Experience 1080p Blu-ray with Netgear NeoTV 550 HD Media Player

Playing Blu-ray is a big advantage of NETGEAR Neo TV Ultimate HD Media Player, although it does not have a BD-ROM drive. Now that the Neo 550 has a Blu-Ray license, it is easy to play Blu-ray with Neo 550 – just add an external Blu-Ray Disc drive via USB connection, and play copy-protected Blu-ray as easy as AVI, MKV, DivX, MP4 videos stored in USB stick. There are many tips and tricks for high-definition 1080p/1080i Blu-ray playing, you can check for detailed information at NeoTV 550 Tip & Tricks at Netgear.

netgear neotv 550

Tips to Play Blu-ray with Netgear Neo 550

In case that you’re having problems when playing Blu-ray with Netgear Neo 550, we recommend you Pavtube ByteCopy software, which also help you out of to the following situations:

Your expensive Blu-ray Discs are getting scratches;

NeoTV 550 refuse to play some Blu-ray Disc because of region issues- it can only be played in a specific region, which is not the region you’re in (e.g. Blu-ray Disc purchased from oversea market);

You are in need of a firmware update to enable Neo TV 550 to play a most recent released Blu-ray movie while there has not been an new firmware update come out;

You’re hoping to down-mix DTS-HD MA audio to Dolby Digital 5.1 because your AV receiver lacks support to DTS-HD decoding or some other reason.

Pavtube ByteCopy is a piece of Blu-ray/DVD ripping software with easy operation and lifetime free upgrade. Registered user can always rip most recent released Blu-ray Discs by updating the software to latest version of Pavtube ByteCopy – for free. The software copies Blu-ray Disc and DVD into MKV file format, which is well supported by NeoTV™ 550 Ultimate HD Media Player and NTV 350. By default Pavtube ByteCopy does not change the original AV codec, so the ripping process (lossless backup) takes very short time- about 10min for DVD-5, and 1 hour for BD-25. In lossless mode, main movie (1080p) with all audio tracks and subtitles will be copied to MKV without changing anyway. This is an ideal backup method for home theatre sound effects, as up to Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD audio are reserved. Find a lossless BD rip process with Blu-ray disc’s file structure below:

Download Pavtube ByteCopy Trial

Pavtube ByteCopy for Windows
Pavtube ByteCopy for Mac

Steps to Rip Blu-ray to Netgear Neo 550

Step 1. Run Pavtube ByteCopy, and click “Load Disc” button to import movie files from copy-protected Blu-ray Disc/DVD. (Tip: You need a BD drive to read Blu-ray Disc.) Learn >> How to rip Blu-ray on macOS Sierra?

load Blu-ray

Step 2: To copy Blu-ray/DVD main movie with all audio streams and subtitles, simply click "Format" to find “Lossless/encoded Multi-track MKV (* mkv)” under “Multi-track Video” catalogue. This is a straight rip of a Blu-ray/DVD file structure, which includes chapter info too. MKV conatainer will save multiple video, audio and subtitle tracks form original Blu-ray in output MKV and you won’t suffer any quality loss. Reading MakeMKV vs ByteCopy

lossless MKV

Note: If you’d like to compress DTS-HD MA audio to AC3 5.1 audio, while still maintaining 1080p Blu-ray video quality, do some settings before Blu-ray ripping process. Click "Settings" to navigate to "Video" to make sure the output video size is 1080p and then switch to "Audio" to choose AC3 codec audio and make sure the channel is 5.1 channels.

settings

Step 3. Click the “Convert” button to start ripping the Blu-ray movie to Netgear Neo 550 supported MKV files. After conversion I click “Open Output Folder” and get an MKV file.

Tip: for shrinking 1920*1080 Blu-ray to 1280*720, just set “Video Size” to “720p”. When transcoding Blu-ray to other codecs, it takes longer time than that of “lossless” copy. When H.264 is used for compressing Blu-ray, Pavtube ByteCopy will try detecting and employing NVIDIA CUDA enabled graphics card for accelerating Blu-ray to MKV transcoding process.

By now you can transfer the copied BD/DVD movie to an eSATA drive or USB drive and play Blu-ray from the external drive. As lossless Blu-ray copy could takes 20-40GB, you’re advised to use NTFS file system to store ripped 1080p MKV. When FAT 32 file system is used, you’ll have to cut down file size to less than 4GB by shrinking Blu-ray.

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