Enjoy Blu-ray movies on HDTV with WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player

When backing up Blu-ray Discs for enjoying on HD TV with WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player, there are many ways to choose from. To keep lossless quality for high-definition TV, you can either copy m2ts streams straightly from BD, or make the whole BD into an ISO image file. But there is a problem here- the WD TV Live Plus will not allow you to forward movie or select a chapter to start with when playing BD ISO or m2ts clips. So many WD TV uses turn to MKV format, which holds a whole movie in a single file including lossless video, multiple HD audio tracks and subtitles.

But another issue comes up- subtitles are not displayed as you watch ripped movie on HDTV, because WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player does not supports PGS subtitles in MKV container. In order to have subtitles displayed correctly, you have to extract the subtitles and convert it to a format that Live Plus does support, like srt, ssa, sami, etc. What is the best and easiest way for copying Blu-ray for watching on HDTV with WD TV Live? Our answer is, rip Blu-ray with Pavtube ByteCopy.

blu-ray to wdtv live playback

Pavtube ByteCopy rips Blu-ray to MKV with original video and audio quality. You can keep multiple audio tracks and meanwhile convert the Blu-ray PGS subtitles to vobsub, which can be read by WD TV Live Media Players. It can rip Blu-ray with DTS 6 channels audio, TrueHD DTSMA audio, Find below a basic guide of how to copy Blu-ray Disc to lossless MKV file with burnt subtitle by converting the PGS subtitles for Western HD media players.

Software Availability and notes:

Trial of Pavtube ByteCopy for PC (Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 compatible)

Trial of Pavtube ByteCopy for Mac (Mac OS X 10.5 and above)

Note 1: A trial copies 7 discs only. There will be a Pavtube logo on converted videos (not on copied ones).

Note 2: You’ll need a Blu-ray Disc drive to read BD.

Guide: Backup Blu-ray and convert PGS subtitle for WD TV Live Plus

Step 1. Run Pavtube ByteCopy, You can choose the Blu-ray Disc, BDMV folder, BD ISO or DVD, VIDEO_TS, DVD ISO as source video. Click the "File" to load the source video you want to convert.

Tip: By default only Title One is retained. Title 1 (Main Title) contains full-length movie, extras are not included.

load blu-ray

Step 2: Then you need to choose the format and set for the format you choose. Navigate to "Format" > "Multi-track Video" ＞"Lossless/encoded Multi-track MKV(*.mkv)".

lossless MKV format

Step 3: Which is the best format and settings for WD TV Live Plus Media Player, please read the following detailed analysis.

Video Codec: A Blu-ray contains these video codecs: MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 and SMPTE VC-1 stream sealed in .m2ts container while WD TV Live Plus supports MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 and SMPTE VC-1 stream sealed in .m2ts container. The WD TV Live HD media player support all the video codec that a Blu-ray movie can include. There's no need to change Blu-ray video codec or rip Blu-ray, unless you'd like to compress the movie to smaller file size (e.g. when ripping BD-50 movies).

Audio Codec: Blu-ray includes LPCM as well as Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby Lossless, DTS digital surround and DTS-HD audio formats. WD TV Live media players supported audio codec in MKV container: MPEG Aduio, PCM, Dolby Digital, DTS, AAC. An audio receiver is required for multi-channel surround sound digital output. If you connect WD TV Live Plus directly to TV you get stereo only. LPCM audio must be not converted, since the codec is not compatible with MKV container. When a MKV file contains LPCM audio, it is not playable. Dolby Digital and DTS audio can be kept (by checking "Check" box). Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD HR and DTS-HD MA audio should be converted to Dolby Digital, i.e. AC3 (by checking "Check" and "Encode" boxes) if you're using 5.1 audio system.

Subtitle: Blu-ray has .sup subtitles with PGS codec. Although the WD TV Live Media Player plays Blu-ray subtitles from BD ISO/BDMV, it does not support PGS subtitles in MKV container. So here you need to convert sup subtitles to dvdsub format. Click the “Settings” button to navigate to "Subtitles" to select desired subtitles streaming you’d like and check the “Encode” box under “All Subtitle Streams” to set “dvdsub” for WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player playback. Press “OK” to confirm.

SETTINGS

Step 4. Back to the main interface, and press the “Convert” button to start backing up Blu-ray movie to MKV file. In this way the main movie with subtitles and audio tracks will be extracted and packaged into MKV container format without transcoding to ensure you get lossless movie clips; and the PGS subtitles will be converted into vobsub format. You get original Blu-ray videos with HD audios (TrueHD, DTS-MA, AC-3, DTS, etc) and subtitles, and correct display of Blu-ray subtitles for enjoying Blu-ray movies with WD TV Live HD Media Player.

Why should a WD TV user choose Pavtube ByteCopy for BD backup:

1. Lossless video quality. Pavtube ByteCopy can copy Blu-ray contents to MKV without changing anything. You get highest possible video quality, i.e. original Blu-ray video contents, just in a different container format. And WD TV Live handles Blu-ray contents well.

2. Fast forward and chapter locating. Original chapter structure is preserved. You can quickly skip to any chapter you like when playing MKV.

3. Proper subtitles display. Since Western Digital players do not support Blu-ray PGS subtitles in MKV file, Pavtube ByteCopy converts the subtitles to vobsub when ripping Blu-ray for WD TV media players.

4. Fast speed. When ripping Blu-ray in “lossless” mode, it takes around an hour to copy a 25GB and 10 minutes to copy a DVD 5.

5. Flexible audio output. Audiophiles can pass-through Dolby TrueHD, DTS-MA, and LPCM audio to MKV so as to send the audio to AV receiver for de-coding and reproducing the surround sound faithfully (studio effects). Average users can down convert 7.1 audio to Dolby Digital 5.1 or stereo.

See Make MKV and Play MKV solutions | Rip Blu-ray to MKV with MakeMKV

What's Next? Price: $42