How to watch Blu-ray on a TV: from an external drive, using a 3D player, using a computer.

As Blu-ray technology continues to improve, you don’t even have to burn your home movies to disc to watch them on TV. High-quality DVD players (and all Blu-ray disc players) have USB inputs that can be used to host flash drives filled with movies. Then you can access the files through the main menu of your DVD player and watch them on your TV. You just need to follow the directions.

How to watch Blu-ray on a TV from an external drive

Let's see how to watch blu-ray from an external drive. The process step by step:

Step 1. Look in the manual of your DVD player for the type of video files it supports. DVD players will not support any file format - most support MKV or AVI files, as well as some other popular formats. Be sure to check the “Specifications” list in your DVD player’s instruction manual to find out what formats it will support before you waste time.
Step 2. Insert the USB flash drive into the USB port on the computer.
Step 3. Open the USB flash drive by clicking “My Computer,” and then click the flash drive icon.
Step 4. Drag the video files with the appropriate formatting to this window. Now they will be transferred to your USB drive.
Step 5. Remove the USB drive from your computer.
Step 6. Insert the USB flash drive into the open USB port on the DVD player.
Step 7. Use the remote control of your DVD player to go to the "USB Flash Drive" menu. Select the file you want to play from the list by highlighting it and pressing the "Enter" or "Play" button on the remote control. The file will now play on the screen of your TV.

How to watch Blu-ray using a 3D player

The 3D Blu-ray Disc Player is fully compliant with the officially accepted standard. The work of the 3D disc is that the image information is encoded on a disc with a resolution of 720p or 1080p at 24 frames per second in a manner called frame packing (two frames overlap each other).

When the 3D Blu-ray Disc is inserted into the 3D player, the laser assembly reads the encoded 3D signal and then transfers the video information through the remaining elements of the connecting chain, which include a 3D TV or video projector.

To view 3D information, a television or video projector decodes a 3D signal and displays two previously folded frames, so two overlapping but slightly different images are displayed on the screen (one for the left eye and the other for the right eye), which can be mixed into a three-dimensional image with using special glasses worn by the viewer.

ATTENTION! Depending on the make / model of the 3D TV, glasses with passive polarization or active shutter are required.

In addition, if you place the home theater receiver on the path between the 3D Blu-ray Disc player and the TV or video projector, then the receiver should be able to transmit 3D signal from the player to the TV / video projector. However, if you have a disc player and a 3D Blu-ray TV, but you are using (or plan to use) a home theater where the receiver is not 3D, there is a workaround.

ATTENTION! All 3D signals must be transmitted via HDMI connections that comply with the specifications of version 1.4 or higher.

How to watch Blu-ray on a TV using a computer

There are three ways to watch blu-ray on a TV using a computer

Default Method: Blu-ray Software

The only officially supported way to play Blu-ray on Windows is to use a commercial program such as CyberLink PowerDVD. It usually sells for around $ 50. However, if your computer comes with a Blu-ray drive, you should already have some Blu-ray enabled software.

Very few manufacturers will ship a computer with a Blu-ray drive without compatible software. Check if you have installed a Blu-ray software player that you simply did not know about. If you reinstall a blank copy of Windows, you will either have to reinstall it from your computer’s recovery DVDs, or use one of the following methods.

If your computer does not have a Blu-ray drive, and you added it yourself, it should have a CD that has something like PowerDVD. It is recommended that you keep the CDs that came with your computers and equipment in case they contain important things that you will need later. If you accidentally threw it away, you will either have to buy the software again, or use one of the more complicated methods described below.

Simple method: watch a movie in 30 minutes using VLC

The easiest way to watch Blu-ray without commercial software is to use MakeMKV to copy a movie and then watch it using VLC. Stages of execution:

Install MakeMKV as described in our original instructions.
Insert your Blu-ray disc. Make sure there is enough free disk space (depending on the disk, this can be up to 50 GB).
Launch MakeMKV and go to "File"> "Open Disc" and select your Blu-ray drive. MakeMKV will open the disc and then present you with the names on the disc. Click the MakeMKV button, and your movie should start copying.
When this is done, simply double-click on the resulting file and it will play in the VLC.

ATTENTION! This is by far the easiest way to watch Blu-ray movies, but you will have to wait until the movie “bursts”. This should not be time consuming, so if you plan ahead in at least half an hour, this is certainly a method that you can use.

Hard Method: Watch a movie with XBMC

Alternatively, the XBMC Media Center software has a Blu-ray plug-in that works similar to the above. You still need MakeMKV, but it's pretty easy to configure:

Install MakeMKV as described in our original instructions.
Install the Blu-ray plugin as described in our plugin feature in XBMC 10.
Insert your Blu-ray disc. Make sure there is enough free disk space (depending on the disk, this can be up to 50 GB).
Open XBMC and select "Video"> "Add-ons for video"> blu-ray Player with MakeMKV. From there, you can play the main movie on disk. This may take a few minutes to buffer, but I found that it works pretty well.

ATTENTION! Every time you want to watch a Blu-ray movie, you can simply open XBMC and run the plug-in to watch your movie. The stream should play pretty well, but keep in mind that streaming is an experimental feature of MakeMKV, so you may have buffering problems.

Please note that if you prefer not to use XBMC, you can transfer Blu-ray from MakeMKV to VLC, as described here. Use the XBMC method, because it requires manual work only for the first time, after which it becomes easy, while the VLC method requires you to configure the flow each time.