - one which is easy enough for a total computing ignoramus to get up and running with little or no
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I don't respect IP anymore. I've worked my whole life, given my effort to companies who make big money and I get a salary, at best; and an eventual layoff, almost always.
been fucked and fucked again by corp america and I've had enough.
IP is a corrupt concept. they steal from you, so treat them how they treat you.
do you respect the mafia? why respect IP companies? if they were honest and didn't overprice things and put more and more restrictions on things, that would be one thing; but they are corrupt mo
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you just fuck things up for everybody else
I'm really not seeing how that's true in this case.
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I'm over 50 and have paid so many times over, I feel I've more than 'helped' the industry long enough.
I respect corps that respect me. but the entertainment industry treats us all like criminals. so, I might as well just play along; if I'm being treated like one, I will act the part (in their eyes). I don't give a fuck. after so many years of seeing the bullshit and lies from them, I've had enough. I started out in good faith and paid for cable, vhs tape rentals, dvd rentals and then netflix. I saw th
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show me one god damn thing any of these IP companies have done that could be conveyed as 'pro-consumer' in the past 15 odd years. Tell me who the real leaches are.
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"You don't think it is noteworthy or interesting that a free, open source library is able to play Blu-Ray?"
is able to execute bluray java, not play discs. the bluray libs will play Standard compliant, non encryted discs. eg: home movies. you still need a proprietary decrypter to get around bluray limitations. and if it has cinvia that is a second program to detect and erase cinvia with little loss to audio.
ip holders are rarely ip creators. and copyleft benefits from copyright law, which is where it gets me
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And BD-Java is good how exactly? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to admit for all the blue ray disks I have, the included menus and bumf just makes it a less pleasant experience.
I don't know who builds in the code for these 'features' - but it makes it very difficult to justify buying legitimate media when the studios seem to put all their crapware in the way.
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Well the DRM isn't actually a useful feature, but having a player that supports BD-J, when BD-J is used for some kinds of DRM, is useful insofar as it lets you view the DRM'd discs.
If the question is whether BD-J being part of Blu Ray has added any useful features to Blu Ray, then I think the answer is no.
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> Yes, you can muddle through all the playlists by hand and extract everything you want, but sometimes you just want a family member to be able to play the damn thing.
Actually, if you want to play the "joe average" card here it makes much more sense to rip the media and present a simple menu option so that "a family member is able to play the damn thing".
The whole Tivo/iTunes/XBMC interface is MUCH simpler for rube relatives than anything that a DVD or BluRay will present to you. It's f*cking ironic that
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> But then I have to do that for every single disc. And I value my time.
What time? You stick the disk in and type run.
There is no "time" involved. The computer does all of the work. It chugs along quietly while you go do something else.
The part of the process that requires my direct interaction with the computer actually takes LESS time than futzing with a console player would.
There's no need to "pretend' that disk menus are useless. They serve no real purpose for 99.9% of users. If anything, they are a