Windows 7 Media player will not play back BluRay disc's

2/29 2012. Over two years after this post was made, and Windows Media Player with Windows 7 will not play my Blu-Ray movies. (Unknown DVD format, and yes, I am using a Blu-ray drive.) This is ridiculous. I don't care how much it costs Windows to license the technology--Blu-rays are now a staple of home entertainment.

Any program that can create .gif files has to pay for the license to use the LZW algorithm. Can you think of any picture editing software that doesn't support .gifs? Doubtful. This situation is no different.

I know this is technically unrelated, but it's related in spirit--I got burned, bad, buying a Vista 64 Ultimate Upgrade to XP for over $200 to take full advantage of my processor back before 7--and found my computer becoming slower than when I was using XP. Less than a year later, I was using 7, and honestly, it's the happiest I've been since upgrading to XP (I am in fact currently running an XP/7 dual boot system.)

However, it is punches in the gut like this blu-ray issue and Vista which is going to keep me from buying Windows 8, at least for a long, long, time.

7 WORKS, Microsoft. Don't worry so much about 8--fix what's wrong, not what isn't broken. Like blu-ray support in Windows Media! (And maybe add .mkv support as well, by default!)

I totally agree . This whole issue is ridiculous. I'm building a multimedea computer and bought a blu ray drive thinking it to be a no-brainer . Only after investing in hardware I figure out that this is not possible to use with Windows Media Center! I don't trust Cyberlink, I had a lot of issues trying to deal with their sketchy website. Hasn't Microsoft made plenty of money to include codec in their new miracle, solve-all version of windows? I'm going to tell everyone I know about it.

@BlindAngelman You need first to check if your laptop drive is indeed a Blu-ray drive, not a plain DVD drive. Insert a Blu-ray movie in the drive, and right-click Properties on the drive in Windows Explorer. Ignore the Type, just check if the Used space is something like 40 GB (actual size depends on the movie, but it should be much bigger than the 5-7 GB of a standard DVD.)

Try also to expand the BDMV\STREAM folder of the disc in Windows Explorer: You should see a bunch of .m2ts files, the biggest usually being the actual movie, the other smaller ones being the FBI warning, some trailers, bonus files, etc.

I assume that since your laptop was advertized as Blu-ray capable, it already has appropriate processor and graphic specifications.

Now that you have ascertained that your drive is Blu-ray capable, you need to purchase a third-party (i.e. non Microsoft) Blu-ray software player, as Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center or free media players such as VLC are not able to play Blu-ray discs natively.

There are only 3 Blu-ray players on the market worth considering:

Arcsoft's TotalMedia Theater 5

Corel's WinDVD Pro 11

Cyberlink's PowerDVD 12 Pro or Ultra

All have trial versions you can download and try for a few days.

Determine first what features are important for you and dedicate some time to compare the products, as the trial duration is rather short. You probably already have one of these evaluation versions that came with your laptop, if it was sold as Blu-ray capable, but it might be an old or feature-limited version.

My own criteria are usability, integration with Windows Media Center, and ability to play Blu-ray discs ripped on the hard drive (as plain files and folders, not as an ISO image), as I rip all my DVD and BD to hard drives in order to build my movie library and avoid looking for and inserting a disc each time I want to play a movie. It's also a good way to share movies with friends and family, although it's probably better to not just rip, but also convert the movie to a smaller size for that purpose: Even if your friend has a 64 GB USB flash drive that can fit the whole disc, it would take ages to just copy it.

Beware that most reviews on the web are sponsored by specific software editors, try to find independent reviews and blogs, and user feedback before making your choice. AVS forums are usually a good place to start (TMT5, PWDVD.)

Because there are so few contenders in the Blu-ray software player market, the players are extremely expensive, and some editors (like Cyberlink) even stop updating them with the new movies' signatures, so you may be forced to update to a newer version for big bucks if you want to watch recent movies. I consider Blu-ray players a scam right now, that's why I would love to see Microsoft enter the market with native Blu-ray playback in Windows.

If you plan to build a movie library, which is the whole point of Windows Media Center and Windows Home Server, Blu-ray (and DVD) copy protection measures prevent you from doing so even for this kind of personal fair use. You need another (expensive) software to do so, Slysoft AnyDVD HD is the best (and kind of only one) there is. It allows you to rip (i.e. copy) your own movies to your hard drive (right-click "Rip Video DVD to Harddisk" on the Notification Area icon) or to play the movie from the laptop to a TV that does not support HDCP (Blu-ray's anti-copy features.)

I still don't now how to play my blu ray and this laptop is supposed to play blu ray and it works on the play station and my laptop is perfectly fin so how do I play it?