Best (Software) Media Player for BluRay ISO

VLC is pretty much the king for all audio, video and DVD. But, their BluRay support isn't quite there yet. There are some addons and hacks etc, but it's just not good enough.

Now, I'm not talking about playing actual BluRay discs on a physical hardware BluRay player, I've got that covered.

I've been completely digitizing my entire movie collection both for safekeeping and for convenience. I've got my external hard drive connected to my laptop, which is connected to my big screen. I can watch movies and TV with my Apple Remote on-the-fly.

The setup that I've created is far cooler and superior than any other way currently possible to organize and watch one's media collection. So that's the why and enough of the nerd gushing.

Now that I'm backing up/digitizing my BluRay collection I immediately learned that VLC cannot handle BluRay ISOs (yet) like it can DVD ISOs.

I've searched and I've searched and the best I could find was:

http://www.dvdfab.com/media-player.htm

Which gets the job done, but it's also a bit laggy/buggy and has problems with full screen mode so watching movies is definitely not ideal.

Doesn't matter if it costs money, I'm looking for hands-down, the best way to play my BluRay ISOs directly (not looking to convert or burn onto disc again - which defeats the whole purpose).

Any suggestions? Anyone else already find the holy grail of all media players on Mac?

Thanks

UPDATE - I'll make a list of my findings so far of software that plays BluRay ISO:

- DVDFab Media Player (http://www.dvdfab.com/media-player.htm) It "works", but is buggy and slow, also has issues with full screen. It does appear to support full menus, but takes forever to load.

- iDeer Mac Blu-ray Player (http://www.ideerapp.com/) Really fast and lightweight and plays BluRay ISOs great, does not appear to support full menus.

- Macgo Blu-ray Player (http://www.macblurayplayer.com/download.htm) Appears to be the same program and company as iDeer only I couldn't even get it to load (eternal spinning wheel).

So far, iDeer seems to work the best for straight playing the movie portion of BluRay ISOs, but no support for menus it seems, however you still appear to be able to view special features under "Other Titles" though a bit raw and blind in what you're doing/selecting without menus. Navigation is a little rough too.

Nothing, nada, no way? No one else has any other (media players for Mac that can play BluRay ISO) suggestions?

I realize there are some better media players for Windows, but definitely not looking to run a virtual install of Windows every time I want to watch a movie. Way overkill and definitely less than ideal.

For now, iDeer will have to do, it's the best I can find and not half bad. BluRay is still relatively new technology (6-7 years isn't very long for a brand new medium) in which new software has to be developed.

Naturally things will improve, but I still have a feeling there are some quality (but perhaps unknown) players out there that I just haven't found yet.

Right, I already listed that one, didn't work for me. For some reason, the basically duplicate program (obviously by the same person/company) iDeer, works fairly well.

I'm not ready to lay down $50 for it though when I'm not positive it's the best option yet.

Nice, XBMC (while a somewhat funky program) gets the job done, and for free.

There doesn't appear to be menu support (mind you, the premium apps don't seem to deliver on this either), but I'll see if there's an addon for it.

Thanks

Right now, I think it's pretty much XBMC for the win. Really, the only thing that would set a clear victor apart is a program that actually supports menus to emulate the full BluRay experience as intended.

But, I really don't know if that program exists yet.

Forget all previous replies. VLC is still the king, just takes a little elbow grease.

Mount the ISO (super easy to do natively in Mac OS X - nothing new to download or setup) and then pop open VLC > Open Media > Discs.

Alternatively, if you're having issues mounting, you can just open up the ISO source and go to BDMV > STREAM and play the largest .m2ts file directly in VLC.

It takes a moment to load up a 25gb+ file so give it a minute. Obviously no menus, but you can play the special features manually as well. VLC doesn't suffer from the full screen issues other players do, because it uses the available screen real estate and doesn't confuse between your Mac and TV resolutions.

Considering what's on the market in 2013 for Mac Blu-ray ISO playback, don't spend any money. Use this VLC method until VLC inevitably supports full Blu-ray playback out-of-the-box or until a respectable premium player comes along.

Many movies are now branched and that means multiple M2TS files.

Click to expand...

I haven't run into that yet myself.

While I agree, it's inconvenient that Apple made that choice for whatever reason, it's not really that big of a deal. You can easily pick up an external Blu-ray burner/player, which is what I always did for DVD anyways as to not wear out the original hardware, especially when it comes time to upgrade and offload the old laptop.

In any case, even if Apple supported Blu-ray discs, I doubt it would support Blu-ray ISO (digitally - maybe we could still do the pseudo mounting playback thing, but would it be any better that VLC?) and we'd be in the same boat juggling all the software players. I realize there was some finality to my last reply, but I'm still searching for the best solution. I'm a minimalist and I'm pretty serious about finding the easiest solution, so I'll report back once I have the answer.

Well, actually, the topic is specifically about:

Best (Software) Media Player for BluRay ISO

Not hardware. While the hardware part is an interesting topic, it's not the topic at hand.

The discussion is concerning what's the best software option for ISO, not hardware for physical disc playback. The two are entirely different and I don't want them to be confused or considered interchangeable.

Apple's choice to not support a Blu-ray drive doesn't really concern me. I have an external drive that handles all the latest Blu-ray tech and I have my PS3 for casual movie watching.

What concerns me, is the best way to play my digitized movie library.

Right now, VLC and XBMC are probably the best options, but still leave a lot to be desired.

Yeah, iDeer ended up being the best choice for me too in the end.

No menus, but you can easily switch to special features, alternate versions etc under Titles.

To be honest, it might actually be a better experience without the menus and loading and having to navigate through that.

No BS trailers, intros, loading animations or having to wait for sometimes slow, unintuitive and animated menu transitions.

What I'm sure is really just the programmers not being able to yet offer a full and proper playback experience may be a blessing in disguise, because it just lets you get to the content instantly.