HD-DVD And Bluray Playback And Conversion

[wrathloki]

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum but I'm not really sure where to put this as I'm new to the forums. I was wondering if there were any free programs that can playback HD-DVD and Bluray either from a disc or from a directory (On Windows XP). If not is there some way I can convert a HD-DVD or Bluray directory to .mkv (h.264)?

[Doom9]

Playback and free? Not really. VLC can play EVOs and M2TS files so you can play both formats, but you don't get the menu stuff, no PIP and the likes - but it does play alright.

And as for conversion, look for eac3to in the audio forum for the audio stuff, evodemux, tsMuxer and TsRemux in the authoring forum - and if you're interested about video re-encoding, that's in the video encoding section (mpeg-4 encoder guis for divx/xvid/avc, new and alternative codecs for vc-1/wmv9 and mpeg2 encoding for guess what.. mpeg2)

[wrathloki]

Playback and free? Not really. VLC can play EVOs and M2TS files so you can play both formats, but you don't get the menu stuff, no PIP and the likes - but it does play alright.

And as for conversion, look for eac3to in the audio forum for the audio stuff, evodemux, tsMuxer and TsRemux in the authoring forum - and if you're interested about video re-encoding, that's in the video encoding section (mpeg-4 encoder guis for divx/xvid/avc, new and alternative codecs for vc-1/wmv9 and mpeg2 encoding for guess what.. mpeg2)
So VLC should be able to play the straight evos huh? I can't seem to get it to work is there some addon I need to install for it to work?