ok, so, it is possible to view a Blu-Ray disc in Linux?? Like with mplayer or xine or vlc?

I wish Linspire would involve themselves in things like Blu-Ray, that would be one of the great advantages of having a big pocket for profit company making a Linux distro.

Really what we need is WinDVD for Linux. That's a great program, I wish it could be used without using Windows...

Seems like the majority of my fellow Linux/FreeBSD/etc users are against buying software though. It's a shame...it really is worth money in many cases. Personally I would pay for a program in Linux capable of playing back Blu-Ray.

--Brian

I think that Blu-ray disks have copy protection built into them. That would be the reason that there is no Linux player for them. Open source Linux would not adhere to the requirements needed to keep the copy protection intact.

There is a LinDVD, but it is only available to PC manufacturers. It used to be available in Mandriva, but is no longer included. I got a copy of it a while back, and it does work. But I don't watch a lot of DVD's, so I had no use for it. I also don't believe that it supports Blu-ray disks.

As for paying for software, there is so much free software you don't need to pay for it. I did buy a copy of NeroLinux, mostly because it supports burning to Blu-ray disks. I don't yet have a Blu-ray drive/burner to try it on.

Edit: Check out this thread on LinDVD for Fedora. That is where I got it from:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=169381&highlight=Lindvd

Waterhead's right: since Linux doesn't have a commercial application layer which, at least, slows down piracy...it won't happen.

You can rip a blu-ray, though, and watch it with, say, mplayer.

Wait, how do you rip a bluray without breaking its copy protection? Is the copy protection for bluray already broken? And if so why would ripping it change anything?

Sorry I'm confused

You don't. You strip it's copy protection thanks to reverse engineering. Then you play it in its unprotected form.

Oh, your post made it sound like you could play them by ripping them first, but not play them off the disc. So I was confused.

I wasn't aware that the copy protection for bluray was already broken (a bit out of the loop). Geez that was even faster than CSS, right?

Well sort of :) You can rip them and play them but there's currently no way to play them directly off of the disk. It's not integrated like the decss library is for DVDs. My short answer to your question would have been no, there is no way to play back a blueray disk under Linux. Sucks, but true at this point.

-Trouble

You can rip BluRay discs to hard disk in Linux with the free (beer) DVD Fab HD Decrypter under Wine

http://www.dvdfab.com/free.htm

It may not work with BD+ protected discs yet, though this is only a small portion of released discs so far.

You would then play the rips with mplayer.

I have never tried BD's, though I use DVD Fab Decrypter under Wine for DVD file serving and backup/editing/reauthoring.

I wasn't aware that the copy protection for bluray was already broken (a bit out of the loop). Geez that was even faster than CSS, right?

Bluray protections (AACS and BD+) have been circumvented on Windows with AnyDVD.

BD+ protected titles:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=993757

http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=14592

Since one piece of software has done it (AnyDVD), why wouldn't the others follow (DVDFab, DumpHD, etc) in time?

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/BluRayAndHDDVD

Mplayer/xine/vlc will only improve their BluRay rip playback capability moving forward.

If someone wrote an NDISwrapper-like wrapper for AnyDVD, then BD direct disc playback might be possible on Linux. Until then, avoid BD+ titles, use the free DVDFab and rip first.

Based on the freedom reasons, I continue to buy and use only DVD's.