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I'm looking for a recommendation that maybe somebody here is able to provide. I have a MacBook Air, which by design doesn't have a dvd/blu-ray drive. I was curious if anybody here could recommend a solid external DVD/blu-ray drive for playing discs on a Macbook? A cursory search on Amazon yields so many different choices for such a device, most of which are sold by other companies & fulfilled by Amazon (and many of these strike me as potentially sketchy). I'd like to get one, but I'm a bit lost as far what to choose. If anybody can recommend some particularly good/reliable external dvd/blu-ray drives I would greatly appreciate it (and they don't have to be sold on Amazon, of course - that's just one place I looked).

To play BDs on a computer, you'll need the right hardware (the disc drive itself) and the right software (to read and decrypt the disc). I don't have a Mac, but Pioneer makes good external USB BD drives. I've had this model (claimed to be "Perfect for Mac users"!) for a couple years and it's worked well.

If you're planning to rip discs as opposed to just play them, you'll want to download the drive utility from the manufacturer's website and turn off the default "Quiet Mode". Also, you'll need to source the necessary software elsewhere. It might be possible to find an external blu-ray drive that comes packaged with Mac software, but honestly, on the software end, if you're willing to go a little bit sketchy (e.g. MakeMKV, or VLC + a separately downloaded decryption library) you'll get vastly superior results. Most commercial BD software won't even allow screenshots.

I found this free player that seems to work (and allow screen shots too):

https://www.leawo.com/blu-ray-player/

(It has a few mildly annoying quirks -- but the price is right)

Both VLC (free) and MacGo's Blu-ray Player Pro software (note the Pro part; not free but there is demo mode to try it out) seem to allow for blu-ray playback as if actually playing from a regular blu-ray player (i.e., menus and everything work), last I played around with them. However, I rarely do, so grain of salt on 100% success rate of a particular blu-ray actually working... and region locking may or may not be an issue.

Do you have to install anything extra for VLC? Last time I tried it on BluRays I had no luck.

Okay, I take that back, VLC does not seem to play a blu-ray proper with its from scratch install, which is what I had. What I was recalling is that it does play blu-rays that have been backed up to .iso files.

A bit of googling indicates that you need two missing files. They are fairly easy to find and install by hand and one of them probably needs to be kept pretty current to play the latest blu-rays. Anyway I did that and now VLC plays my blu-rays too.

I never had luck getting VLC to work without a decrypter. I personally paid for a lifetime licence for DVDFab Passkey (for DVD & Blu-ray) and it is used daily as my main Blu-ray player is my HTPC.

The worst discs are those that use all the latest Sony DADC protection (such as Indicators) which take more than several minutes to decrypt because they have hundreds of fake playlists. Very frustrating to pay for a disc and you'd get a far superior experience just pirating it in full quality in minutes.

The Pachyderminator wrote: Sun Apr 26, 2020 5:59 pm To play BDs on a computer, you'll need the right hardware (the disc drive itself) and the right software (to read and decrypt the disc). I don't have a Mac, but Pioneer makes good external USB BD drives. I've had this model (claimed to be "Perfect for Mac users"!) for a couple years and it's worked well.

If you're planning to rip discs as opposed to just play them, you'll want to download the drive utility from the manufacturer's website and turn off the default "Quiet Mode". Also, you'll need to source the necessary software elsewhere. It might be possible to find an external blu-ray drive that comes packaged with Mac software, but honestly, on the software end, if you're willing to go a little bit sketchy (e.g. MakeMKV, or VLC + a separately downloaded decryption library) you'll get vastly superior results. Most commercial BD software won't even allow screenshots.

Thank you so much for this recommendation and the information. Unfortunately, this particular model is on "back order" on most sites and those who are selling it have increased the price from $90 to $140+ (the latter also being the price of another, seemingly comparable Pioneer model). And yes, my main objective is be able to plays DVDs, blu-rays, and CDs on a laptop while I don't have access to a home entertainment set-up. I had no clue it would be such a journey to zero in on an external USB BD drive. So far the Pioneer models look good, though $140+ feels pretty steep... but that might be what it's going to take.

I'm definitely looking for more recommendations if there's anybody else here who has experience with this.

And regarding the other posts, I really appreciate the discussion of the software needed to play blu-rays on a computer. I'll be crossing that bridge as soon as I purchase one of the external drives...

Hi, I'm new to the forum.

I made this small tool to visualize the aspect ratio of all the numbered releases, excluding anthologies and box-sets, of the main collection. I'm not sure I'm in the right place but I wanted to share it:

https://iguacel.github.io/iguacel/#/exp/14

Dylan wrote: Mon Apr 27, 2020 4:55 pm Unfortunately, this particular model is on "back order" on most sites and those who are selling it have increased the price from $90 to $140+ (the latter also being the price of another, seemingly comparable Pioneer model). And yes, my main objective is be able to plays DVDs, blu-rays, and CDs on a laptop while I don't have access to a home entertainment set-up. I had no clue it would be such a journey to zero in on an external USB BD drive. So far the Pioneer models look good, though $140+ feels pretty steep... but that might be what it's going to take.

It's not the most elegant or aesthetically pleasing solution, but you can get a cheap internal drive and hook it up to a laptop's USB using this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000V ... UTF8&psc=1

Obviously you're not going to take this on an airplane, but as others have pointed out, playing directly from a disc is cumbersome and ripping the file to the hard drive is a much better option.

jedgeco wrote: Thu May 07, 2020 2:59 pm Obviously you're not going to take this on an airplane, but as others have pointed out, playing directly from a disc is cumbersome and ripping the file to the hard drive is a much better option.

Provided you have 40-60 minutes and up to 50 GB to spare per disc. Even in this age of cheap hard drives, storage costs become a factor if you want to rip a sizable collection.

I suppose this is the right place to ask, but my bluray player is ready to be replaced. For those more tech aware what's a good and affordable choice that's out there?

If you're looking for something basic, David Mackenzie always seemed to indicate that you could safely get a Panasonic and that it shouldn't have undefeatable noise reduction. Can't recommend a specific model, unfortunately.

Yeah, just basic for. I might want to future with UHD if can play PAL.

Also would appreciate it having 3D capabilities for Godard.

Do they even make 3D-capable TVs anymore?

Projectors usually still have 3D playback capabilities.

For PAL you may want to look at region free players.

My Sony all-region player (BDP something) has been very dependable for years and years, and only cost around 200$.

Thanks all. Decided on a Panasonic per the above rec with some winnowing from some tech sites.

Looking for a solution to this one: My Region B BFI “El Sur” will not play on my LG player booted into Region B. It reports that the disc is not compatible with the Region of the player. (This is my first time playing this disc.)

All other Region B discs tested have worked fine. When this occurred once before with a different disc, the problem was solved by unplugging the player to purge the timeline that kept the disc restarting on the error. This solution is not successful here, no matter how many tries or how long the power-down.

Any suggestions?

UPDATE: Ended up doing a factory reset in the player’s “Settings”, which cleared the problem. Surprised it took more than a simple power-down-and-wait.

If your player has a resume playback type of feature enabled, try turning that off. Also if it has such a capability, try purging its memory.

Michael Kerpan wrote: Sun Apr 26, 2020 7:08 pm I found this free player that seems to work (and allow screen shots too):

https://www.leawo.com/blu-ray-player/

(It has a few mildly annoying quirks -- but the price is right)

I used to have a torrented copy of PowerDVD on my old laptop, but I can't move it over to my new computer. So, I'm now in the market for Blu-ray playback software. I do have an external blu-ray drive.

I'm wondering if anybody else has tried using Leawo? I can't really find any reviews of it online, which raises quite a few red flags. You'd think the only working free blu-ray playback software would at least merit a techcrunch article. Otherwise I'm going to try and trackdown a discounted version of PowerDVD.

And the VLC blu-ray work-around didn't work for me.

The Leawo player software isn’t region-free, and I don’t generally play Blu-rays on my computer, but it has been working great when I need to do so. And it being free, the price is right.

Regarding VLC (on a Mac), after a little bit of troubleshooting, it just seems to be really limited about which blu-rays will actually play with it. I did find one after a few misfires, the Twilight Time Miss Sadie Thompson. (I can't recall what the others were that I did get to work last month when I first got VLC to play actual blu-rays. I apparently lucked out as whatever it/they were, it/they all worked fine). Some of the others seem to want to work, but they never finish starting up (Manhattan, Uncut Gems) and actually play; others just error out. Doesn't really seem worth bothering with.

Pretty much every blu-ray I tried with MacGo's Blu-ray Player and/or Blu-ray Player Pro seemed to work though. The Pro version however seems to pay attention to Region setting, and seems to be limited to 5 changes... but the basic version doesn't seem to mind (even Satantango plays). The Pro version mimics playing the actual disc like if you played it on a blu-ray player; the regular version you can just have it play the movie or blindly pick other content one at a time by chapter. (VLC was a bit better than Pro as you could actually click on the playback screen to pick from the menus, while with Pro you need to use a pop-up that behaves like a remote to control the disc playback.)

VLC works well with DVDFab Passkey. I tend to use PotPlayer, with no menu support, but when I want menus, I use VLC.