Hey, I have a Pioneer USB Blu Ray player. I plug it in, and the “Play Disc” shows up in my menu, but when I press it I get nothing.
I did a search and it looks like the issue is possibly related to Blu Ray encryption? I get this being a “thing” for a fully open-source platform like Raspberry Pi, but I’d sort of expect the Vero hardware to have a licensed player. At the very least an application available via the “OSMC Store” to allow Vero users to install a licensed application to playback consumer DVD/Blu-Ray titles.
Is there some 3rd party software that I can manually install that will playback Blu Rays?
Is there player software that will do the decryption without having to “rip” to a file first?
I get that OSMC on Vero4K is also open source, but personally I think non-open-source encrypted player software available via the OSMC “store”, for the Vero4K, wouldn’t be a completely unreasonable idea, since it’s sort of sold as a “premier device” solution (especially given you can buy a stand-alone blu-ray players for less than $30 now).
I don’t mean to sound like a dick here, am I just way off base?
The problem is that support can’t be added after shipping the device. So if we added a Blu-ray license, we’d need to add a $9.50 license to each device that likely wouldn’t be used or appreciated by most of our users. We’d then also need to develop a player which would take substantial time and effort. Then we’d have reinvented the wheel: another Blu-ray player
Kodi’s currently design means in theory you could decrypt it, and feed it in via inputstream after paying the license and developing a player. Anything else would be a GPL violation. So we’d have to open source things. The Blu-ray disc association wouldn’t permit this. Open source == open keys. I’m not really keen on making OSMC locked down and DRM only.
As you’ve said yourself, Blu-ray players can be had for about $30. They’re also going to be better at playing these discs for the forseeable future than OSMC will be.
OK, so if I’m understanding correctly, OSMC/Kodi uses mplayer, is that correct? If so is there a settings where I can pass additional option flags to mplayer?
OSMC and Kodi don’t use mplayer. They use VideoPlayer which is built in to Kodi. You could look at getting an external player to work, but it won’t be as integrated in to Kodi, and it wouldn’t be accelerated in hardware
I’d like to make a comment on this… One of the features I did always miss about Kodi and now the Vero is a full blu-ray capable player that can decrypt BDs right from a disc including the menues. If there would be an optional player with a llicense that one could buy, if wanted, I’d definitely do it! (Or is there no way that could be done? Is the ability of a device to decrypt BDs hardware based?)
And I’d say: Yes, you would’ve reinvented the wheel as the Kodi box would then be the perfect all-in-one media center box - it would replace a media player, a DVB-S/-C/-T(2) device, a blu-ray player, maybe some day a device to play online streams, etc.
It would be perfect and I guess, I wouldn’t just be one of only a few to very much appreciate such a feature - the only media device needed in the living room, saving energy, remotes and having one UI experience for everything.
It’s something we want to do but at the moment we can’t.
Menu support for unencrypted discs may come in the future but decrypting discs on the fly is still problematic. The licensing is quite expensive and would have to be costed for all devices: most users would have no use for this.
If there are developments in the future we will let you know.
Hm, ok… It’s good news that it’s a feature on the list, but I’d love to see it come to my Vero 4k some time soon.
So, an optional addon for an additional fee that users, who want it, could purchase is not possible? Or are you suggesting that it would be too expensive as an optional addon just for some?
Maybe a Vero with a built in Disc tray for Ultra-HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, DVD, CD, DVD Audio and SACD would be something that would be of use for many… As a device capable of all those formats including the features of Kodi doesn’t exist. The new Sony X800 UltraHD Blu-ray player got quite popular for offering exactly those features, but lacks all the compatability when it comes to files and the UI experience that a OSMC device can offer. And of course, the support. I believe, this could bring a lot more users to your devices. And certainly I’d love to see this myself.
But a Blu-ray decryptor and full BD menu functionality would be on top of my wish list.
No – that’s not possible unfortunately.
We would need AACS keys, which would have to be burned in to the device at the time of manufacture. This would also require certification and development of software that is compliant (BD-J is Java based so there are probably implications there too). The cost would go up substantially.
That’s what I mean… If not with an integrated disc tray, maybe at least from the software side for the existing Vero to be used with an external disc tray.
And if not all of that, will BD-J support for decrypted BDs (and maybe even support for UHD Blu-ray including menu support) be coming to OSMC/Vero some time soon? That would be a first awesome step!
BD-J support was added in Kodi with this commit, and it will be included in Kodi 18.
I think Sam will wait for it to be released since backporting the changes needed to play BD-J disks would be non-sense. libbluray version also has to be bumped to 1.0.1 (we now use 0.6.2 iirc).
I saw recent changes to libbluray 1.x which added BD-J support and knew it had been in the work for some time; but I wasn’t aware when Kodi would adopt these changes. Looks good.
You can currently attach an external drive; as long as it has enough power
I’m aware that I can… I was referring to the software support of all the above mentioned disc formats that would obviously need a future in-built tray or an external one: at some point UHD Blu-ray, DVD Audio, SACD beside the ones already working (with BD-J working soon hopefully!). Any plans on those formats? (I guess, there was some discussion about DSD file format support used for SACD on the forum already)
