Backup Blu-ray to ISO, BDMV, M2TS, MKV for playing on WD TV Live Plus

Western Digital’s amped up WD TV Live Plus goes beyond Netflix with Flickr, Pandora, DVD menu support, control through Windows, and more. You can play media from your home network and the Internet on your big screen TV. Plus, enjoy access to your Netflix unlimited membership and other premium content. What I mean is that you can experience them as big as life on your TV in Full-HD 1080p with WD TV Live Plus HD media player.

The supported file formats of WD TV Live Plus HD are including WMV9, AVI (MPEG1/2/4, Xvid, AVC), H.264, MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1), MOV (MPEG4, H.264), M2TS, TP, TS, MOV/MP4 (MPEG4, h.264), DVR-MS, VOB (unprotected or unencrypted). Here comes these questions:

Can WD TV Live Plus playback Blu-ray backups?

The answer is YES. To keep lossless video quality for backing up Blu-ray Disc, you can either copy m2ts streams straightly from BD, or make the whole BD into an ISO image file. To keep all multiple audio and subtitle tracks, you can copy Blu-ray to lossless MKV files. And WD TV Live Plus plays Blu-ray lossless backups in different formats: ISO, BDMV, M2TS, and MKV.

Which is the best format when ripping Blu-ray to WD TV Live Plus for playback?

Personally I will advise you to select the MKV format, because it plays lossless quality, multiple audio tracks, subtitles, and chapters. As 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, 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.

To help you get it done, MakeMKV can do this. But another issue comes up-when a Blu-ray is copied to MKV without changing anything, subtitles are not displayed when you watch the ripped Blu-ray movie (in MKV format) on HDTV, because WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player does not supports PGS subtitles in MKV container. There are two ways to get subtitles for MKV Blu-ray backup:

1. Convert the Blu-ray subtitles to something compatible with WD TV Live Plus when ripping Blu-ray to MKV. This can be done with ByteCopy. A guide here.

2. Rip the Blu-ray Disc to MKV with MakeMKV first, and extract .srt external subtitles from Blu-ray Disc later. If you don’t have the Blu-ray Disc at hand, convert .srt subtitles from MakeMKV. This takes longer time.

WD TV Live Plus supports subtitle format srt, ssa, sami, and ass. But mostly people use .srt subtitles for MKV.

Oter Blu-ray ripping tips for newbies

1. It requires a Blu-ray Disc Drive to read BD, not an optical DVD drive.

2. It takes much more time to rip a Blu-ray than that of a DVD. DVD to MKV rip can be done in10 minutes while Blu-ray to MKV rip 1-2 hours or even longer based on the computer you use.

3. A Blu-ray movie may contain HD audio (e.g. 7.1 channels TrueHD, DTS-HD streams). Better check if AV receiver support them before ripping a Blu-ray. If not, downmix the audio when ripping Blu-ray. Info on this page may give you some hints.

4. Keep in mind that not any HD media player so far plays full role of a Blu-ray Disc player- they may decodes video, audio, subtitles and recognize the chapter mark, but none support full BD navigation- you lose menus when playing Blu-ray rips with HD media player.

5. Personally I recommend ByteCopy  for ripping Blu-ray and DVD to HD media player, cause it’s very flexible with various backup solutions.

Related links:

[Review] MakeMKV vs ByteCopy vs DVDfab

[Knowledge] The advantages of MKV format for Blu-ray Ripping

[Solution] Selecting a Blu-ray to MKV Ripper