Question about Bluray Driver

Harold88

I have this unit in my PC ASUS BW-16D1HT .

I am able to play movies from original bluray and DVD discs by using special programs like Power DVD.

My question is: is there any way to read 4k movies from original Disks with this driver?

I have tried a bunch of my 4k movies but none of them works. My PC don't even recognize the 4k movies disc. It's like I haven't inserted anything in the driver unit.

Is there any way to read 4k discs?

I am using my computer instead of a dedicated bluray player and it's working just fine except the fact that I can't read 4k movies.

DavidG1

Commercial blue ray disks will be copyright protected with encryption. You need specific software to break the encryption and rip the tracks to your pc
How to Rip Blu-ray Discs to Your PC

You need a blue ray player of capable of reading 4K, as this is a relatively new format not all Blu-ray players are capable of playing 4K. It looks as though your Asus should be capable of reading UHD disks though
There is a firmware update for this BD player from Asus, but ironically earlier firmware is apparently more compatible with UHD than later so you may need to look online for help. It may also be worth a support email to Asus, details of which can be found on the same page here.

BW-16D1HT  Driver & Tools | Optical Drives & Storage | ASUS United Kingdom

Additionally Windows media player doesn’t have codecs to play blue ray which is why you need PowerDVD to play BD-ROMS. There may be software included with your Asus drive to play 4K.

Harold88

I don't want to rip them just to read the discs in order to play the movies.

next010

The drive and it's firmware need to be able to read 4K BD discs. If firmware update does not solve problem of reading drive, new hardware is likely required.

Once past that you then need 4K/Ultra version of PowerDVD.

If you have problems with PowerDVD or OS DRM requirements then your next best option is something like DVDFab Player 5 which might be able to decrypt the disc in real time though that software has a tons of components and you might have to purchase another to get it play.

The other real time decypter is Redfox AnyDVDHD, which may solve playback in PowerDVD or allow playback in open source software like VLC (which has some BD menu support).

Harold88

Like what?

Unfortunatly advertising for those units is unclear about this issue, probably because almost no one is using the PC bluray as a bluray player.

next010

There are a bunch of circa 2017 drive lists out there, one here which has your drive on the list but here it claims anything running 3.03 firmware is bad. It looks like some vendors have even released firmware updates that block reading of discs in Windows, though they should still probably work with PowerDVD, I guess.

There are basic USB 4K drives, here seller claims it works so long as DRM display requirements are met.

Supersonic

I have one of these, works fine with UHD discs.

Check out the makemkv forums if you're having trouble.