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Ripping Blu Rays is way deeper than I expected (programming.dev)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by tatterdemalion@programming.dev to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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I didn't think I'd spend hours reading about this today, but some things surprised me:

Just using a Playstation sounds like it won't work or will be a huge time sink.
Blu ray optical drives are way more expensive than I thought
The copy protections on Blu rays are exceptionally annoying, to the extent where there is really only one closed source software -- MakeMKV -- that can work around them. This post goes into some interesting details.
Finding a drive that is known to work with MakeMKV is a pain. There's a brand called Pioneer that seems promising but they have stopped producing bluray drives ~~went out of business last year~~. I have no idea which model works, and it's common that secondhand sellers will swap enclosures and pass it off as a different model.
Sometimes you need to flash the firmware on the drive to make it work with 4K UHD discs.

I was going to try ripping a Blu-ray that I bought recently, since I couldn't find a quality rip anywhere, but I'm pretty turned off from the whole prospect at this point.

Anyway I'm not really asking for a specific reply, I just thought this topic was interesting and I'm curious what people think about Blu rays and optical media in general. Does the future seem bleak? Are we going to be stuck with shitty WebDLs for most new content? Or is physical media here to stay?

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[-] Mobile@leminal.space 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Hey @MDCCCLV@lemmy.ca, I just wanted to let you know that I bought a 4k UHD movie the other day and my blu-ray player that I updated the firmware on could not play the disc as well.

I found answers online pointing to updating my volume unique keys (VUK). These keys are necessary to decrypt the discs. To make a long story short, there is a database online that you can use to update your keys to read your 4k UHD disc. I used this script in particular because I was able to echo the output the HTTP website. I didn't want to click on a link that is not using HTTPS.

I'm using linux so this was the solution that worked for me. I think there are other ways to update these keys. If you do go this route of using this bash script, please keep in mind that it's going to be a few hours. The transfer speed was in the kilobytes. Towards the end of my patience, I just hit ctrl-c to skip the keys for other nations that I don't see myself using.

Once all was done, I was able to get VLC to run my 4k film on my PC :)

this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2025

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