Recommendations for Blu-Ray Playback Software

[DemonDragonJ]

I recently purchased a blu-ray drive for my computer (this drive, to be specific), and I was displeased to learn that it could not play blu-ray discs without special software.

Therefore, can anyone here recommend software for me to use with the drive? I seek software that is fairly intuitive to use, does not consume great amounts of system resources (either disk capacity or memory), and, most importantly, is free, or at least very inexpensive and has only a one-time fee, not a continues fee for its usage. Thank you very much.

As a side note, why will blu-ray drives not play blu-ray discs without special software? That seems to be a major mistake to me, since video game consoles can play blu-ray discs without any upgrades or additional software, and all optical drives can play regular DVD's without any additional software. What insight can anyone here offer on that subject?

[d_stilgar]

VLC has bluray support. It isn't native, but VLC is awesome and totally free!
http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=98554
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZAbZQDOOio

http://lifehacker.com/5621471/how-to...ayback-in-xbmc

[DemonDragonJ]

VLC has bluray support. It isn't native, but VLC is awesome and totally free!
http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=98554
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZAbZQDOOio

http://lifehacker.com/5621471/how-to...ayback-in-xbmc

Yes, thank you very much, but I currently do not use VLC player, so is it possible to play blu-ray discs in Media Player Classic, which is included in the K-Lite Codec Pack, which I currently use?

[Airbozo]

You can try it.
My Blue ray player came with a free version of cyberlink blue ray edition.

VLC is pretty good. It can be used from a simple player to a full on network media streamer.