How to play a Blu-ray on a regular DVD player?

Date October 21, 2016 Author Catherine Category Blu-ray Tips

A Blu-ray Disc player can play Blu-ray discs, DVDs, CDs, and, in some cases, even SACDs and DVD-Audio Discs while a DVD Player can’t play any Blu-ray discs cause they require entirely different laser assemblies and the discs are completely different in their format and recorded pits and lands. Let’s see the detailed explanation why a DVD Player can’t support Blu-ray discs.

play Blu-ray on DVD Player

Why DVD Players Cannot Play Blu-ray Discs?

The reason that you cannot play a Blu-ray Disc on a DVD player is that Blu-ray Discs are embedded with more video and audio information than a DVD player is designed to read. In addition, the “pits” used to store the information on a Blu-ray disc are much smaller than a DVD, which requires a blue laser to read the information, whereas DVD players use red lasers. Blue lasers produce light beam with a shorter wavelength, which is needed to focus on the smaller pits of a Blu-ray Disc. The pits on the disc is where the video and audio information of Blu-ray Discs (as well as DVDs and CDs) is stored.

So is there any solution to play Blu-ray on DVD Players? Actually, the best workaround is that you can convert Blu-ray to DVD Player supported format then play the videos via USB or over network. Normally, a DVD Player can support AVI files but some new DVD Players now can play many media files including MP4, MKV, TS, etc. In addition, some DVD Players have strict requirement on AVI formats. For example, some Panasonic DVD Players only can play DivX AVI while the others only support XviD AVI. So it is not sure which files your DVD Player supports. You need to check your user manual of DVD player. When you know your DVD Player supported format, you can convert you Blu-ray to DVD Player playable format video with Blu-ray Player.

Best Blu-ray Ripper to Rip Blu-ray to DVD Player

There are many Blu-ray ripping tools in the market that will make you confused which one to choose. We made a research and tested some top software and recommended you Pavtube ByteCopy, This Blu-ray Ripper is highly praised in Blu-ray ripping software field for its integrated Blu-ray decryption and multifunctions.

– Rip AVC and VC-1 Blu-ray to DVD Player supported format video.

– Decrypt Blu-ray encrypted by AACS, BD+, MKBv61, MKBv62, UOP, etc.

– Remove any Blu-ray region codes for your DVD Player with different region codes.

– Rip Blu-ray to DivX, XviD, AVI, MPEG-2, MP4 for DVD Players.

– Convert Blu-ray to lossless MKV, Multi-track MP4/MOV/AVI.

– Convert Blu-ray PGS subtitle to DVD Sub.

Pavtube ByteCopy also has many other functions, if you want to learn it, please read ByteCopy review. If you are using Mac, please use Pavtube ByteCopy for Mac to backup Blu-ray to DVD player certificated formats on Mac 10.12 macOS Sierra, Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan, Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite, 10.9 Mavericks, etc.

How to Convert Blu-ray to DVD Format?

Step 1: Load Blu-ray disc into the program.

Launch the program on your computer, insert your Blu-ray disc into an internal or external Blu-ray drive, on the program’s main interface, click “File” > “Load from disc” to load commercial Blu-ray disc to the application.

load Blu-ray

Step 2: Output DVD player supported file formats.

Check the specification explanation on your TV to see which video standards your TV using: NTSC or PAL, you should also be clear of your TV display screen aspect ratio: 16:9 or 4:3. Then click “Format” bar, from its drop-down list, select “VCD/DVD/SVCD” > “DVD PAL (16:9)”/DVD PAL (4:3)” or “DVD NTSC (16:9)”/DVD NTSC (4:3)” according to your own situation. You also can choose AVI, MP4, MPEG-2 from “Common Video”.

Output DVD video format

Tip: Click on “Settings” to modify video codec, resolution, frame rate, sample rate etc. Of course, different settings will have different results. And you should know, the higher video quality with bigger video size, please pay attention to your storage. Or you can also keep the origional settings which is also a good choice. Usually, a DVD Player supports 720p video.

Step 3: Start Blu-ray to DVD video conversion process.

Clicking the Convert button on main interface, you can go to Conversion window to start conversion. After the conversion, you can click “Open output folder” to pop output directory with the converted files.

When you get the DVD format video, you can transfer it into a USB stick or a NAS then stream your Blu-ray rips on DVD Player via USB port or over network.