Playback of encrypted bluray backups, external player and Emby Windows 2.219

[timbertroy 1]

Context

I have a desire to respect the laws in my country as much as I can. We are allowed to make backups or transfer media to other platforms BUT removing digital locks is not allowed. To comply with this, I have physical copies of movies for which i created backups without tampering with the digital locks (encrypted blu ray folders).  I can play these backups with regular software which supports reading from a blu-ray drive such as PowerDVD or VLC (its basically doing the same as if i was playing the disc).

What I am trying to do

I am trying to import my encrypted backups into Emby so i can use the beautiful media center interface it provides

While it would be nice to have the Emby WIndows app directly support playback of encrypted blu-ray folders (perhaps using the same design VLC uses to stay clear of legal troubles in certain countries), I am under the assumption this would take a while before i could hope to see this added to Emby. However, I have found some articles that describes setting up External Players in Emby, which i think would be an acceptable compromise. According to those articles, there would be a configurable option to specify that if the movie is a blu-ray folder, play it using the specified external app. I would gladly set it up to use VLC and enjoy the best of both worlds in the short term :)

Problem

But in the most recent version of Emby (2.219) with Premiere Key installed, I cannot find where those External Player settings are located!!! Can someone help me find it or enable it so I can experiment with a VLC integration please?

References

Here is a link to the article i found on this forum on the subject:

 

Any help to get my media center to work with encrypted blu-ray backups would be very much appreciated.

Troy
 

[softworkz 5066]

38 minutes ago, timbertroy said:

I have a desire to respect the laws in my country as much as I can. We are allowed to make backups or transfer media to other platforms BUT removing digital locks is not allowed. To comply with this, I have physical copies of movies for which i created backups without tampering with the digital locks (encrypted blu ray folders).  I can play these backups with regular software which supports reading from a blu-ray drive such as PowerDVD or VLC (its basically doing the same as if i was playing the disc).

If circumvention of the bluray encryption is not allowed in your country, then playing it with VLC is not allowed either. It makes no difference whether it's decrypted and saved as unencrypted file or whether it is decrypted on-the-fly during playback.  Only PowerDVD is legal because they are paying the license fees and are authorized to play it.

External player support is planned for the next major update, but don't expect too much from it. The Emby app just launches the player with that file and then you are on your own with the player and have left the Emby app.. With a remote control it is hardly possible to return back to the Emby app. And of course you have no Emby OSD for seeking, skipping, chaning quality, changing audio streams, enabling subtitles, etc. Also it can't remember your position for resuming later.
Jost saying...probably it's not what you're expecting.

[timbertroy 1]

11 hours ago, softworkz said:

External player support is planned for the next major update, but don't expect too much from it. The Emby app just launches the player with that file and then you are on your own with the player and have left the Emby app.. With a remote control it is hardly possible to return back to the Emby app. And of course you have no Emby OSD for seeking, skipping, chaning quality, changing audio streams, enabling subtitles, etc. Also it can't remember your position for resuming later.
Jost saying...probably it's not what you're expecting.

Ok so i understand the feature is not available yet in Emby Windows?   But somehow it used to be available in earlier versions that the author of the post i linked used? I suppose "Emby Theatre" was a different app being replaced by the new Emby Windows?   Just wanted to clarify.  I'll be waiting for this feature soon. If PowerDVD is legal then i shall use that as my player. Just the fact im able to have a nice collection presentation and launch PowerDVD from there for me would be a great plus.

Is there a way to sign up for notifications when that feature is released?      Worst case ill keep checking once in a while.  I appreciate your work BTW its really a nice media center software and i like it better than Plex because its offline and keeps things simple.

 

[visproduction 315]

Of interest... sort of the opposite is true.  If you have a proper .mkv media copy, it often will playback fine on a better quality blu-ray player and be able to output complete surround sound.  Of course, you would need to make a copy of the media onto a blue-ray data disc.  Oddly, no older .mp4 media copies could play on the blu-ray player I tested.  

Tested Panasonic: DP-UB820-K  Typical retail now about $400.

[softworkz 5066]

1 hour ago, timbertroy said:

Ok so i understand the feature is not available yet in Emby Windows?   But somehow it used to be available in earlier versions that the author of the post i linked used? I suppose "Emby Theatre" was a different app being replaced by the new Emby Windows?  

Yes, the predecessor app had it. As it is not among the top ranking features it had been postponed to reduce the workload for the new Windows+Xbox apps.

1 hour ago, timbertroy said:

Just wanted to clarify.  I'll be waiting for this feature soon. If PowerDVD is legal then i shall use that as my player. Just the fact im able to have a nice collection presentation and launch PowerDVD from there for me would be a great plus.

Then it will be fine for sure!

1 hour ago, timbertroy said:

Is there a way to sign up for notifications when that feature is released?      Worst case ill keep checking once in a while. 

Several options:

• You can subscribe to this forum - then you will get an e-mail each time a new topic is posted
• You can FOLLOW the "Emby Release Agent" acount, then you will get an e-mail each time a new version (of various apps) is published
• You can subscribe to the Announcements forum. This gives you notifications each time a blog post is made