Get VLC to Play DVD/Blu-ray on Windows 8.1/8/7 for Free

If you are a Windows 8.1, Windows 8 or Windows 7 computer user, you might be surprised to find out that it won't play your DVDs/Blu-rays as Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, omitted this feature in the new version of the OS. Although optical media is going the way of the VHS tape, there's a lot of content out there that's not available for streaming or in compatible video formats. And now VLC provide a free way to play encrypted DVD/Blu-ray on Windows 8.1/8/7 and also Mac OS, Linux.

VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as Blu-ray, DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. After install the program, you can insert your DVD to your drive and play DVD with VLC on Windows 8.1/8/7, for Blu-ray playback, you need read the following guide.

Here's how to get your VLC 2.0 to play encrypted blu-ray discs on Windows 8.1/8/7?

First download VLC from here. Then you'll need two files: keys database and AACS dynamic library.

Keys database

Get the file UPDATED 20-04-2012!

Windows 8.1/8/7: put it in %APPDATA%/aacs/ . How to find where %appdata% dir is?

Mac OS: put it in ~/Library/Preferences/aacs/ (create it if it does not exist)

Linux: put it in ~/.config/aacs/

AACS dynamic library

VLC 32bits on Windows 8.1/8/7: put that file in your VLC directory

VLC 64bits on Windows 8.1/8/7: put that file in your VLC directory

Mac OS: put that file in ~/lib directory (create it, if it does not exist)

Linux 32bit: put that file in VLC folder (or in LD_LIBRARY_PATH, usually /usr/lib/)

Linux 64bit: put that file in VLC folder (or in LD_LIBRARY_PATH, usually /usr/lib64/)

Tip: If VLC still can't help you play Blu-ray disc movie on Windows 8.1/8/7, you need a third party software to help you. You can get a UFUSoft Blu-ray Player for Windows(Only $39) to play Blu-ray movies like Blu-ray Discs, Blu-ray folder, Blu-ray ISO Image on windows 8.1/8/7/Vista/XP directly with Blu-ray effect.