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DVDs are fairly simple to deal with on Windows 10, but what about Blu-ray? These discs are now the standard for HD video on the physical format, and as more and more of us use our PCs for home entertainment, it's perfectly acceptable to want to play a Blu-ray on it. But it's not just a case of popping a disc in the drive and putting your feet up. You need something like PowerDVD from Cyberlink.
Products used in this guide
How to convert your Blu-ray discs to digital
This isn't for the light-hearted, mostly because it takes such a long time to do and it's easy to make a mistake. But there is a free way to do it using two pieces of software.
MakeMKV and Handbrake have been featured before in our roundup of DVD cloning software, and for good reason: both are completely free. While MakeMKV is technically still a beta, and it's still very powerful.
Essentially you use MakeMKV to pull the data from the Blu-ray, then run it through Handbrake to compress it down. You can, of course, skip Handbrake, but each file from a Blu-ray will be huge. So unless you have an awful lot of storage on hand, running through Handbrake is a good step to reduce the file size at the expense of outright quality.
How to watch your Blu-ray discs on Windows 10
You can watch the actual discs on your Windows 10 PC without having to convert them to a digital file.
The first option to mention is the good old Swiss Army Knife, VLC. Natively, VLC won't just play your Blu-ray discs, so you'll need to do some tweaking.
It's not necessarily the best option, but if you're a heavy VLC user already, it's at least an option.
Perhaps a better, also free, method is the Leawo Blu-ray player application. It also supports DVDs, and while you're not paying for it, you're only getting a very basic Blu-ray player. Nevertheless, it's reliable and gets the job done.
If you're interested in something a little more feature-filled, there are a number of paid apps out there. The best is Cyberlink's PowerDVD. The latest version is PowerDVD 19 but for watching Blu-Ray, it makes more sense to get the previous version, PowerDVD 18 which starts around $60. It offers support for 3D Blu-ray as well as regular discs, high frame rate playback, casting and 4K UHD Blu-ray.
Additionally, PowerDVD will also play back directly any of your ISO files from Blu-rays or DVDs, so you've got everything you need under one roof. It's a handy piece of software to have on a media PC, and you can even use it to pull in content from YouTube and Vimeo, including 360-degree video.
The app you need
There are free ways to watch Blu-ray discs, but you get what you pay for and much more besides with Cyberlink's excellent PowerDVD 18. It's last years version, but given it can be had right now for half the price of PowerDVD 19, it's a better value choice if watching Blu-ray is your primary goal.
Full-featuredPowerDVD 18
Serious software for media fanatics
PowerDVD 18 is an amazing piece of software that can play up to 4K Blu-ray discs with True Theater and full-screen enhancements for the best possible experience.
PowerDVD can also play YouTube and Vimeo videos, as well as natively playing 360-degree content. It's a great value and a really powerful piece of software for enthusiasts.
Additional apps
If you're looking for something a little less intensive or want to digitize your collection, these are the apps for you.
MakeMKV(Free at MakeMKV)
Simple to use and will convert all your physical discs into digital files with ease.
Leawo Blu-ray player(Free at Leawo)
Basic, but functional, if you just want to play the disc and nothing more, this is a great app to get.
VLC(Free at VideoLAN)
VLC is a brilliant tool for Windows that, with some tweaking, can play virtually anything imaginable.
Handbrake(Free at Handbrake)
Handbrake will convert your Blu-ray's raw files into something more useable for your PC or home media server. And it's free!
This post may contain affiliate links. See our disclosure policy for more details.
Richard Devine
Richard Devine is an Editor at Windows Central. A former Project Manager and long-term tech addict, he joined Mobile Nations in 2011 and has been found on Android Central and iMore as well as Windows Central. Currently you'll find him covering all manner of PC hardware and gaming, and you can follow him on Twitter and Instagram.
How to watch Blu-ray discs on Windows 10Full-featuredPowerDVD 18$48 at Amazon
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BestLaptops with an Optical DriveWindows Central2019
The optical drive may be a dying feature on laptops, but there are folks who absolutely must have one. It's harder than ever to find a good laptop with this kind of drive, but not impossible. Whatever your budget or specific use case, there are still good laptops out there for you like the HP Envy 17t.
Best overall â HP Envy 17t
With the Envy 17t, HP has created a desirable laptop with a large screen, an optical drive, and just about every other spec you could ask for. It's sleek, sophisticated, and surprisingly thin considering it has a 17.3-inch display and, most importantly, you can slot a DVD into it.
Much of the hardware here you'd find elsewhere in HP's premium lineup. The processor is an 8th Gen Intel Core i7, the graphics come from NVIDIA in the form of a 2GB MX150, and the audio comes courtesy of Bang and Olufsen. This is every bit the high-end laptop you expect, but it doesn't command a particularly high price
It's also making use of some cutting edge internals, like Intel's Optane memory for storage acceleration. It's even got pretty good battery life at up to nine hours. What more could you ask for?
Pros:
Best overallHP Envy 17t
Big, beautiful, and ticks all the boxes
The Envy 17 has a large display, a gorgeous design, tons of hardware, and even squeezes an optical drive into its sleek body. This is a sure-fire winner for people who want a great laptop and that coveted optical drive.
If you're on a tight budget, Dell has just the ticket with the Inspiron 15. It also has plenty of other goodies to go with it, proving you don't need to spend a lot to get a great laptop and still have an optical drive. Download picture style canon terbaru 2018 youtube.
Besides the DVD drive, this Inspiron 15 has a 15.6-inch display, an Intel Core i3 processor, 1TB HDD storage, and 8GB of RAM. Toss in a bunch of USB ports, HDMI, and an SD card slot and you have a cheap laptop with plenty of flexibility. It's unusual to find a full Intel Core i processor on a cheap laptop such as this, so the Inspiron 15 has a little more power than some of the competitors in this price range.
An easy way to give this laptop a little extra oomph for a little extra cash is to consider replacing the 1TB HDD with an SSD. For an additional $100 you can get a 1TB SSD that will make your daily life with this laptop a lot faster.
Cons:
Best budgetDell Inspiron 15
A low-cost laptop that still plays DVDs
Laptops with optical drives are few and far between, but this one will let you play your DVDs without running away with your wallet. Plus, it has better specs than a lot of the competition.
If you're looking for a solid value option that's still well equipped, Lenovo's Ideapad 330 is what you're looking for. Not only does it have an optical drive tucked away in its fairly slim side, but inside you'll find a plethora of other impressive specs.
At 15-inches it's the sweet spot for people who want a larger display without going overboard into the 17-inch range, and despite an extremely attractive price, it's packed with plenty of goodies on the inside. An 8th Generation Intel Core i5 is paired with 8GB of RAM SSD storage and plenty of connectivity, including USB-C.
Lenovo always has great keyboards with its laptops, too, so you'll get an all-around solid laptop. The Ideapad 330 might be a mid-ranger, but it punches way above its price tag. It's well designed, built to last, and is a perfect carry for the office or college.
Pros:
Cons:
Best 15-inchLenovo Ideapad 330
Solid hardware, great price
Lenovo has a laptop here that doesn't try to be too flashy but mixes solid hardware, good design, and a fantastic price. If you love the 15-inch form factor and need an optical drive, this is the laptop to get.
Acer's Predator gaming focused notebook has a very neat trick: you can have it both with and without an optical drive. The drive is modular, and can be swapped out for an additional cooler. The idea is that when you're gaming, you probably don't need the optical drive (unless you're playing some older games off a disc) so you can give the laptop some additional help keeping cool.
Besides this niftiness, you get a quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, a combination of HDD and SSD storage, and a really nice 15.6-inch, 1080p display with NVIDIA G-Sync for tear-free gaming.
The graphics power is provided by a 6GB NVIDIA GTX 1060, and Acer has a bunch of software tools on board to help you get the best from it. It's an excellent gaming laptop all-around.
Pros:
Cons:
Best gamingAcer Predator 15 G9
Optical drive when you need it, cooling when you don't
This laptop has an innovative solution to the optical drive, allowing you to remove it when you're gaming to add in some extra cooling and keep performance high.
Conclusion
The optical drive has now become a niche laptop feature, but that doesn't mean demand for it has gone. There are still people who need it and there are still laptop makers satisfying that demand, and satisfying it with good hardware.
The HP Envy 17t is a great laptop, period. Fallout 4 mod categories. That it has an optical drive is a bonus, but by current standards it lacks very little. The inclusion of dedicated graphics and Intel Optane memory is a nice touch, and the Envy 17t is extremely well rounded. It even looks the part!
But there are also good choices out there for other needs. Whether you're on a budget, looking for something smaller, or even need something with the power to handle gaming, there's something out there for you. The days of installing PC games from a DVD are long gone, but Acer's Predator 15 has an innovative design that keeps the optical drive alive, but only when you need it.
Credits â The team that worked on this guide
Richard Devine is an Editor at Windows Central. A former Project Manager and long-term tech addict, he joined Mobile Nations in 2011 and has been found on Android Central and iMore as well as Windows Central. Currently you'll find him covering all manner of PC hardware and gaming, and you can follow him on Twitter and Instagram.
Rich Edmonds is a staff reviewer at Windows Central, which means he tests out more software and hardware than he cares to remember. Joining Mobile Nations in 2010, you can usually find him inside a PC case tinkering around when not at a screen fighting with Grammarly to use British words. Hit him up on Twitter: @RichEdmonds.
This post may contain affiliate links. See our disclosure policy for more details.
Best Laptops with an Optical Drive in 2019Best overallHP Envy 17tFrom $850 at HPBest budgetDell Inspiron 15$370 at AmazonBest 15-inchLenovo Ideapad 330$628 at AmazonBest gamingAcer Predator 15 G9$1,079 at Amazon
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This page contains information about installing the latest HP Blu-ray driver downloads using the HP (Hewlett Packard) Driver Update Tool.
HP Blu-ray drivers are tiny programs that enable your CD-DVD Drive hardware to communicate with your operating system software. Maintaining updated HP Blu-ray software prevents crashes and maximizes hardware and system performance. Using outdated or corrupt HP Blu-ray drivers can cause system errors, crashes, and cause your computer or hardware to fail. Furthermore, installing the wrong HP drivers can make these problems even worse.
Recommendation: If you are inexperienced with updating HP device drivers manually, we highly recommend downloading the HP (Hewlett Packard) Blu-ray Driver Utility. This tool will download and update the correct HP Blu-ray driver versions automatically, protecting you against installing the wrong Blu-ray drivers.
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