More: Bluray Playback & Ripping

First off, not every Bluray – especially new ones – will work. That is because of the proprietary protection system used for these discs, which require unique keys to be accessed. Given Sony is earning money splendidly through bluray licenses this won’t change in the future until someone is able to reverse-engineer the security system called AACS. However, the reason why many discs do work by now are security researchers and hackers who’re contributing to a list of known keys that can be used by tools like the VLC Player to successfully open protected bluray discs.
In addition to this, there’s a shareware tool called MakeMKV that is able to rip Blurays as well as DVDs very effectively. Given I’m german and this blog is hosted in Germany, where we have the legal right to make copies of movies we own for personal use, I will describe how to use the tool. However be aware that following my advice on disc ripping may be illegal in your country.

Playback

To enable the VLC Media Player we have to get two things: The necessary libraries so it knows how to do it and the file with all the encryption keys.
First, let’s install the libraries. This will also install the VLC Media Player as a system package, so please make sure that any previous installation is removed beforehand.
Open a terminal and copy this command into it (CTRL + C to copy, CTRL + SHIFT + V to paste):

sudo apt install vlc libaacs0 libbluray-bdj libbluray1 libbdplus

Now we need to create a new folder and place the encryption keys there. Do as follow:

1. In your File Manager, go to your home folder and press CTRL + H to show hidden folders (those with a . at the beginning).
2. Open the .config folder. in here, create a new folder named “aacs”.
3. Download this archive and place the extracted keydb.cfg file in the new folder.

Now try watching a bluray disc with VLC Media Player. There’s a good chance it will just work! Make sure to keep the link to the file you downloaded, it keeps being updated with new keys to make more more and more blurays available.

Ripping

Caution! Following these steps may violate laws of your country.
Please check the legal status of ripping media discs before proceeding.

Ripping is possible via the shareware software MakeMKV. It is directly available in your Software Store and free during its beta phase. The software is exceptionally powerful as it is not just able to rip Bluray discs but also DVDs and, to certain extent, even HD-DVDs. The resulting files will always be native quality, meaning they may be huge (over 20gb per movie). You’ll most likely want to familiarize yourself with Handbrake to convert it into smaller files.

The developers publish new temporary license keys you can enter while it’s still in beta for free use. You can check it in their forum and enter it in the tool under Help → Register.

After opening the tool and selecting the drive your movie is in just click the big button in the middle. This will make it analyze the disc for its contents and offer you a list what to rip from the disc.