How to Play Blu-ray on Mac [Two Ways]

I want to play Blu-ray's on My MacBook Pro, but just didn't find a way to make them play. I've tried installing a couple of different apps but still no movies displayed. Is there any Blu-ray playing software available for Mac to play my BD disc? Any suggestions would be cool. thanks!

Back in the days, most PC manufacturers have DVD-ROM drive integrated with a computer and Microsoft includes free option that allows you to freely watch DVDs on your PC. That's not the case if you are using a Mac machine. Mac has never had built-in optical drive, not to mention playback of DVD or Blu-ray disc. [Related article: how to play Blu-ray in Windows 7]

If you pop a Blu-ray disc into your Mac with a little help of external BD drive, you'll run into some trouble because Apple Mac doesn't offer program to support Blu-ray playback. So how can you play Blu-ray on a Mac? Thankfully, you can still watching Blu-ray movies on a Mac with either of these solutions:

• Use the third-party Blu-ray players for Mac. You can find plenty of those apps on the web provided by software developers.
• Download Blu-ray ripping software to rip the Blu-ray disc and convert its contents to digital video files that Mac can read.

In the following parts, let's look at how these two solutions work for you.

Way 1: Getting the Blu-ray Playing Software for Mac

There are many of apps out there that claim to play your Blu-ray on MacBook Air, Pro or iMac. If you're looking for a simple program to just get the job done with a minimum of fuss without a sacrifice of image and audio quality, Mac Blu-ray Player will deliver what you want.

It's an impressively powerful program that plays almost everything from Blu-ray (BD disc, BDMV folder and BD ISO file), DVD to 4K video, to HD & SD digital video files such as MP4, MKV, AVCHD, MOV, AVI, M4V, WMV, FLV, DAT, MTS, and to popular audio files: WAV, FLAC, AAC, AC3, MP3, M4A, MKV, OGG, WMA, APE.

It works fine on Blu-ray disks of multiple regions, and plays back Blu-ray with menu support on Mac. It also supports Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1/7.1 channel audio. There are advanced controls for tweaking the viewing and sound of videos so you can get the best movie-going experience.

Here's what you need:

• An external Blu-ray drive for Mac. You obviously need an external USB Blu-ray drive connected to your Mac to read Blu-ray disc
• Mac machine. Either a MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or iMac with OS X 10.6 or above is OK.
• Internet connection. If you play protected Blu-ray discs on Mac, you will need Internet connection to let Blu-ray Player app analyze the disc.

When you have everything ready, it's time to play Blu-ray in Mac. You just insert the BD disc into the drive, and launch the program, click the "Open Disc" option on the interface to load Blu-ray movie, and you're good to go.

Note that if you are playing Blu-ray folder or ISO files on Mac, select "Open File" option on the interface, instead. During the playback of Blu-ray, you're able to change playing settings, including the audio track and subtitles of the movie, audio channel, track of video and aspect ratio. etc.

That's it! Happy enjoying a full length Blu-Ray movie.

Way 2: Rip Blu-ray Disc to Play on Mac

This is another great solution if you don't want to go with Mac Blu-ray player for some reason. Ripping a Blu-ray and save its content to digital movie files could take you some time, but you will get more flexibly when handle the result files—you can watch them on your computer, streaming to a TV, or import them into iTunes and sync with iPad for viewing on the go.

Blu-ray Converter is what we will use in this article. It's an all-in-one tool that enables users to remove protection & region coding on the both Blu-ray and DVD disc, and convert the content to a wide range of digital audio and video formats, including MOV, MP4, MKV, WMV, M4V, AVI, FLAC, MP3, M4A, WMA. It's also can be used as a solid video converter program, letting you convert videos from one format to another easily.

Other useful features included in Blu-ray Converter is its preset profiles and editing suites. The preset profiles let you rip the Blu-ray, DVD or video to play on a device of your choice without knowing what format and settings you need to configure to fit on it perfectly; the editing suites give you a list of tools to do editing on the video to get the result file you like.

How to Rip Blu-ray and Play on MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac

I'll list the basic steps here to show you how to rip and play a Blu-ray disc in Mac, read on.

• Connect Blu-ray drive to your Mac, insert the BD disc into it, and then launch Blu-ray Converter.
• Click "Load Disc" button at the upper left corner of the program window to load Blu-ray movies.
• Select an output format from "Profile" drop-down menu at the lower left corner. MP4 and MOV is recommended.
• Fine-tune conversion settings through "Settings" option next "Profile" menu if necessary.
• Press the "Convert" button to begin converting Blu-ray to video format you chosen.

Done! When the Blu-ray conversion is complete, you're ready to watch the ripped Blu-ray movies on Mac. Enjoy!

Can VLC Play Blu-ray on Mac

VideoLan's VLC Media Player is one of the most popular free and open-source cross-platform media players on the planet. It plays almost everything you throw at it, and it adds support of Blu-ray disc playback on compatible computers. Sometimes, however, VLC might not work with the Blu-ray discs and get the message "Blu-ray error: This Blu-ray Disc needs a library for AACS (or something like this) decoding, and your system does not have it. Your input can't ..." If that's the case, you'll need to upgrade the VideoLAN and get the latest .cfg file.

Can QuickTime Play Blu-ray Discs

No, Apple QuickTime Player will play neither Blu-Ray nor DVD disks. It just supports a limited number of formats, such as QuickTime movie files, most MPEG-4 files, MPEG-2, DV Stream, Mjpeg, and some audio files like WAV, AIFF, AAC. You'll have to get a Quicktime alternative to watch a Blu-ray on Mac machine.