External Blu Ray Reader For Mac
Your guides
Looking for the best Blu-ray, DVD and CD burner? Pioneer makes high quality Blu-ray, DVD and CD burners, both internal and USB. Choose an internal SATA drive if you need 15x performance, or a slim USB drive if you need portability. The same applies to Blu-ray disc reading, but you should keep in mind that playing a movie released on a Blu-ray disc can be done on any external Blu-ray drive. Higher Blu-ray disc reading speeds are needed mostly to process non-multimedia data on Blu-ray discs such as games, software, etc.
Kevin Purdy
Kimber Streams
After researching more than 70 optical drives across four years, testing more than a dozen, and surveying more than 300 readers, we’ve found that the LG GP65NB60 is the best USB DVD drive and the Pioneer BDR-XD05B is the best external Blu-ray drive—if you need an optical drive at all. A Blu-ray drive can also rip, burn, and play DVDs and CDs, so buy one if you think you’ll ever deal with Blu-ray discs. But if not, you should stick with a DVD drive, because they're much cheaper.
Our pick
LG GP65NB60
This model reads and writes DVDs at the same speeds as most external optical drives, and it’s inexpensive, quiet, and reasonably sturdy.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $27.
The LG GP65NB60 (in black; LG also sells gold, silver, and white versions) is smaller and lighter than other portable DVD drives, and it operates at about the same speed. This sleek black rectangle easily fits inside a bag or drawer, and it draws power from an included Mini-USB cable. Most important, it’s available at major retailers.
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Our pick
Pioneer BDR-XD05B
The smallest, lightest portable optical drive we tested; it’s one of the fastest, too. It has a convenient clamshell design and a long USB 3.0 Y-cable, but it can get loud.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $100.
If you need an external optical drive that can handle Blu-rays as well as DVDs, get the Pioneer BDR-XD05B (or the silver BDR-XD05S, which is identical in function). In our tests, this model was the fastest at burning and ripping DVDs. It’s also the lightest and most compact Blu-ray drive we tested, and it comes with a USB 3.0 Y-cable, which is handy for older computers that can’t power the drive from one port. However, we found this Pioneer model slower to rip Blu-rays than competing drives, and a bit noisier.
Runner-up
LG SP80NB80
Burns and rips at the same speeds as our top pick, and uses a more universal Micro-USB cable. But it’s sold at fewer stores, and shipping costs more.
Buying Options
If the GP65NB60 (or any of its color variants) is unavailable, we recommend the LG SP80NB80 because it is just as quiet, and it rips and burns DVDs at about the same speed. Roughly the same size as our top pick, the SP80NB80 has a matte case that shows fewer fingerprints. It also connects via Micro-USB, a cable type that’s a bit easier to find and replace than Mini-USB. However, this drive costs significantly more than our pick when not on sale. Depending on the price, you might also have to pay for shipping.
Runner-up
LG WP50NB40
For about the same price as our top Blu-ray pick, this LG model is even faster on Blu-ray tasks, though slower on DVD burns.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $100.
If you have a big Blu-ray collection to digitize and only rarely use DVDs, or if our Pioneer Blu-ray pick spikes in price, get the LG WP50NB40 instead. Compared with our top Blu-ray pick, it’s about 30 percent faster at ripping Blu-ray discs—which comes out to around 15 minutes per disc—and slightly faster burning them, for about the same price. But if Blu-rays are more of an occasional need for you, and you mostly use DVDs, our top pick is a better choice. The LG WP50NB40 is also louder, and a bit larger and heavier, than the Pioneer drive.
Everything we recommend
Our pick
LG GP65NB60
This model reads and writes DVDs at the same speeds as most external optical drives, and it’s inexpensive, quiet, and reasonably sturdy.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $27.
Our pick
Pioneer BDR-XD05B
The smallest, lightest portable optical drive we tested; it’s one of the fastest, too. It has a convenient clamshell design and a long USB 3.0 Y-cable, but it can get loud.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $100.
Runner-up
LG SP80NB80
Burns and rips at the same speeds as our top pick, and uses a more universal Micro-USB cable. But it’s sold at fewer stores, and shipping costs more.
Buying Options
Runner-up
LG WP50NB40
For about the same price as our top Blu-ray pick, this LG model is even faster on Blu-ray tasks, though slower on DVD burns.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $100.
The research
Why you should trust us
Kevin Purdy has been writing for Wirecutter since 2013, testing and assessing products both subjective and seemingly inscrutable. He has written guides to standing desks, USB microphones, Android smartwatches, foam mattresses, and many more items with small differences between them.
Kimber Streams has covered technology for six years, and has been a PC expert for Wirecutter for more than three years. They’ve tested hundreds of laptops, even more storage devices, and way too many peripherals—including wireless mice, mechanical keyboards, and optical drives.
Who this is for
With the ubiquity of streaming services, cloud storage, and (slowly) increasing broadband speeds, many people no longer need optical discs, and most new laptops don’t have optical drives. But plenty of people still need to use such a drive occasionally, whether to play a movie on DVD or Blu-ray, install software that isn’t downloadable from the Internet, or back up data or a personal media library. If you still need an optical drive, but only sometimes, you’re better off getting one that connects via USB rather than buying a chunky laptop with a built-in drive.
Over years of testing, we’ve found that external optical drives have few big differences between them—they tend to look alike and perform similarly. If you already have an optical drive that serves you well and works with the discs you have, you won’t gain much, if anything, from upgrading to one of our picks.
If you still need an optical drive, but only sometimes, you’re better off getting one that connects via USB rather than buying a chunky laptop with a built-in drive.
Any drive that can rip and burn DVDs or Blu-rays can also handle CDs just fine. We didn't test CD-only drives because they're almost impossible to find, DVD drives are inexpensive, and very few people who have CDs don't also have DVDs or Blu-rays.
You also shouldn’t buy a portable drive for a desktop computer that has room for an internal drive, because drives with a dedicated power source tend to be faster and cheaper than portable USB-powered options. Nor should you buy one to use with a tablet.
How we picked
The most important features for an optical drive are speed, size and weight, and noise. Price and availability are also important, as we’ve seen models disappear completely or become fare for third-party price-gougers as optical drives become less necessary to most people.
The drives we tested all operated at about the same speed; since most people use these drives only when necessary, it's not worth spending four times as much to get something that's notably faster, especially since faster drives are also bulkier.
The following attributes are what you should look for in a portable optical drive, whether it’s a rarely used make-do or a semi-frequent laptop-bag item:
- Read and write capability: DVD drives must read and write DVDs and CDs, and Blu-ray drives must read and write Blu-rays, DVDs, and CDs. (We’ve found a few optical drives that can read, but not write, Blu-rays.)
- Speed: The speed of an external drive has two components, namely the drive’s read and write speeds, and the speed at which data travels between the drive and the computer. Theoretically, a 6x Blu-ray drive, for example, should need only a USB 2.0 connection, since the drive writes at a maximum of 27 megabytes per second, and USB 2.0 reaches about 35 MB/s. In practice, however, the USB 3.0 drives we tested (such as our top Blu-ray pick) were faster than the USB 2.0 models. Most affordable models use USB 2.0.
- Size and weight: About 74 percent of the more than 300 people who responded to our survey said they used their external optical drive only at home, but enough people travel with one that both size and weight are important considerations. Plus, a more compact drive is easier to store when you’re not using it.
- Noise: All optical drives make noise, but the drive shouldn’t drown out, say, the movie or show you’re trying to watch.
- Sturdiness: Few external disc drives are pretty, but the case shouldn’t fall apart under light pressure, the connections shouldn’t be wobbly, and the buttons need to work when you press them.
And here are some features that are nice but not crucial:
- Usable movie-playing software: Our survey found an even split between people who told us they needed their drive to include software to play Blu-rays and DVDs and those who said they already had software or preferred free (but potentially illegal) alternatives. (To learn more about these free alternatives and what makes them illegal, take a look at the Playing DVDs and Blu-rays section.) Nearly every external drive from a known brand comes with CyberLink Media Suite for Windows, including all the drives we have most recently tested.
- Bus-powered (single-cable) operation: Most recent computers provide enough power to run an optical drive off a single USB cable, but some older laptops (such as the 2010 MacBook Air) don’t provide enough juice to a single port. For those computers, you’ll need a Y-cable that plugs into two USB ports to power the drive. Drives that come with a Y-cable, whether built-in or separate, provide some handy foolproofing. We didn’t test larger external drives that required their own power cord, as we saw those drives as being too expensive and bulky for most people’s needs.
With those criteria in mind, we scoured retailers for the best-selling and top-rated optical drives, and we checked manufacturer websites for models released since our previous update.
How we tested
We tested each DVD drive finalist by ripping an ISO file (creating a full copy of the disc) from a test DVD of video files using ImgBurn on Windows and the Disk Utility app on macOS, with each drive connected to USB 3.0 ports on each computer. We burned the ISO files to a Verbatim dual-layer DVD and timed each process. We also ripped and burned a test DVD to compare times between older drives and potential new picks. For Blu-ray drives, we repeated the above process with a Blu-ray, and used both ImgBurn and MakeMKV to rip and burn to a Verbatim dual-layer Blu-ray disc. We assessed DVD playback using the Criterion Collection DVD of Dazed and Confused and Blu-ray playback with Pacific Rim.
As we tested, we took note of how easy it was to insert and retrieve discs from each drive, and we paid attention to the noise each drive produced. We also showed the drives to a handful of people for design comparison, and noted how sturdy the drives, buttons, cables, and plugs felt.
Our pick for DVDs: LG GP65NB60
Our pick
LG GP65NB60
This model reads and writes DVDs at the same speeds as most external optical drives, and it’s inexpensive, quiet, and reasonably sturdy.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $27.
If you don’t need a drive that can read and write Blu-rays, you should get the LG GP65NB60. Its burning and ripping speeds are in line with those of other DVD drives, plus it’s inexpensive, thin, and light. While it’s only a third of the price of a Blu-ray drive, if you think you’ll need a Blu-ray drive at some point, the better option is to spend the money on a Blu-ray model now than to have to buy a second optical drive later.
The GP65NB60 ripped and burned our test disc at roughly the same speeds as the other drives we tested, give or take a few seconds. On a MacBook Pro, all the drives we tested ripped and burned the same DVD within a minute of one another. We saw a couple of exceptions on Windows—the Dell DW316 was much slower to burn, and the Samsung SE-208GB (our prior pick) was much faster at ripping—but a few seconds’ difference in a 30- or 50-minute operation won’t affect most people.
Though the LG GP65NB60 is significantly better than many of the drives we researched, not many things distinguish this model from our runner-up. It's slightly lighter, at 0.43 pound, and slightly more compact, at 5.6 by 5.4 by 0.6 inches (though the differences come down to tenths of an inch). Its included 2-foot-long Mini-USB cable feels a bit sturdier than the Micro-USB cable of the runner-up. (If you need a Y-cable to connect to an older computer, this model should do.) Other than that, it's mostly the availability and the price that give the GP65NB60 its edge—this model is almost always cheaper, and it's available from Amazon, with free shipping for Prime members, unlike our runner-up.
This LG drive’s activity-indicator light and eject button are on the front of the disc-loading tray, as with most portable disc drives. The button’s slight protrusion makes the tray a little easier to open than on drives from Dell, and even other drives from LG. This design is not as convenient to see or use as a top-mounted light and button, but we had no problems ejecting discs during our tests. The GP65NB60’s noise was noticeable but acceptable during our movie-watching, and similar to that of other DVD drives we tested this year.
The GP65NB60 is coated in a shiny plastic that picks up fingerprints and dust. It seems like it would scratch easily, but in our tests it survived quite a few stuffed-backpack trips unscathed. The drive has the words “Slim Portable DVD Writer” printed on its top in thin gray type, in case you might confuse it for a book or a pill case.
Like all the other drives we considered, the LG GP65NB60 comes with CyberLink software for writing and playing DVDs, and the software is okay at doing those things. The drive supports writing and reading M-DISC, which purportedly provides longer archival life for your discs (though the tech hasn’t been around long enough for anyone to know for sure). LG covers the drive with a one-year warranty.
Our pick for Blu-rays (but mostly DVDs): Pioneer BDR-XD05B
Our pick
Pioneer BDR-XD05B
The smallest, lightest portable optical drive we tested; it’s one of the fastest, too. It has a convenient clamshell design and a long USB 3.0 Y-cable, but it can get loud.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $100.
If you need an external optical drive that can handle occasional Blu-rays but more often DVDs, we recommend the Pioneer BDR-XD05B. It was the fastest at burning and ripping DVDs in our tests, it’s the lightest and most compact of the Blu-ray drives we tried, and it comes with a USB 3.0 Y-cable. In our tests, it was slower to rip Blu-rays and a bit noisier than competing drives, but it wasn’t loud enough to drown out a movie.
The Pioneer BDR-XD05B was the fastest optical drive we tested at ripping DVDs, at 15 minutes, 44 seconds. That’s less than half the 32 minutes it took our top DVD drives to rip the same DVD, and just about half the ripping speed of our Blu-ray runner-up pick. But the Pioneer was slower at ripping Blu-rays than the two LG Blu-ray drives we tested, taking 53 minutes to rip our test disc on a Windows computer, compared with 37 minutes for our LG runner-up pick. If speed is a concern for frequent Blu-ray ripping or writing tasks, you should get our runner-up Blu-ray pick or invest in a dedicated internal Blu-ray drive for a desktop computer; otherwise, for reading Blu-rays and DVDs, and occasionally burning either one, this Pioneer drive is the best option.
Of the Blu-ray drives we tested, the Pioneer BDR-XD05B is the smallest (5.2 inches wide and deep), thinnest (0.6 inch thick), and lightest (9.2 ounces, including the cord). Its black plastic case is matte, unlike the case of our DVD pick, so it’s less prone to showing fingerprints and dust.
In our tests, the Pioneer could get pretty noisy when ripping and burning discs, but it was a little quieter when playing a movie. The whine of the drive was audible (but not overwhelming) during playback of quieter dialogue scenes, and we couldn’t hear it at all over Pacific Rim’s Jaeger-on-Kaiju action.
The drive has a clamshell lid rather than a tray-loading design—when you press the Open button located on the top (rather than the front) of the drive, the top opens like a car hood to let you insert or remove a disc. The BDR-XD05B comes with CyberLink Media Suite for Windows and a one-year warranty.
Runner-up for DVDs: LG SP80NB80
Runner-up
LG SP80NB80
Burns and rips at the same speeds as our top pick, and uses a more universal Micro-USB cable. But it’s sold at fewer stores, and shipping costs more.
Buying Options
If our top pick for DVD drives sells out or jumps in price, you could buy the LG SP80NB80 and get the same performance and a slightly better design, though at a price that fluctuates and sometimes requires paying a shipping fee. In our tests, it read and wrote DVDs at roughly the same speeds as our top pick, often within just seconds. Its matte surface is a bit more attractive and less scratch-prone than that of our top pick, and its Micro-USB connection, rather than Mini-USB, means that most owners would rarely be stuck without a cable nearby (or, at the least, available at a drugstore). As of this writing, its price fluctuated between $40 and nearly $25, with the lower price just below the $25 threshold for free shipping at most sellers.
Runner-up for Blu-rays: LG WP50NB40
Runner-up
LG WP50NB40
For about the same price as our top Blu-ray pick, this LG model is even faster on Blu-ray tasks, though slower on DVD burns.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $100.
If our top pick drive for Blu-rays is unavailable or its price spikes, we recommend the LG WP50NB40, especially if you rip and burn Blu-rays more often than DVDs or plan to digitize a large Blu-ray collection. In our tests, it was about 30 percent faster—or roughly 15 minutes faster per disc—than the Pioneer at ripping Blu-rays. It was a couple of minutes faster at writing Blu-rays, too. But the LG WP50NB40 was considerably slower at ripping and writing DVDs on Windows—in ripping a DVD, most of the DVD drives we tried were about 85 percent faster.
This LG drive’s activity light and eject button are on the front of the slide-out tray, as opposed to the Pioneer’s flip-open clamshell design with a corner button. That front placement makes the LG drive’s eject button a little harder to press with confidence. The LG drive is about half an inch wider and longer than the Pioneer drive, and it weighs about a tenth of a pound more. As for the looks, it’s a flat, black box covered in matte plastic, much like the others.
Playing DVDs and Blu-rays
Microsoft doesn’t include native support for DVD or Blu-ray playback in Windows 8 or 10, likely because the required codecs are expensive and that cost would be passed on to everyone who buys the operating system. The DVD Player software included with macOS allows Mac owners to play DVDs, but that operating system has never supported Blu-ray playback. Windows 7 and earlier can play DVDs just fine without additional software, but not Blu-ray discs.
To play Blu-ray discs legally on a Mac or a Windows PC, you need to purchase software that licenses those codecs. The people who make Blu-ray movies would prefer that you watch them on your television, so nobody has an incentive to make Blu-ray playback software that isn’t a dumpster fire, which could explain why nobody does. The CyberLink software included with our favorite DVD and Blu-ray drives is a decent option—more of a small trash-can fire—for Windows users, and similar alternatives exist for people running macOS.
You can find many free programs that bypass the DRM (digital-rights management) on DVD and Blu-ray discs—encryption designed to prevent you from copying the content from the discs, or even playing them on certain screens—such as MakeMKV or VLC, but none of those options, whether free or paid, are legal to use in the US. As Whitson Gordon of Lifehacker explains, the moment you bypass the DRM of a disc—even if you’re only making a personal backup of media that you purchased or watching a Blu-ray without licensing the codec—you could find yourself in violation of US copyright law. Macworld also addresses some common questions about the legality (and morality) of DVD ripping in this helpful explainer.
You can find many free programs that bypass the DRM on DVDs and Blu-rays, but none of them are legal in the US.
In October 2015, the Library of Congress issued several exemptions to the DMCA (the mechanism by which publishers get material in violation of copyright taken down) related to DVD and Blu-ray footage, but as Gizmodo reports, those exemptions apply only to “documentary filmmakers, ‘noncommercial’ videos, multimedia ebooks containing film analysis, college professors and students with educational purposes, and kindergarten through twelfth grade teachers with educational purposes,” and only if their usage meets certain conditions. Copyright laws could possibly change in the future, similar to the RIAA’s position on ripping music CDs, but until then we recommend treading with caution if you consider using software that bypasses the copy protection on DVDs and Blu-rays.
The competition
We eliminated any DVD drives that cost more than $40 and any Blu-ray drives that cost more than $120, as well as any models that didn’t both read and write discs, and any that had poor or few reviews on Amazon. We also eliminated older versions of currently available drives, and we didn’t retest anything we’ve ruled out since we first published this guide in June 2013.
The LG GP70NS50 burned and ripped DVDs at about the same speeds as other drives we tested in 2017, but it currently costs more than our picks, and its silver paint scratched a few times in our travels. It’s a fine drive otherwise, and worth the investment if you can find it on sale.
The Samsung SE-208GB was our previous top DVD pick for this guide, due to its uncanny speed at ripping DVDs in Windows and its convenient top-mounted eject button and light. But it’s no longer available consistently at its prior price, and Samsung seems to have discontinued all of its optical drives after the bankruptcy of its TSST partnership with Toshiba.
At this writing, the Buffalo DVSM-PT58U2VB (aka the Buffalo MediaStation) costs more than our picks, but in our tests it ripped and burned DVDs at roughly the same speeds. It’s also a half-inch bigger on one side. The built-in Y-cable is worth paying for only to someone who travels a good deal with a low-power laptop.
The LG SP80NB60 is cheaper than our picks—and feels like it. This model ripped and burned at roughly the same speeds in our tests, but the USB connection felt loose, and we could feel the components of the drive shifting inside the case.
In our tests, the Dell DW316 was notably slower (by about 15 minutes) at burning DVDs on Windows. It currently costs more than our picks, and it’s not always in stock at retailers other than Dell. If you were buying a Dell laptop and needed an external drive mostly for reading discs, this model would not be a bad add-on purchase, but you can do better otherwise.
The Pioneer BDR-XD05 was a former Blu-ray drive pick, but the company has replaced it with the BDR-XD05B.
The Archgon MD-3107S is large, heavy, and expensive, and it doesn’t come with Windows software. We also encountered several errors when trying to play DVDs that worked without issue on the other drives.
The Pioneer BDR-XU03 has positive owner ratings and is thin and light, but is too expensive right now.
The Pawtec drives have poor ratings overall.
Footnotes
You could use an optical drive with an Android tablet, but doing so is far more trouble than it’s worth. And some Windows tablets can’t power an optical drive from their USB ports, though you can get around that problem by using a powered USB hub.
Jump back.
Sources
External Blu Ray Drive Review
Kirk McElhearn, Watch and rip Blu-ray movies on your Mac, Macworld, June 24, 2013
Whitson Gordon, Is It Legal to Rip a DVD That I Own?, Lifehacker, January 23, 2013
Macworld Staff, DVD-ripping FAQs, Macworld, April 20, 2010
Sebastian Anthony, How to play DVDs and Blu-ray discs in Windows 8, ExtremeTech, December 8, 2012
Corynne McSherry, Kit Walsh, Mitch Stoltz, and Parker Higgins, Victory for Users: Librarian of Congress Renews and Expands Protections for Fair Uses, Electronic Frontier Foundation, October 27, 2015
Katharine Trendacosta, The New DMCA Rules Don’t Go Far Enough, Gizmodo, October 28, 2015
Blu-ray Disc recordable speed, Wikipedia, August 24, 2014
One of Steve Jobs’s most memorable comments may be the way he referred to Blu-ray as “a bag of hurt” back in 2008 during a Q&A with members of the press:
“I don’t mean from a consumer point of view—it’s great to watch movies—but the licensing is so complex. We’re waiting until things settle down and Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace before we burden our customers with the cost of the licensing and the cost of the drives.”
As Macs users well know, things haven’t settled down (at least not from Apple’s perspective). Four and a half years after that comment, OS X still doesn’t support Blu-ray playback, nor has any Mac shipped with a drive capable of even reading or burning data on a Blu-ray disc. And given that few Macs even include optical drives these days, Apple’s never going to bring Blu-ray to the Mac. (The company can already sell you HD movies and TV shows directly from the iTunes Store, so why would Apple want to embrace Blu-ray?)
External Blu Ray Drive For Mac Best Buy
While Blu-ray was in its early days when Jobs made his “bag of hurt” comment, the format has come a long way, and the Blu-ray disc is holding its own in the marketplace. True, people still buy more DVDs than Blu-ray discs, but that could change in the next few years.
And even though downloading HD movies is easy, there are several reasons to buy Blu-ray discs. The picture quality is better (with higher bit rates and less compression), as is the audio (with several different mixes for multichannel systems). If you lack a fast Internet connection (or are subject to bandwidth caps from your ISP), it may be quicker and easier to buy a Blu-ray disc than wait to download a file that might top out at 8GB. Also, even with digital extras included with many movies now, you don’t get the full complement of bonus content you do with a disc. Finally, an optical disc is a good, hard-copy backup.
Sold on Blu-ray yet? Then it’s time to learn how you can watch and even rip Blu-ray discs on a Mac.
The hardware portion of the equation
The first step to be able to play Blu-rays on a Mac is to purchase a Blu-ray drive. You can get an external, USB Blu-ray drive for less than $50, though you might want to look around the $80 to $100 range to find a good one. (The cheaper models are usually from unknown vendors and often get poor reviews from users.) Many of these models are bus-powered, so you don’t need a power supply; just connect them to a Mac that has powered USB ports, and you’re up and running. You won’t need any special drivers to mount the Blu-ray discs, but once they’re mounted, there’s not much you can do with them.
MCE Technologies sells a USB Super-BluDrive for $79, which includes software that can play Blu-ray movies (the same program I’m going to look at below, Mac Blu-ray Player). OWC also offers both internal and external Blu-ray drives, but you’ll need to bring your own software to the party.
Bear in mind that a Blu-ray drive can also play DVDs and CDs. So if you’re planning to get an external drive to connect to a Mac that is devoid of such a device, think about getting one that includes Blu-ray support.
Blu-ray playback software
At first blush, there are a number of different Blu-ray playback software options for Mac users. But if you take a closer look, you’ll discover that they are often the same software but with different monikers, sold by companies with different names. I tried two such programs: Aurora Software’s Blu-ray Player ($30 for a one-year license or $40 for lifetime usage) and Macgo’s Mac Blu-ray Player ($60 for a lifetime license, but discounted to $30 until July 1).
In my testing, I found the interfaces to be exactly the same, aside from some different colors. The Preferences windows are the same; the About boxes are nearly the same, too, with just a slight difference in version numbers. This kind of similarity is common with DVD, Blu-ray, and other types of video-conversion software. For simplicity, I’ll focus on Mac Blu-ray Player. (Note that Mac Blu-ray Player is due for a 3.0 update soon; I tested version 2.8.)
First, you should be aware of a couple of things. Because the software needs to acquire the decryption keys required for playback online, you need an Internet connection for it to work. Second, registering the software imposes constraints. When I registered Mac Blu-ray Player on my laptop, I couldn’t use it on my desktop Mac. And, when I switched the registration back to my desktop Mac, the software told me I had activated it two out of five times. As the company’s website explains it:
There are five times each year for Macgo registration code activation. If registration code activation is outnumbered, it will present a tip “Registration failed. Your registration code activation limit is reached.”
Executive Editor Jonathan Seff looked at Mac Blu-Ray Player about two years ago, and found it quirky and unreliable. Since then, the company has definitely improved the software. When you insert a Blu-ray disc in a drive and launch the software, it detects the disc and displays a spartan “menu.”
In watching half a dozen Blu-ray movies with the software (all recent releases, ranging from Sucker Punch to a just-released disc of Bach’s “St Matthew’s Passion”), I encountered none of those early problems with playback or stability. Video playback was smooth, with no artifacts, in both a window and in full-screen mode. Audio was similarly fine, although the app crashed once when I turned on subtitles for a movie that wasn’t in English. I tested the app on both a late 2011 Mac mini (2.7GHz Intel Core i7 with 16GB of RAM) and an early 2013 MacBook Pro (2.5GHz Intel Core i5 with 8GB of RAM), using my Plextor PX-B120U 4X Blu-ray drive (discontinued but still available for around $100 online).
The software offers the standard play/pause controls, but also lets you skip forward or back in 30-second chunks; change audio track and subtitle synchronization; adjust brightness, saturation, contrast, gamma, and hue; and much more. I found nothing lacking in the software’s functionality.
Ripping Blu-rays
In addition to simply playing your Blu-ray movies on your Mac, you may want to copy them to your Mac to watch on your laptop when traveling, or convert to a format you can watch via an Apple TV, for example.
[Editor’s note: The MPAA and most media companies argue that you can’t legally copy or convert commercial DVDs or Blu-rays for any reason. We (and others) think that, if you own a disc, you should be able to override its copy protection to make a backup copy or to convert its content for viewing on other devices. Currently, the law isn’t entirely clear one way or the other. So our advice is: If you don’t own it, don’t do it. If you do own it, think before you rip.]
Blu-ray Software
There are two methods you can use. The first involves decrypting and copying the entire disc to an .iso disc image. This file will be the same size as the original Blu-ray—about 30GB to 40GB—so you may run into space issues pretty quickly. I used Aurora Software’s free Blu-ray Copy, and this app copied my Blu-ray discs in roughly real time; a 2-hour movie took about two hours to copy. You can then play the copy by mounting the disc image, and using Mac Blu-ray Player. In that app, choose File > Open File, or click Open File in the main window, and select the BDMV file in the disc image. You can also open BDMV files with the free VLC Media Player.
The second method is to make an MKV file (MKV is a file container format that can hold video, audio, picture, and subtitle tracks in a single file). Using GuinpinSoft’s MakeMKV—free while in beta, which it has been for several years (visit this forum thread to find the current temporary beta key)—you can decrypt a Blu-ray disc and save whatever parts you want (if you don’t need the 7.1-channel audio mix, for example, just uncheck it) into an MKV container. This takes about half the duration of the movie; when the decryption is finished, you have an MKV file that you can play back with VLC or other software. If you want more manageable file sizes, you’ll need to convert the MKV to a smaller file—in the same format, or in a different format, such as an iTunes-compatible MP4—using a tool such as HandBrake.
Into the blu
That’s pretty much all there is to it. You may encounter certain discs that don’t work due to new and varying copy protection, but in general the process is pretty easy if you’re willing to invest a little time and money.