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I know this might be slightly off topic, but I am really stuck because I can't find much info about this relating to Anime Blu-rays.

So I bought a Blu-ray disc drive for my PC years ago, and then upon getting it home found that that all the official players didn't work very well, and couldn't handle subtitles. So after a while of messing around with different solutions I just went back to my PS3.

Now its 2013, the Official Licensed playback programs for Blu-ray on the PC actually work for Blu-rays, and handle Subtitles better than most. I have tried PowerDVD 13, and Total Media Theatre 6, with both of them having better subtitle support than the PS3, and VLCs half broken Blu-ray support.

So I was wondering if anyone has any experience with the above two programs, or others.

I am mainly interested in.

Handling of Subtitles.

Handling of PCM Audio. (Aniplex/NISA)

Handling of Dolby True. (Funimation)

Handling of DTS-HD. (Sentai)

Handling of NISA Strange Disc Structures. (I have heard of some older brick players choking on these)

either powerdvd or total media are fine

the problem wtih PC blu-ray software is they force you to upgrade your license every year or two
basically its a scam, theywill release a new version of the software every two years and claim they no longer support the old software version

the catch is bluray content has disc protection which requires an aacs key update regularly and they wont release the key for the older software version which forces you to buy the newest version of the software

personally I put all my bluray on a home NAS server and re-encode them to save space. I can watch anything on laptop or pc at anytime without inserting discs

I went with Total Media. They don't put out as many versions that you have to buy and the upgrade cost from the last version, 5, to the current was only $10. They also don't install random bloat ware.

I did some reading and part of the issue as to why they end up having to charge for a new version every year or so is the studios or a studio will start using some new type of anti-privacy technology, like a DRM, or a watermark system, and then they have to buy into the patients too...

A while ago I did the math for the HTPC path the amount of CPU time, and Hardrive space needed for it, even encoding at something reasonable like 22 or 23 Constant Rate factory would end up resulting way to many hours needed and 5TB to 6TB. Which would just cost to damn much to administrate with the needed back ups. I would have to have two RAID systems, because 1 there is no disk that big, and two you have to work under the assumption that the RAID itself could fail.