4K Discs Sofware player?

[edtorious]

I got the ASUS BW-16D1HT drive but what kind of software do I use to play the 4k discs? I tried Quicktime and VLC but getting an error message and could not play. Any advise or suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

[casperes1996]

For licensing reasons this isn't straightforward.

You can get VLC to play pretty much anything - I have no experience with 4k discs, but with regular blu-rays, it required a dynamic library and an encryption key map, and of course then it only supports the discs that there are decryption keys for in the database.

I am going to bet that there exists no free software that allows you to play 4k discs simply. The VLC trick I mentioned before, whilst not strictly speaking illegal, does bypass the licensing in a semi-hacky way. A commercial product would need to have a license to play the discs.

 

[edtorious]

For licensing reasons this isn't straightforward.

You can get VLC to play pretty much anything - I have no experience with 4k discs, but with regular blu-rays, it required a dynamic library and an encryption key map, and of course then it only supports the discs that there are decryption keys for in the database.

I am going to bet that there exists no free software that allows you to play 4k discs simply. The VLC trick I mentioned before, whilst not strictly speaking illegal, does bypass the licensing in a semi-hacky way. A commercial product would need to have a license to play the discs.

Thanks, how do I go about being able to play BD thru VLC?

 

[casperes1996]

Thanks, how do I go about being able to play BD thru VLC?

Honestly it's so long ago I set it up I can't entirely remember, but my setup at least doesn't work with 4K discs.

You can fairly easily find it on Google though. That's what I did. - In fact, here's an article that seems to do the right thing:

2026 Deep Guide of Playing Blu-Rays with VLC on a PC/Mac

Can VLC play Blu-ray discs? How to do that? Explore the VLC’s performance, pros & cons, and other effective methods to play Blu-ray on Windows and Mac.

www.videosolo.com

You need the AACS dylib and the keys database (link in article) and place them in the specified folders, restart VLC and it should just work

 

[Nermal]

The link above doesn't specifically mention UHD discs, which use different encryption. Something that does work is to use MakeMKV to remove the protection. You can then play the resulting .m2ts files in VLC or IINA.

While I'm here, it's worth mentioning that you should not install any firmware updates for your drive. That particular drive does not officially support UHD discs, and later versions of the firmware actively block it from reading them.

 

[casperes1996]

The link above doesn't specifically mention UHD discs, which use different encryption. Something that does work is to use MakeMKV to remove the protection. You can then play the resulting .m2ts files in VLC or IINA.

While I'm here, it's worth mentioning that you should not install any firmware updates for your drive. That particular drive does not officially support UHD discs, and later versions of the firmware actively block it from reading them.

I did mention that it was only for Blu-Ray and not 4K discs, but thank you for the additional information, helping the OP out with what they actually wanted to achieve 🙂 - Could be useful to me in future as well.

 

[Fishrrman]

I did a quick search and found this:

How to Play 4K Video on Mac

Macgo Mac Blu-ray Player can support 4K UHD Videos on Mac now to provide users stunning clarity when they play 4K on mac.

www.macblurayplayer.com

I can't vouch for anything posted there, I'm just "passing this on".

But my guess (and it's ONLY "a guess") is that you may need one of the apps out there that are designed to play BD discs on the Mac, as mentioned in the piece above.