- Play Blu Ray On Mac
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- Blu Ray On Mac
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Since the late '90s, Macs have welcomed DVD movies. Pop a disc in your drive, watch Apple's DVD Player app open, and enjoy the show. Simple. But DVDs' high-definition successors, Blu-rays, never got the same warm reception. Today, the right third-party hardware and software will let you play Blu-ray discs on your Mac. But, uh … maybe you shouldn't?
Tell us how you really feel, Steve
Steve Jobs famously hated the licensing hurdles and hefty fees Blu-ray imposed. With his characteristic taciturn restraint, he publicly called the format a 'bag of hurt' and likened the groups behind it to the Mafia. Apple never built Blu-ray drives into Macs, and eventually ditched optical drives altogether to focus on selling movies through iTunes.
But some Mac users still need to burn their own Blu-rays or read data off BD discs, so there are plenty of third-party Blu-ray drives available for the Mac. And once those drives became available, a few enterprising companies who did (presumably) pay up for the keys to decrypt Blu-ray discs released Mac apps to play regular Blu-ray movies with those drives.
![Blu Ray Software Mac Test Blu Ray Software Mac Test](/uploads/1/2/6/2/126241834/334548110.png)
Unfortunately, searching for
mac Blu-ray player
online gets you a lot of highly suspect sites with creatively translated English, each pitching their own totally not-at-all-questionable video player that may or may not actually play Blu-ray discs. But there are a few options respectable enough to make it into the Mac App Store. We'll discuss those in a moment, but first, let's talk about another app that sounds like a good idea, but really isn't.Blu-rays on VLC
VLC is a justly beloved open-source video player — free, robust, and able to play tons of different formats. With the right tinkering, Blu-ray can be one of them. But playing Blu-rays on VLC is like free-climbing a skyscraper without safety equipment: Sure, it's technically possible, but it's also incredibly difficult, full of drawbacks, and almost certainly a bad idea.
For starters, the site I originally used to find the right files that would supposedly enable Blu-ray playback on VLC is, as of this writing, no longer capable of establishing secure connections. (Which is why I'm not linking to it here.)
When it was up and running, its sparse instructions didn't seem to work, and I had to go digging for another site's advice to get VLC playing even sort of nice with Blu-ray. Then I had to separately install Java to have any hope of getting Blu-ray interactive menus working.
Even after all that, VLC wouldn't play most discs I tried with it, ominously warning me of revoked certificates and other things that sound like they involve well-paid lawyers. And when it did play discs, it refused to let me skip past the annoying preview video tracks before the movie; sometimes, trying to do so just dumped me back at the beginning of them.
VLC works great for lots of things. Blu-ray playback isn't one of them. Just don't do it. Especially when you've got another free and far more legitimate option waiting for you in the Mac App Store.
Leawo Blu-ray Player
![Blu Ray Software Mac Test Blu Ray Software Mac Test](/uploads/1/2/6/2/126241834/735634493.jpg)
The two currently available Mac Blu-ray apps come from Chinese companies. Shenzhen-based Leawo's is by far the cheaper – as in, it's free – and while it's perfectly adequate, you definitely get what you pay for.
I tested Leawo's player with a selection of discs from every major studio (plus Criterion, for you cinephiles out there), ranging from titles I bought back in 2009 to discs released in 2018. They all played just fine, with a crisp picture and clear sound. Leawo's menus let me easily switch audio and subtitle tracks, and jump between different video files on the disc with a Playlist option. And unlike hardware Blu-ray players, it's not region-locked, so you can watch discs from all over the world.
But bones don't get much barer than Leawo's offering. It doesn't support Blu-ray menus at all; if you want to view special features, you'll need to guess at their location from the Playlist menu. If you're dying to watch, say, The Sound of Music's pop-over interactive commentary with sing-along mode, Leawo's app will not be one of your favorite things.
The app takes a solid minute (I timed it) just to load a disc, a process that requires multiple un-intuitive menu clicks, and whoever ported it into Mac didn't bother to change the drab Windows-like interface.
If you just want to watch Blu-rays on your Mac, Leawo will definitely do that. It's perfectly serviceable. It doesn't seem to install spyware or bother you with ads. But there's a better (and considerably more expensive) choice if you want a more robust experience.
Macgo Blu-ray Player Pro
Hong Kong-based Macgo's Blu-ray Player Pro usually sells for a whopping $79.95, though you can watch for frequent sales that will knock the price down to a still-lofty $39.95. On the App Store, with a 'family' license to run on multiple Macs, it'll cost you $64.99. (There's a marginally cheaper non-Pro version, but like Leawo's app, it doesn't fully support menus, so why bother?)
For that price, you'll get an experience nearly identical to popping a disc into any regular Blu-ray player. Macgo's app played my test discs flawlessly, with full support for menus and a virtual remote that even mirrored the what-are-they-even-there-for red, blue, green, and yellow buttons on the average Blu-ray remote. Its interface isn't Mac-like, but it's clean, intuitive, and unobtrusively minimal.
Discs loaded quickly — 15 seconds, tops – and played the same pre-roll ads and trailers they would in a hardware player, though thankfully, I could skip them just as easily as I would elsewhere. The app offers hardware acceleration for smoother playback, though aside from loading speed, I didn't notice a difference in quality between it and Leawo's app. Macgo's app even supports BD-Live online features, though you'll have to go into the Preferences to turn that feature on; it's switched off by default. I couldn't tell or test whether Macgo's app was region-free, but I'd be surprised if it weren't.
The only shortfall I found in Macgo's app, besides its price, was its lack of support for 3D or 4K UHD Blu-rays. I'm sure that's a dealbreaker for some folks, but most users probably won't lament it.
Maybe just don't
In hindsight, Steve Jobs may have been right to keep Blu-ray drives out of Macs. On a laptop screen, you may not be able to fully enjoy the HD splendor of a great Blu-ray picture. (And hauling around an external drive plus discs would make the experience a lot less portable.) Desktop Macs with big screens already have Netflix, iTunes, and lots of other less noisy and expensive ways to watch HD movies.
For the same $120 - $180 you'd shell out for Macgo's app and a good external drive, you could buy a decent Blu-ray player to hook up to your big-screen TV. (Reputable names like Sony and LG offer region-free players you can score for $100 or less with a little comparison-shopping.)
If you don't own a TV or a Blu-ray player, do own a Mac, already own an external Blu-ray drive for some other purpose – like ripping the Blu-ray discs you own for your personal digital collection – and really, really want to watch Blu-rays specifically off the discs, you'll likely be pleased with Macgo's app, and reasonably satisfied with Leawo's.
But with so many other, less troublesome ways to watch movies on your Mac, maybe you're better off leaving this particular bag of hurt alone.
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Is Leawo Blu-ray Player safe? Can I play 3D Blu-ray disc on it? Why my Leawo Blu-ray player not working? The overwhelming majority seems to have such problems when using Leawo Blu-ray player.
You know that Leawo Blu-ray Player is a good free option for people who want to play the Blu-ray disc on computer, even it also brings some troubles. Today, we are going to make a detailed review for Leawo Blu-ray Player and give the answers for your questions about this free Blu-ray Player. Just read on if you want to know more.
Main Features of Leawo Free Blu-ray Player
Leawo Blu-ray Player, previously available for $50, has been turned into a free program. From it's official website, we list its main features below:
• Play Blu-ray disc of all regions even that comes with different disc protections;
• Play DVD disc from region 0 to 6, even with CSS protection;
• Play common video in popular video format such as MP4, MKV, AVI, etc.;
• Play all kinds of audio files, including music, narrations, broadcast, etc.;
• Select subtitle and audio track from source media file;
• Add external subtitles for video playback;
• Provide two different kinds of menu control for the disc playing and media playback.
Actually, almost all Blu-ray player programs own these feature to play Blu-ray, DVD, and common video/audio on computer. So, the most attractive point of Leawo Blu-ray player might be free. We have downloaded it and did a test with it.
Our Test Report for Leawo Free Blu-ray Player
The installation is the same with other program. Do not have the spyware and ads. Then we comes to a clean and intuitive interface.
Note: The default interface doesn't have 'Open Disc' option. You have to insert your Blu-ray/DVD disc into your computer. After you computer recognize it, you disc will appear on the main interface.
Click on the disc and it will prompt the attention that 'Mouse operation on disc menu is not applicable now. Please try to use Virtual Remote Controller or keyboard'. After you choose 'Yes', you can select the subtitle and go the the Blu-ray menu, which comes from the source disc. From the menu, you can choose to play the main movie, select scenes, play bonus features of the movie, etc.
It takes 32 seconds to load this Blu-ray disc. And when loading this disc, the CPU it took to run is too high.
Well, now we can enjoy this Blu-ray movie on the computer with Leawo Blu-ray Player. When the movies plays to the 12 minutes, it froze and I can't even close it. We wait for a long time to let it recovery to play but it failed.
Then, we restarted this program and repeat these steps to play another disc. However it also crashed. After we tried several times, it only played one disc successfully.
In addition, there is however an annoying pop-up whenever you pause a movie asking if you want to 'copy and backup the disc' - an advertisement for other Leawo software.
That's all for our test to play Blu-ray disc with Leawo Blu-ray Player. We also played some video and audio files with it, it just work good, without any problems. The DVD disc playback also have the same problem that it crashes most of the times.
The Pros and Cons of Leawo Blu-ray Player
According to our test, we summed up the advantages and disadvantages of Leawo Blu-ray Player. Just follow use to see it.
Pros:
#1. Free, simple and safe.
#2. Work perfect for playing video/audio files.
#3. Powerful DVD/Blu-ray menu from source disc to control the playback.
Cons:
#1. It has ads to recommend their software after paused the playback.
#2. When playing DVD/Blu-ray disc, it crashes 9 times out of 10.
#3. It uses too much CPU of your computer when using this program.
#4. Actually, it can't read some protected discs.
An Alternative for Leawo Blu-ray Player - VideoSolo Blu-ray Player
Comparison between XMedia Recode and VideoSolo Video Converter Ultimate
Play Blu Ray On Mac
You should know that free options always have its limitations. Leawo Blu-ray Player is not stable and you can't watch your Blu-ray movie smoothly. The crashes will drive people crazy.
So, to enjoy Blu-ray/DVD disc on computer, you can try another program - VideoSolo Blu-ray Player. It's not free but the performance is good and stable. At first, follow us to see the features of VideoSolo Blu-ray Player.
The VideoSolo Blu-ray Player also have all the main features that Leawo Blu-ray Player owns. It can plays Blu-ray disc, DVD disc and common video/audio files on computer. Also, it can provides a Blu-ray/DVD menu for playback control.
You don't need to worry about the crashes. The stable performance can help you play the DVD/Blu-ray disc smoothly. There is a free trial version which allows you to evaluate it.
Step 1. Launch the VideoSolo Blu-ray Player and you'll come to the intuitive interface.
Step 2. Insert your DVD/Blu-ray disc to your external drive and go back to the program and select 'Open Disc' button after the computer reads the disc successfully.Note: To read the Blu-ray disc, you have to use a Blu-ray drive. The default drive of computer is a DVD drive.
Mac Blu Ray Players
Step 3. Usually, the program can load the disc successfully. You just need to enjoy it on your computer. It won't crash like the Leawo Blu-ray Player. But sometimes, it will also fail to load DVD/Blu-ray disc due to the DVD/Blu-ray copyright protection.
Blu Ray Player Software Mac Test
Leawo Blu-ray Player VS. VideoSolo Blu-ray Player
Best Mac Blu Ray Software
VideoSolo Blu-ray Player | Leawo Blu-ray Player | |
Price | $34.95 | Free |
Support Media | Blu-ray, DVD, Common Video/Audio | Blu-ray, DVD, Common Video/Audio |
Support OS | Windows/Mac | Windows/Mac |
Blu-ray Menu | No | Yes |
Loading Time | 5s(average) | 12s(average) |
Smilebox desktop mac app crashed. CPU Usage | Low | High |
Performance | Terrible | |
Ads | No | Yes |
Blu Ray On Mac
Though Leawo Blu-ray Player is free, it's not a good option for playing Blu-ray disc on computer. It needs to be improved on the disc loading and playing side of things as it is always crashes. If you want to enjoy your movie with more ease, then VideoSolo Blu-ray Player is the better choice.