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Playing Blu-ray
Introduction
The purpose of this article is to explain how to play Blu-rays under Funtoo Linux. Since (nearly all) Blu-rays are encrypted and copy-protected, some steps are necessary to allow playing the content with a media player like media-video/mpv or No results.
Playing Blu-ray involves circumventing the copy protection and encryption of the discs. In some areas of the world, this may be illegal.
To be able to play Blu-ray disks using mpv (or any other player), it is necessary to circumvent the encryption scheme of the disk. At the moment, there are two possible ways to do this:
Possibilites
At the moment, there are two possible ways to decrypt and play a Blu-ray:
| Method | Description |
|---|---|
| libaacs & libbdplus | GPL'd software, does not work with recent disks. |
| makemkv | Proprietary software, works with all disks. |
If you don't want to use proprietary software, using No results and No results will be the solution of your choice. If you however have very recent Blu-ray disks or don't mind installing a proprietary application, consider using No results. This article will explain both ways.
Playing Blu-ray disks using makemkv
This section explains how to play Blu-rays using the proprietary software No results. makemkv has been originally designed to copy Blu-rays to mkv files, but using the shipped libraries it is also possible to play disks on-the-fly.
Installation
First, emerge media-video/mpv or No results with the bluray useflag. Then, install makemkv:
root # emerge media-video/makemkv
License key
Using MakeMKV requires a license key which you may get either by purchasing the software or by using a free beta key, which is available at the MakeMKV Forums.
Copy the key and insert it into your settings.conf:
~/.MakeMKV/settings.conf app_Key = "Your Key here"
Using MakeMKV
To make sure that your player uses the libraries shipped with makemkv, the following environment variables need to be set:
LIBAACS_PATH=libmmbd
LIBBDPLUS_PATH=libmmbd
So, assuming that your Blu-ray is mounted at /media/bluray, you can play it like this:
root # LIBAACS_PATH=libmmbd LIBBDPLUS_PATH=libmmbd mpv bluray:////media/bluray
If you want to use vlc, run it like this:
root # LIBAACS_PATH=libmmbd LIBBDPLUS_PATH=libmmbd vlc
Then use the play disc menu entry.
Playing Blu-ray disks using only free software
This section explains how to play Blu-rays using No results and No results.
First, emerge media-video/mpv or No results with the bluray useflag.
Then, make sure that both libraries are installed:
root # emerge media-libs/libaacs media-libs/libbdplus
As the next step, you will need to store a file called KEYDB.cfg into the following folder: ~/.config/aacs
This file contains keys which have been extracted from hardware players. Such a key is needed to decrypt Blu-rays. At the time of this writing, in can be downloaded at [1].
Note that recently no new keys have been extracted, therefore very new Blu-rays cannot be played using this method.
After this step, you should be able to play the Blu-ray if and only if it can be decrypted. For VLC, chose the play disc option from the menu. For mpv, assuming that your blu-ray drive is located at /dev/sr0:
root # mount /dev/sr0 /media/bluray root # mpv bluray:////media/bluray