Help With Blu-Ray Playback. (1 Viewer)

[smarty12345]

Hi.
I recently got my hands on a Blu-Ray drive for the HTPC. And Its installed in the system fine.
If I insert a Blu-Ray disc into the drive with MP open, after a short wait up pops the menu asking that a disc was detected and what would I like to do... And from there I can pick a title or whatever and off I go.
So its obviously able to play back the disc.
My problems start when/if the disc is already in the drive.
I use StreamedMP Skin. And I have enabled in the menu editor the "play Blu-Ray" menu item. But it does nothing if I select it.
I have even switched back to the old Default Home basic skin that ships with MP and tried that.. If I select the "play disc" option, it does nothing. If I use Videos and select the Disc drive (E:/) it does nothing.
Its like MP refuses to see there is a disc in the drive.
Yet its there in Windows and working fine. I can play the streams from the disc in media player. And, as I said. It works on disk insertion.. Just not if I come out of the playback and try again later without ejecting the disc first.
I am using AnyDVD HD to decrypt the disc, And no region removal as all my discs would be "B" anyway so I leave that alone.

Would anyone have a clue why this is behaving this way? Its driving me potty that I cant get something that seems so simple to work.

 

[smarty12345]

Update :

While thinking about this issue last night it occured to me that perhaps MP was not looking at the correct drive letter for some reason. And when I checked. sure enough. That Seemed to be the case.
MY BDROM drive is labled as D: in Windows, but in MP Config>video>Video Folders it had E: listed, and also "Automatically add Optical Disk Drives" was unticked.

So, I remeved the E: and added D:, and ticked the check box for the auto add feature.

Launched MP and tested. The "Play Bluray" option from the StreamedMP Menu still did nothing. But, the "Play DVD" option I also added to the menu now at least looks at the drive, and launches the Menu for the disc thats in the drive.

But then comes other issues, Launching that way, I can play the film fine, and pause, skip forward and skip back work. But thats it. I can't for instance press "X" and go back to the home screen, or anything. Only Esc works. Not the end of the world, but still buggy... Becuase IF I use the auto play feature by inserting the disc anew, then while in playback all the expected key functions work fine.... Why should this be different? surely the playback engine in MP is the same throughout? or am I missing something?

Another issue, Having gotten this far. Once you have launched a disc from the "play DVD" menu option, Either DVD or BD, and for whatever reason quit playback and come back to the home screen or anywhere else. If you then return to "play DVD" and select it, nothing happens. I then have to restart MP for it to work again. Then after one go, same again.

Would someone at least be able to tell me if they have disc playback working properly? As in, with a disc in the drive, they can just click on Play and it actually works.
Just so I know its not an issue with the software. Because at the moment I can't see a single setting or option I could do anything different with. And I would have though disc playback would be native and not need to be highly configured in a Media playback application. So I am hoping I am missing something.

 

[smarty12345]

Update 2.

I thought it was Streamed MP. But its not. Its a Media Portal bug in general with disc Playback from the Home screen.
I have replicated the issue on a different system, With both Streamed MP and the Default Wide skin that ships with MP.
On a clean boot of MP, you can select "play Disc" and it works fine. But once you come away from the disc to something else, and try to select "play disc" again after, it doesn't do anything.. However, if you go to Videos, then select the disc drive with the disc in it, Videos gives you the option to Start from Root or from where you were in the film. Which is what I would expect the "play Disc" option on the home screen to also prompt..

So, there is obviously something broken in the code between the "play Disc" option and Videos. Where once a disc is started, It Cant resume, unless you launch Videos, then select the Drive with the same disc in.

 

[tony72]

I have a bluray drive in my HTPC, but I haven't yet tried to play a bluray disc in it. I'll hopefully try it out tomorrow, so I'll post back and let you know if I see the same issues. It would seem odd if something that fundamental had gone unnoticed, but stranger things have happened.

 

[smarty12345]

Thanks for replying tony72.
I re-read the wiki today and at the bottom was a section I overlooked that states that on playback of Blu-Ray, resume only works from "title mode".
(which is not explained. So I don't know if it means if you had a disc with a menu that worked it wouldn't resume or not)
And that has to be accessed from the Videos Section.
That bit of wiki says for Blu-ray. But I have seen the same behaviour with DVDs as well. So though it doesn't state it, I believe the issue to be on all disc playback.

As its in the Wiki, I guess its an issue that is known and not able to be resolved. Though not a huge issue as 99% of my library is on HDDs. It seems like a pretty fundamental little issue.
I'm not even all that bothered about the resume feature. I just really dislike that fact that once a disc is played once, if you don't eject the disc and re-insert it, you can't even just click "play Disc" and just start from the begining.
It's not especially Wife and Child friendly.. lol.

 

[Stéphane Lenclud]

Thanks for reporting that problem. I did try out Blu Ray playback myself but I could not find either how to start it if already inserted. So you are already further along

Also since I like the menus I'm now using PowerDVD instead.

Maybe @Sebastiii can help us.

 

[Sebastiii]

Hi
I rip my BD on a NAS and for sure from it, it just works.
About BD Driver, no clue right now, i remember using play disc function

 

[smarty12345]

I wonder if its to do with Drive letters and the "temporary" nature of discs.
The resume feature works from "Videos", so something is obviously working. (until you eject the disc of course)
It seems like some how the "shortcut" on the menu for "play disc" can't find the correct path to the drive letter the disc is in once its played the first time and Videos has snatched the job and recorded the resume point.
Give the resume does work, it seems like the most comlicated bit is already coded and working correctly.
I know nothing about coding though. There may well be a good reason the "play disc" option can't work from the resume info.
However, if that were the case, I would much rather just be able to start the disc from the begging each time and skip forward if I had to.
The fact I have to restart media portal each time before play disc works again is a pain. Yes, autorun works, but that still isn't ideal just on its own.[DOUBLEPOST=1430056808][/DOUBLEPOST]

Thanks for reporting that problem. I did try out Blu Ray playback myself but I could not find either how to start it if already inserted. So you are already further along

Also since I like the menus I'm now using PowerDVD instead.

Maybe @Sebastiii can help us.

Do you use PowerDVD launched as a 3rd party player from withing Media Portal? or do you just close media portal and lauch PowerDVD when you want to watch a disc?
I would certainly consider using PowerDVD if I could reliably integrate it into Media Portal and the play disc button worked.
I have avoided trying that route so far as I like to keep as little on the system running or installed as I can. And I find PowerDVD over the yeears is another one of those programs that has become quite bloated. And my system takes long enough to boot as it is.. lol

 

[smarty12345]

Well, in the end I ended up going with Arcsoft Total Media Theatre. Annoyingly, its an end of life product. So I don't know what will happen with support for newer discs etc in the furture with all the bloody java menu and copy protection issues..
Its not perfect, but it integrates OK with MediaPortal. And I can kind of force the disc button to work correctly with that program..
I would have prefered Power DVD due to the fact they still develope it, but, I hate stuff that looks thrown together. And because Power DVD just doesn't want to run in full screen mode automatically when lauched trhough MediaPortal, and they removed the switch commands to be able to do it several versions ago, for me that just bugs me too much.. I would rather not be able to watch the discs that have to dick about like that.

So for me, for now, the way forward was the Arcsoft Software.. Hopefully the info may help other people in the same boat..
Also hopefully, the issue may get resolved in the future of MediaPortal so it works correctly.. I can live without menus. But I can't be doing with stuff that just doesn't work at all.

 

[Edalex]

It's strange to know that Arcsoft is not working. It was always the best Bluray player.[emoji32]