Lately, we’ve been seeing younger fans getting into physical media collecting. Love that. However, they’re understandably confused when it comes to actually playing the discs, because doing so is nowhere near as straightforward as it should be. We’ve written this guide to eliminate any confusion, and we will update it occasionally as things change.

Getting the formats straight

Before we get started, a little terminology:

DVD – Standard definition video (480p or 480i). Has been around since the late 90s. Can still look OK if it was made well, but it will always be blurry on a modern TV, especially compared to HD. Each disc can only hold up to 8.5 GB.

Blu-ray – High definition video (1080p or 1080i), but can also optionally store standard definition video. Better technology than DVD, including lossless audio, less jaggy subtitles, and better video quality in general (in HD or SD). Has an anti-scratch coating. Came out in 2007, and can hold up to 45 GB per disc.

Ultra HD Blu-ray – Ultra High Definition video (2160p, also known as 4K), but can also store 1080p. Better quality video encoding and HDR (high dynamic range) support for better color. Came out in 2016, and can hold up to 90 GB per disc. REQUIRES a 4K TV.

EASY: Set-top Player

By far, the best way to play a DVD, Blu-ray or UHD Blu-ray is with a set-top player. You get full menu support, little to no maintenance is required, and most players are pretty cheap. We’ve seen new Blu-ray players as cheap as US$80, and used ones can often be had for far less at second hand shops and thrift stores. However, be aware that older components can break down and struggle to read a disc. VERY old Blu-ray players are also VERRRRY slow. (You’ll also need that remote control, if it’s missing.)

UHD (also known as 4K) can be very nifty, as it supports much higher resolution (2160p, versus 1080p for regular Blu-ray), and HDR color, which can bring out greater detail in very bright/dark scenes, and particularly eyeball-searing reds and greens. In our experience, modern live action and CG animated movies can get a huge boost from this format, but most anime don’t benefit from it. (Classic films get a mild boost, generally.) Also, you will need a relatively high-end, large, and decently bright display that supports 4K and HDR in order to get anything out of it. UHD Blu-ray support is nice to have, but in our opinion, optional.

To use a set-top player, you’ll need an HDMI cable and a compatible display. If your monitor doesn’t have speakers, you can hook up external ones or a sound bar. Blu-rays require that the video signal be encrypted (a method called HDCP), which the vast majority of displays support, but some old computer monitors don’t. This also means you probably won’t be able to plug it into an HDMI capture device on a computer. Just plug it straight into your display.

UHD Blu-ray requires a UHD/4K display that supports HDR. The players connect to the TV via HDMI 2.1, which also requires a compatible cable. The cables are often not labeled, so when in doubt, just buy a new one. Then there’s the whole issue with the different flavors of HDR (such as HDR10+ and Dolby Vision), but that’s beyond the scope of this document. A lot of cheaper displays claim to support HDR, but are simply not bright enough and will not yield a great experience.

Set-top players are backwards compatible, meaning they can play prior formats, and often can enhance the picture to improve them. For example, virtually all Blu-ray players can play DVDs and even audio CDs. However, a DVD player will not be able to play a Blu-ray.

Show-off Discs (UHD): The Wild Robot, Sinners, Space Adventure Cobra: The Movie, Robot Carnival

USUALLY EASY: Game Console

For most of the last 20 years, most Playstation and XBox game consoles came with optical drives that can also play video discs.

• PLAYSTATION 2 – DVD
• PLAYSTATION 3 & 4 – Blu-ray, DVD
• PLAYSTATION 5 – UHD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, DVD (when optical drive is present)

• XBOX, XBOX 360 – DVD (original Xbox requires a dongle w/ remote)
• XBOX ONE – Blu-ray, DVD (requires app download)
• XBOX ONE X, ONE S, SERIES X – UHD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, DVD (when optical drive is present, requires app download)

Playing a video disc on a game console isn’t usually much harder than using a set-top player, except that you won’t have a dedicated remote control, and figuring out how to control the player with a game controller can be a little annoying. If you’re really dedicated, you can usually buy a Blu-ray remote control as an after-market accessory.

It should be noted that the XBOX line’s Blu-ray support is known to be fairly buggy and suffer from compatibility problems. They’ll usually work in a pinch, but we recommend other options. Playstation 3 and 4 support is very solid, while PS5 is slightly less so. (UHD Blu-ray introduced a lot of potential issues.)

NOT SO EASY: Computer (with a dedicated app)

For those without stand-alone TVs or monitors, the usual desire is to try to use a laptop. Which sounds like it should be easy. Unfortunately this is where things start to get a little stupid.

First, you need an optical drive. These come in full-size 5 1/4″ SATA components (the sort that used to be built into tower PCs), and laptop-sized drives, which are now usually fashioned into an external USB device. The full sized drives are generally faster and more reliable (you can throw them into an external enclosure), but if you’re just playing video, either will work. We were able to find the slim USB ones very cheaply – some as cheap as $50 on sites like AliExpress.

Again, these drives are backwards compatible. A Blu-ray drive will play a DVD, but not vice versa. You will need to check the drive itself to see what it can do. Also, UHD Blu-ray support is… complicated. We’ll get to that later.

Basically any computer made this century can play a DVD. Plug in an optical drive, and insert a disc. MacOS still has a built-in DVD player and it works great. Windows 11 and Linux do not include one, but the free VLC app will do the trick for the vast majority of discs.

Blu-ray is… harder. You see, ripping a DVD in a computer was so easy, it led to a lot of casual piracy back in the day. Blu-ray was designed to make piracy harder, but in doing so, it made just playing a disc on a computer an unnecessary chore. It does this via an encryption standard called AACS, which is updated every few months.

Let’s get this out of the way: The ONLY compliant Blu-ray player software for any platform is Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra. That is it. It’s not cheap (although it does go on sale frequently). It is also WINDOWS ONLY.

Other apps are varying degrees of buggy and unreliable, because they are reverse engineered and unauthorized by the Blu-ray Disc Association. We can’t really recommend any of them, and all of them cost money, but the better ones we tested include:

• Leawo Blu-ray Player (Mac/Win)
• PlayerFab (Win)
• MacGo Bluray Player (Mac)

There are several others, although most of them look suspiciously like one of the above apps, and might be the same app with a different skin.

UHD Blu-ray support is difficult. Some drives are sold with the advertised ability to read UHD BDs. Some Blu-ray drives can be modified (via firmware) to read the discs, but if you are able to do that, you probably don’t need this article. You’ll need to research thoroughly if you want to play a UHD Blu-ray on your computer.

That said, there is currently NO official/legal software option to do this. (PowerDVD supported it for a while, but required a hardware feature that hasn’t been built into PCs in many years, so the feature was removed.) Leawo and PlayerFab can both play this format, but the experience will be buggy, particularly in how HDR is implemented.

We recommend sticking with DVD and Blu-ray playback if you must use a computer.

DIFFICULT: A Computer with Free Software

If you MUST use free software (and if you’re on Linux, there is no other option), there is a hack that sort of works with most discs.

This requires VLC, the freeware MakeMKV (can’t link to this due to its questionable legality) and Java8. Once you install all three, open the MakeMKV Settings, and under Integration, check VLC. (There’s another method that doesn’t rely on MakeMKV, but it’s quite technical and usually requires a command line to install.)

This method can be unreliable: a majority of discs we tried did not operate 100% correctly, and newly released discs will usually require a manual update of the decryption keys. There is usually a bit of tweaking involved in getting the settings right so that the playback doesn’t buffer badly. It USUALLY can be made to work if you’re tech savvy enough.

There is also always the option to rip the disc to local storage, but as a media publisher we can’t really talk about that… Suffice it to say, there are good reasons and less-good reasons to do this, and ultimately we’d love it if you enjoy our discs with full menus and interactivity, the way they’re meant to be played. (But as long as you buy them, we’re happy campers.)

Fancy Sound System

If you’re going to get a nice TV and a Blu-ray player, you might as well go the final step and get some nice speakers, since the ones built-in to nearly all displays are pretty crappy. If you’re happy with stereo sound, some headphones will do the trick. A sound bar can add a small amount of directionality without taking up much space. Bluetooth speakers aren’t a good idea, because there will inevitably be a delay that throws the audio out of sync with the picture.

However, if you really want the full experience, there’s nothing like getting a full-sized receiver, and sticking 5 speakers and a subwoofer in strategic places around your room. This requires running speaker wire and a not insignificant chunk of cash. Audio is, unfortunately, one place where you generally get what you pay for.

If you mostly stick to TV content, most of that is going to be in stereo (or unremarkable 5.1), so the full home theater treatment won’t be necessary. However, if you like movies with a decent amount of action, there is simply nothing like the immersion of a full multi-channel sound system.

Show-off discs: Top Gun Maverick, Spider-man: Across The Spider-verse

About Region Codes

You may have heard about region codes. Your player’s region is set at the factory, and if you try to play a disc from outside your region, you’ll be greeted by an error message. This is a feature that benefits rights holders, but is not great for the consumer.

If you’re not importing discs, you don’t need to worry much about this, but if you travel a lot, or depend on imports where you live, this is something to keep in mind.

For DVD, there are 8 region codes, although only 6 were sold to consumers:

• REGION 1 – North America (incl. Puerto Rico) and Bermuda
• REGION 2 – Europe (except Belarus, Russia and Ukraine), Greenland, Middle East (incl. Egypt), Japan, South Africa (plus Eswatini and Lesotho), and UK and French territories
• REGION 3 – Southeast Asia, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau
• REGION 4 – Latin America, Australia, Caribbean (except French territories and Puerto Rico), and Oceania (except Hawaii and French territories)
• REGION 5 – Africa (except those covered in REGION 2), Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Central Asia, South Asia, Mongolia and North Korea
• REGION 6 – Mainland China

Some discs do not have region codes and are referred to as “REGION 0” or “All Region”.

Blu-ray region codes use only three regions:

• REGION A: North/South/Central America, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea (North and South), Macau, Singapore, Taiwan, Oceania (except Australia and New Zealand), Southeast Asia
• REGION B: Africa, Middle East, Southwest Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Europe (except Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Moldova)
• REGION C: Central Asia, China, Mongolia, Indian subcontinent, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Moldova

In addition, some Blu-rays use a separate feature called PSR-19 to determine the player’s COUNTRY. This trick is used on some anime discs to either lock out the Japanese audio, or not play at all if the player is determined to be meant for use in Japan. (This was to prevent cheaper American discs from flooding the market.)

UHD Blu-ray does not have region codes, but a small handful of discs use PSR-19 to accomplish the same task.

Getting around region codes on a set-top box requires a physically modified player (such as those sold by 220-Electronics) that can be manually switched to the desired region code. Computer optical drives can sometimes be flashed with region-free firmware, but that is quite difficult and will probably void your warranty (and can brick your drive if something goes wrong). Game consoles generally can’t have their regions changed.

ALL DISCS SOLD BY MEDIAOCD CAN BE PLAYED IN NORTH AMERICA. Some discs, such as most of those published by MediaOCD, are all-region. We have tried to note this in the product listing when possible, but otherwise, assume all Blu-rays are Region A and all DVDs are Region 1.

On Disc Rot and Damage

There has been a lot of internet scaremongering about disc rot. The horror stories being told simply don’t match our experiences, or reality.

Disc rot – the slow breakdown of discs to the point where they can’t be played anymore – has been with us since the LaserDisc era. It’s caused by poor manufacturing, where the outer plastic layers of the disc give off gasses, or allow gasses in that oxidize the thin shiny metal layer, making it dull and unable to reflect the laser light properly.

Aside from a notoriously bad batch from Warner Bros. several years ago (which put the fear of God into collectors), this is absolutely not widespread – less than 1% of every mass-produced disc ever made are estimated to have rotted. Ask any serious collector and they’ve likely only experienced this once or twice (usually from the aforementioned bad batch).

It IS true that recordable discs do only last 5-10 years (and are more fragile). But a properly replicated disc (a factory-made one from a publisher) is estimated to last between 30 and 100 years. This might be conservative – most of us old-timers still have perfect-sounding CDs dating to the 80s!

Keep your discs in a cool, dry place, away from direct sunlight, handle them carefully, don’t put stickers on them, and they should provide a lifetime of enjoyment. DVDs scratch easily, but Blu-rays have an anti-scratch coating and can withstand minor wear quite well. Use those cases!

Cleaning

We always recommend carefully handling your discs by the edges and always returning them to their case for safe keeping. But in reality, things happen, and discs can get dirty.

A soft lint-free cloth will take care of finger prints and most dust. We recommend wiping from the inside out in straight lines, since accidental scratches will be less likely to cause errors that way. You can moisten the cloth with water if necessary (distilled water is best).

If you have a bad scuff (this can happen if the disc is loose in the case), we’ve had good luck with rubbing alcohol and a Q-tip. But generally we don’t recommend cleaning fluids unless the situation is particularly dire, as solvents can damage the disc.

What is BD Live and 3D-Blu-ray?

BD Live was an extension to the Blu-ray standard that allowed discs to download additional content (such as bonus features, trailers, etc.). This was only used for major studio releases, and it had a number of problems. The feature has been abandoned, and BD Live features no longer work.

3D-Blu-ray was a format containing full HD movies in 3D for supported televisions. As consumers were not interested in 3D at home, this format has also been largely abandoned (although it can still be used on supported players with supported TVs). Most 3D discs can be played in 2D on a standard Blu-ray player.

Learning More

Optical discs are mature technology, and the underlying technology is no longer being updated. That means that, with good care (and decent component manufacturing), your investment in a player can potentially last many, many years. As time passes and patents expire, we are already seeing the technology endure as cheaper players come onto the market.

If you’re wanting to learn more about Blu-ray, collecting, and which discs are worth your time, we recommend the following resources:

• r/Bluray on Reddit
• r/AnimeCollectors on Reddit
• Blu-ray.com (including their forums)
• The Digital Bits
• Hi-Def Digest
• DVDBeaver.com

And of course, thank you for continuing to support physical media!