{"id":2816,"date":"2013-12-22T20:38:15","date_gmt":"2013-12-23T02:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.eastfist.com\/?p=2816"},"modified":"2013-12-22T20:38:15","modified_gmt":"2013-12-23T02:38:15","slug":"solution-hpmediasmart-dvd-on-hp-laptops-stop-playing-blu-ray-discs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastfist.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/22\/solution-hpmediasmart-dvd-on-hp-laptops-stop-playing-blu-ray-discs\/","title":{"rendered":"Solution: HPMediaSmart DVD on HP Laptops stop playing Blu-ray discs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Solution: HPMediaSmart DVD on HP Laptops stop playing Blu-ray discs<br \/>\nBy Chongchen Saelee<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/h30434.www3.hp.com\/t5\/Notebook-Operating-Systems-and-Software\/Hp-mediasmart-dvd-play-the-avengers-blu-ray-disc\/m-p\/1851997\/highlight\/true#M109828\">http:\/\/h30434.www3.hp.com\/t5\/Notebook-Operating-Systems-and-Software\/Hp-mediasmart-dvd-play-the-avengers-blu-ray-disc\/m-p\/1851997\/highlight\/true#M109828<\/a><\/p>\n<p>See, after 2012, 20th Century Fox slapped a bunch of their newly authored Blu-rays with BD+ and some other fancy DRM (digital rights management) techniques. So in order for you to play their content, you need to use their authorized firmware aka Blu-ray software players.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, if you&#8217;re an owner of an older Hewlett-Packard laptop who is stuck using their built-in media player software such as HPMediaSmart DVD, and you don&#8217;t have software upgrade or update support anymore, then you might be SOL or forced to buy a new commercial Blu-ray software that will play newer titles (Who has USD$100 lying around these days, especially to watch Blu-rays that have been collecting dust on our shelves for more than half a decade?).<\/p>\n<p>HP, however, provided HP laptop owners with a FREE STANDARD VERSION of PowerDVD 10. The file is ~150 MB.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/ftp.hp.com\/pub\/softpaq\/sp56501-57000\/sp56904.exe\">http:\/\/ftp.hp.com\/pub\/softpaq\/sp56501-57000\/sp56904.exe<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Replace HPMediaSmart DVD with this newer version (relatively speaking). It&#8217;s an older version of PowerDVD AND YEARS old (from 2009), but it works all the same. That&#8217;s how the players work anyway, just with added gimmicks and updated library of disc keys.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s how I was able to get most of my newer movies (they aren&#8217;t NEW MOVIES, but rather older movies but still pressed recently so they have BD+):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>IMPORTANT: Uninstall your anti-virus suite, such as McAfee or Norton because it&#8217;ll block the crap out of the new Blu-ray virtual machine which needs that Internet access to get new keys to decrypt those damn discs (DRM, ain&#8217;t it a bitch?). Only after you&#8217;ve successfully installed your new copy of Power DVD 10 then you can reinstall your anti-virus\/firewall\/anti-malware suite. By then, PowerDVD 10 will be registered as &#8220;friendly&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>I downloaded the update installer from HP official tech support forum<\/li>\n<li>I installed it and when asked to remove previous versions of PowerDVD, do so (as long as you have a version previous to PowerDVD 10, you might as well&#8230; of course it doesn&#8217;t make sense if you have a functioning version of HPMediaSmart DVD or PowerDVD 13+)<\/li>\n<li>Once it installs, you still need to apply the patch (which is just another full version of PowerDVD 10) because the file downloads are the same size. But I think it requires the first download to authenticate it otherwise. So once you install the initial PowerDVD 10, open it, click on the &#8220;Upgrade&#8221; icon, go to the &#8220;Patch&#8221; tab and click on that. Again, you&#8217;ll have to download that ~150 MB file again, but it is necessary. The file is called <em>HP-CNB.HP_RiTA10_v4504_DVD120706-03_Normal.exe<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Once the patch reinstalls PowerDVD 10, DON&#8217;T FORGET TO REBOOT YOUR LAPTOP.<\/li>\n<li>AGAIN, REBOOT YOUR LAPTOP after all the installation is completed.<\/li>\n<li>VERY IMPORTANT: HAVE AN INTERNET CONNECTION ON (more on this later)<\/li>\n<li>Now, the testing part, which is where you&#8217;ll be playing Russian roulette. You can be confident discs pressed before 2012 will work, but if you must really know, then you&#8217;ll have to test all your Blu-ray discs. The proper way is to put your disc in and let the virtual machine do it by itself. Don&#8217;t boot up PowerDVD 10 by itself because it might start dialing out or giving you scary messages about its integrity being compromised. So put in the Blu-ray disc and let it auto start-up.<\/li>\n<li>If the disc spins at a consistent speed, odds are it&#8217;s getting decoded properly. If it keeps whirling, nothing is getting read. You might think it&#8217;s broken, but that&#8217;s actually how the DRM is preventing you from reading from the disc. It might even make your BD-ROM drive think there is no disc in there.<\/li>\n<li>So if PowerDVD 10 starts up by itself, then it&#8217;ll attempt to read your disc and download the updated keys to decrypt your disc. That&#8217;s WHY YOU NEED AN INTERNET CONNECTION. If there isn&#8217;t an Internet connection, you might get a scary warning about PowerDVD 10&#8217;s integrity being altered.<\/li>\n<li>-So after it retrieves whatever garbage it needs from the Internet, your Blu-ray might be able to start playing right away. Otherwise, again, this updating process is clunky as hell, so take your disc out, close PowerDVD 10 and reboot your PC.<\/li>\n<li>And if everything went correctly, the next time you put in your Blu-ray, you won&#8217;t require that initial Internet connection and it&#8217;ll play.<\/li>\n<li><b>So RULE OF THUMB: MAKE SURE YOU HAVE AN INTERNET CONNECTION ON THE ENTIRE TIME YOU ARE UPDATING\/UPGRADING YOUR SOFTWARE, PLUS WHEN YOU&#8217;RE TESTING BLU-RAY DISCS TO SEE IF IT PLAYS<\/b><\/li>\n<li>Last, but not least, if you haven&#8217;t reinstalled your anti-virus programs yet, now is a good time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Hope this helps out. I&#8217;m sure a lot of HP laptop users out there can use it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Solution: HPMediaSmart DVD on HP Laptops stop playing Blu-ray discs By Chongchen Saelee http:\/\/h30434.www3.hp.com\/t5\/Notebook-Operating-Systems-and-Software\/Hp-mediasmart-dvd-play-the-avengers-blu-ray-disc\/m-p\/1851997\/highlight\/true#M109828 See, after 2012, 20th Century Fox slapped a bunch of their newly authored Blu-rays with BD+ and some other fancy DRM (digital rights management) techniques. So in order for you to play their content, you need to use their authorized firmware [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[313,361,805,871,1013,1188,1193,1233,1238,1322,1460,1620,1805,1982,2016,2393,2511,2678,2853],"class_list":["post-2816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","tag-bluray","tag-bundle","tag-dvd","tag-exclusive","tag-free","tag-help","tag-hewlett-packard","tag-how-to","tag-hp","tag-install","tag-laptop","tag-mediasmart","tag-official","tag-powerdvd-10","tag-problem","tag-solution","tag-support","tag-troubleshoot","tag-wont-play"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastfist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastfist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastfist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastfist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastfist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/eastfist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastfist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastfist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastfist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}