Watch Blu-Ray discs in Ubuntu – with next-to-no effort required – thanks to a new script by Scott Duensing.
Other methods for play-back of Blu-Ray discs in Ubuntu do exist – we’ve even covered some before – but as the Ubuntu wiki page on restricted and DRM-laden formats notes: they can be a little on the ‘cumbersome’ side.
Scott decided to make his – and thusly your – life easier by creating a small script that ‘glues’ together one of the less-demanding Linux blu-ray playback technologies with the familiarity of VLC.
"After playing with MakeMKV and VLC for awhile, I put together a little script that glues the two together.
"It’s free, I did it for myself, and I thought I’d share it."
The result allows for easy playback of a large number of Blu-Ray movies in Linux.
The script
Scott’s ‘script’, apart from requiring Blu-Ray hardware and media to be useful, requires the pre-installation of two pieces of software:
MakeMKV describes itself as a ‘one-click solution’ for the playback of patent-encumbered formats. It works by using a decryption key to decode encrypted discs and transcoding the data (video, chapters, extras, etc) to the free MKV format
The application is ‘shareware’ and costs around £50 but it does comes with a 30 day free trial during which time all features – including Blu-ray decryption and processing – are free and fully functional to use making it worth a perfect punt for finding out if it is the salve to painless playback.
Download
The script, links to download MakeMKV (which are affiliate) and information on how to run it can be found @ jaegertech.net/software/cross-platform-blu-ray-playback