I've been using VLC forever as a very capable media player for movies on my PC, Mac or mobile devices. It's just brilliant. Can't recommend it enough.
But that's not all. It has superpowers I never expected: it is a quite capable blue-ray player in its own right, even up to 4K, if you drive and computer can handle it.
Of course, nothing free is really all that easy.
First, vlc needs a couple of files to be able to handle the encryption. Fine, here are the instructions for that:
Next, you need to make sure you've got the right versions of everything. Not going to be long winded here:
I'm using Windows 11 22H2, VLC 3.0.20 Vetinari, and JDK jdk-17_windows-x64_bin.exe.
I'd already installed the keys and dll to be able to read a bluray disk, and installed the jdk at D:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk-17. Adjust JAVA_HOME below if you post elsewhere.
In Explorer, right click on 'This PC', select 'Properties'. In the search box, type 'env', select 'Edit the System Variables'. I created three new environment variables: BD_DEBUG_FILE=c:\users\<myaccount>\vlc_debug.txt BD_DEBUG_MASK=0x02000 JAVA_HOME=D:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk-17
Then, I prepended the bin directory of the jdk to BOTH my personal PATH, and the system PATH: PATH=D:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk-17\bin;C:\<blah,blah,blah>
Terminate VLC, and start it again.
Ensure there's a Bluray disc in the drive. From the menu select: Media->Open Disc... Click on Blu-ray radio button Click Play.
The Blu-ray menu should come up after a little while like it was always meant to do. If not, you have that vlc_debug.txt file that hopefully is explaining why.