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[benn600]

Have there been any major developments regarding Blu-Ray within MC over the past few months?

[jmone]

FYI some stats from http://www.digital-digest.com/blog/DVDGuy/2010/10/31/weekly-news-roundup-31-october-2010/ show Blu-ray adoption around 15% of the market compated to DVD over the last year:

[benn600]

It's going down?  Yea, I know I used to buy Blu-Ray but am quickly reducing that because it is a huge pain to deal with all the restrictions.  The sheer size of the content, which causes problems for most people, really doesn't bother me at all!  I've got plenty of space for it...but it's just a disaster in this perfect MC world dealing with these stupid discs....DVDs will have to do for the time being.

[jmone]

Have a read of the article...It's not really going down, more the rate of growth is.  



Edit - I think the stats are pretty good at this stage of the adoption cycle and Sony would be pleased that some weeks over 20% of all discs sold are Blu.  I for one only buy Blu unless there is only a DVD option, and with 80%+ of my library Blu I'd like to see MC support the format in some way.

[benn600]

If the format was supported then I could consider more Blu Ray.

[lhwidget]

While MC doesn't seem to support BluRay playback without some tinkering, I had purchased ArcSoft's TMT3 about a year ago.  TMT3 plays BluRay Discs directly from a BD drive, can play ripped content from my server, and takes full advantage of the Cuda resources from my Nvidia 220 card.

The thing MC does very well is call TMT3 to play the selected file from my library.  The only glitch I have at this point is MC popping back into focus after starting TMT3 (probably due to passing the file name to TMT3).  This I handle with a "bring to front" command from EventGhost (the remote control command translating software I use).

While these two programs aren't free, they both work quite well, producing surprisingly good results.  So far, MC is the best HTPC/media player software I've used.

[swinster]

There was talk a few months back about the possible options (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=59016.msg400225#msg400225). Unfortunately the initial straw poll results were not good for those of us that would like Blu-ray support.

Buying the licence to support Blu-ray was very costly and then there is the development. However, it was discussed as to whether MC could be used as a front end to control something like TMT3 or PowerDVD. Not sure whether this went anywhere though.

[lhwidget]

There was talk a few months back about the possible options (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=59016.msg400225#msg400225). Unfortunately the initial straw poll results were not good for those of us that would like Blu-ray support.

Buying the licence to support Blu-ray was very costly and then there is the development. However, it was discussed as to whether MC could be used as a front end to control something like TMT3 or PowerDVD. Not sure whether this went anywhere though.

MC launching TMT3 for the displayed movie was what I was referring to, and it works quite well (except for staying on top of TMT3 after it launches it, which isn't hard to fix if you use Event Ghost).

[fitbrit]

MC launching TMT3 for the displayed movie was what I was referring to, and it works quite well (except for staying on top of TMT3 after it launches it, which isn't hard to fix if you use Event Ghost).

There is an even more intimate level of integration possible if J River and Arcsoft/Corel can strike up a mutually beneficial, and I believe technically straghtforward "partnership". Jmone referred to this frequently in the thread you linked.

[lhwidget]

There is an even more intimate level of integration possible if J River and Arcsoft/Corel can strike up a mutually beneficial, and I believe technically straghtforward "partnership". Jmone referred to this frequently in the thread you linked.

I read those threads after I posted, very interesting.  I fully agree that native BD support by MC would be a rough road to take, while further integration with TMT would be a very efficient path to BD support, yielding basically the same results without the programming load native support would require.

I'm a lot like glynor, having ripped (or recorded) 99.9% of my source material to a server, using clients to access it in my office, bedroom and livingroom.  For me, Bluray is worth the space for special movies, and DVDs are ok for most.  I very seldom play a physical Bluray disc, but it's nice to be able to do so with TMT3.  I use DVD Fab to rip the few Blurays I have. 

To me, it was worth $50 for DVD Fab (plus another $45 for a 2 year subscription for BD support), $80 for TMT3 and the $50 for MC is the best money I've spent (MC really pulls this together elegently).

[jmone]

Jay T - here is a thread discussing MC's and Blu-ray and what integration/mgt has been done to date - http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=55171.0

[lhwidget]

Jay T - here is a thread discussing MC's and Blu-ray and what integration/mgt has been done to date - http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=55171.0

Thanks jmone, you have a lot of good info in there.

[glynor]

Speaking of TMT3... I'm fairly irritated tonight.

On October 25th, I bought a license for TMT3 Platinum for full price.
On October 28th, they announced a Halloween Sale, where the price was cut substantially.  I didn't get the sale, obviously.  Bummer.
I didn't bother to install it until today, because I didn't need it until tomorrow.

During the install process, it popped up a message that an upgrade was available to TMT5.  I though... What?  I just bought it!  I checked...

TMT5 came out literally today.
No free upgrades for recent purchasers.

I emailed to nicely ask for special consideration.  We'll see what they say.  TMT5 looks much nicer.

[lhwidget]

Hi glynor, total bummer about TMT, I hope they take care of you.

Some things I've noticed:
They are one of the few larger/professional vendors using their forum for support, not a problem, but I'm beginning to see this more now days.

Like Windows, their product was buggy through several releases.  This surprised me from a company as large as ArcSoft, the first patch I installed broke my installation, but by the third patch it was working fine.  (You may want to wait a while before installing v5.)

[glynor]

Hi glynor, total bummer about TMT, I hope they take care of you.

I hope so too.  I'm not that pissed, an I certainly don't feel I have any right to demand a free upgrade.  After all, I also bought a 2010 car this year when the 2011 cars were already on the lots in some cases, and I don't "expect" a free upgrade there. (Note: I bought the new car because my old one got creamed by a sleeping driver, not because I wanted one.)

But I figured it was worth asking nicely.  They might just say yes.  No response yet though.

Played my first BluRay movie ever on my HTPC last night.  Well, 10 minutes of it anyway.  I've had the drive for over a year.  Now, I have actually used it for "BluRay" previously, but those were burned discs and I was using them for data transport and videos I made myself, which isn't quite the same thing.