How to Decrypt Blu-ray? [Top Blu-ray Decrypters]

Part 1. Why Decrypt Blu-rays?

If you are a fan of Blu-ray quality content and have a pile of such discs lying in your cupboard, it is a good idea to digitize the content not only to avoid losing your bought content due to disc damage but also so that you can play it on your smartphone, desktop and other devices which are not capable of playing Blu-ray discs. 

However, there are numerous kinds of copy protection like AACS, BD+, Cinavia and BD-J to protect users’ illegal use of Blu-ray discs. Copyright protection is the key defense against copyright infringement. With the help of it, things will be difficult when one is making a digital backup of Blu-rays into other media like a hard drive and a USB stick. Therefore, if it is for personal preference instead of commercial use, we need to decrypt Blu-rays.

Part 2. How to Decrypt Blu-ray? - Top 5 Blu-ray Decrypters 

There are two ways to decrypt a Blu-ray. One way is to remove the protections and make an exact duplicate copy of your Blu-ray to a blank disc with a Blu-ray copy software, and another way is to use a Blu-ray ripping software to rip and convert the Blu-ray into whichever digital format you like.

There are many programs available to decrypt Blu-rays while you are copying or ripping your Blu-ray disc/folder/ISO files. And such Blu-ray decryption is totally automatic. Subsequently, I will list some top Blu-ray decrypters able to decrypt Blu-rays easily and fast, telling you how to use each of them.

(1) DVDFab Blu-ray Ripper

DVDFab Blu-ray Ripper

DVDFab Blu-ray Ripper allows you to rip and convert any 2D or 3D Blu-ray / ISO file / Folder to any video & audio format playable on any device, media player, or home theatre. 

With Blu-ray Ripper from DVDFab, you can rip Blu ray disc to an easy-to-use format. Convert it to any 2D or 3D format including H.265 and 4K high-quality videos as well the more command formats like MP4, AVI, or MKV. You can even just select your device and DVDFab Blu-ray Ripper will decrypt and convert the video and audio to the format that your device supports.

Just like DVDFab Blu-ray Copy, here too you can use the tool Blu-ray Cinavia Removal. DVDFab Blu-ray Ripper supports batch conversion and is programmed to accelerate the ripping speed with multi-threading, multi-core usage and support for latest NVIDIA CUDA and Intel Quick Sync. 

Steps on how to decrypt Blu-ray using DVDFab Blu-ray Ripper:

Step 1: Download and install DVDFab Blu-ray Ripper.

Step 2:On the main screen select Ripper option. If the source is a BD then attach a Blu-ray player external with the disc inside. Navigate to the disc after click on the Add button and if it is an ISO you can directly drag and drop the file to the main UI.

After loading the source file, click the "Info" button to see what copy protections the source Blu-ray has. And of course, all the protections have been automatically detected and removed.

Step 3: Once the source file has been loaded, click on the Profile Switcher button to choose the profile for conversion. With DVDFab Blu-ray Ripper you can decrypt the Blu-ray content to any audio formats, 2D & 3D video formats, or devices in support of video playback. 

Step 4: Select the Titles, Audio track and the subtitle you want to be present in the output file. Use the Advanced settings toolbar and the Video editor to do other customizations.

Step 5: Once all settings are done, select an output directory and click on the Start button to start the ripping process which you can see in another window. Once the output file is generated you can see the end result how Blu-ray decryption is done using DVDFab Blu-ray Ripper.

Note: If you also want to decrypt and rip 4K Blu-ray disc, there is a DVDFab UHD Ripper of great help. 

(2) DVDFab Blu-ray Copy

DVDFab Blu-ray Copy

DVDFab Blu-ray Copy allows you to losslessly backup or compress any copy-protected Blu-ray disc to a blank disc directly or save it as an ISO image file or folder on your hard drive. It provides five copy modes to meet your diverse needs.

DVDFab Blu-ray Copy is an expert in decrypting Blu-ray discs and making a copy/clone of it on another disc or DVD or on your hard drive with the 3D information intact. Wondering how to decrypt Blu-ray if it contains Cinavia protection then fret not because along with Blu-ray Cinavia Removal you can even remove that protection from the content.

This tool can burn your Blu-ray media content to both blank Blu-ray discs and even DVDs if you want to save money or just don’t have a Blu-ray handy but still want to make a high-quality backup. In this case, you can make a BD-format disc that plays only on a Blu-ray player, or if you have a Blu-ray disc handy, you can burn a Blu-ray disc like BD-R 25, BD-RE 25, BD-R 50, or BD-RE 50.

Steps on how to decrypt Blu-ray using DVDFab Blu-ray Copy:

Step 1: Download and install DVDFab Blu-ray copy.

Step 2: After launching the software, select the "Copy" option first and go to the Mode Switcher menu on the left side of the UI to select the copy mode you require. Then insert your Blu-ray disc and navigate to it by clicking on the Add button, or just drag and drop the ISO or the Blu-ray folder to the main screen. 

After loading the source file, click the "Info" button, and you will see that all the copy protections from the source Blu-ray have been automatically detected and removed.

Step 3: You don’t need to copy all the data from the Blu-ray to another disc or on your computer. Before decrypting the Blu-ray and copying it, you can choose the Titles, subtitles, and audio track that you want to copy to the output file. You can also define the volume label and choose the output file type from BD 50, BD 25 BD 9 or D-5 from the Advanced Settings panel.

Step 4: At the bottom of the UI, in the “Save to” bar select your optical drive as the directory (copy to a blank disc) or select any folder (copy to a folder) after clicking on the folder icon if you want to create the ISO (copy to an ISO) in your computer local directory.

Click on the Start button to start the copy process immediately. A new window will open showing you the progress where you can pause or cancel the task if req uired. You can minimize the window to do any other parallel task using DVDFab software or any other application on your computer.

(3) EaseFab Blu-ray Ripper 

How to decrypt Blu-rays using EaseFab Blu-ray Ripper:

• Load your Blu-ray file
• Choose output format
• Start to digitalize your Blu-ray

(4) VideoSolo Blu-ray Ripper 

How to decrypt Blu-rays using VideoSolo Blu-ray Ripper:

• Download and Install VideoSolo Blu-ray Ripper
• Insert Blu-ray disc to Blu-ray drive
• Import your file by clicking “Load Disc” > “Load BD Disc”
• Scroll down the box of “Profile” and choose an output format
• Click “Convert” and start decrypting Blu-rays

(5) ImElfin Blu-ray Copy/Ripper

Compatible with Windows and Mac, ImElfin also has the ability to decrypt Blu-rays in its copy mode and ripper mode. You can use it to convert Blu-rays to any video or audio format, making them available on portable devices with multiple video effects.

How to decrypt Blu-rays using ImElfin Blu-ray Ripper:

• Import your Blu-ray file
• Choose your favorite output format
• Convert Blu-rays while decrypting it 

Part 3. Extented Info: Five Common Blu-ray Copy Protections

There are five kinds of Blu-ray copy protections in detail. Besides them, others may be also used but are less popular than them. No matter which kinds of copy protection, they can be applied to both Blu-rays and DVDs. Now, let's have a look.

(1) DRM

Popularly known as DRM protection. This is a standard that the prerecorded Blu-ray comes with. The only files on which this protection is applied are the stream files and not the other files that are present in Blu-ray disks. Such protection is applied for pre-recorded disks and the same goes for other Blu-ray protections.

(2) AACS Encryption

This encryption has been developed by a consortium of media industry leaders - Disney, Intel, Microsoft, Panasonic, Warner Bros., IBM, Toshiba, and Sony. It stands for Advanced Access Content System (AACS) and the consortium is known as AACS Licensing Administrator. The encryption used as part of this is 128-bit AES encryption. The Blu-ray players or the device have the Device key while the disks have Media Key Block. Using these two a Media key is generated which decrypts the Title key which is finally used to decrypt the audio and video in the disc.

The list of keys with AACS encryption that are available with the players can be revoked in case there is a suspicion that the keys have been compromised. Whenever a newer version of Blu-ray is inserted into a player, the drive checks for the Host Revocation List in the “Media Key Block” and updates it in the permanent non-volatile memory of the device. This system ensures that even if there is a hack and a list of keys are leaked (which happens quite often) by people looking to decrypt Blu-ray discs, the AACS consortium still has the chance of revoking the old list and creating a new one.

(3) BD+ Protection

BD+ Protection is optional protection that is applied in addition to AACS encryption. This protection garble or mangles the video content with instructions within the disc itself on how to repair the content. The instructions are known as BD+ instructions and run on a virtual machine.

The virtual machine runs the BD+ instructions and fetches a “Fix-up Table” to fix the mangled parts of the video. However, BD+ protection was hacked by reverse-engineering the VM in 2008 by hackers who were looking at how to decrypt Blu-ray with BD+ protection. Since then there is a continuous stream of changes in upcoming VMs along with BD+ discs which are yet again reverse engineered by hackers keeping the loop running.

(4) Cinavia

Cinavia is a protection tool developed by a company called Verance and since 2012 it is compulsorily supported by all Blu-ray players. Cinavia protection is an audio watermark that is present in addition to AACS protection and helps prevent theatre recordings of movies (CAM recording) to be released online or as a personal copy.

While this audio is not audible to human ears, Blu-ray players can read this watermark and figure out if the media content you are trying to play on a home disk is for theatres. It can also check if the AACS encryption used on the disk is similar to the one that was used on the original recording. The reason why this is hard to crack protection is that the watermark differs from each disk to disk therefore making a general decrypting logic difficult. If the player detects a counterfeit, it will degrade the audio quality of the Blu-ray, therefore, making it a poor copy of the original 4k content.

(5) BD-J

BD-J: also known as Blu-ray Disc Java developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association, making Blu-ray disc titles more sophisticated. It is a specification used to support Java ME (especially the Personal Basis Profile of the Connected Device Configuration or CDC) Xlets for advaced content on Blu-ray disc and the Packaged Media Profile of Globally Executable MHP (GEM). Now, BD-J has been supported by Sony’s PlayStation.

Part 4. Conclusion

Although Blu-rays are protected by Cinavia, BD-J, or other codes, there are always freeways to decrypt Blu-rays and bring good memories back to life. Have you decided which Blu-ray copy or ripper to adopt? DVDFab products, such as Blu ray Copy software and Blu ray Ripper software, are highly recommended.