AnyDVD HD lifetime license gone duff - what are my options?

Pawnless Endgame · 10 Nov 2018 at 23:47

I'm not interested in copying blu-rays, so please no discussion about copying discs, decrypting or ripping to a device.

I use AnyDVD HD so that I can play my blu-rays in Media Player Classic. I don't like Power DVD, Win DVD, Windows Media Player etc... too bloated. I like the simplicity of MPC. It's the same reason why I hated Real Player and Quick Time too.

I purchased a 'lifetime' licence years ago for around £85 from the Slysoft web site. Recently however, I noticed that my newer blu-rays aren't working. After a bit of searching, it turned out that Slysoft have changed their name to Redfox and are forcing the lifetime holders to buy a new licence which is currently €109 (about £100). People have moaned about this on the Redfox forums and basically been told that they're screwed.

I don't particularly want to fork out another £100 for a lifetime licence that could go dead in 4 years time if the company was to change names again. So what are my other options? Playing blu-rays in Media Player Classic is all I'm asking for. I repeat - I'm not interested in copying, ripping etc.

Pawnless Endgame · 11 Nov 2018 at 18:54

Thanks for the links to the files! I have the portable version of VLC (3.0.4), so what directories will I need to put them in?

I tried \%appdata%\Roaming\aacs for KEYDB.cfg then \VLC\App\vlc for libaacs.dll but the disc doesn't open.

Also, how do I tell if portable VLC is 32-bit or 64-bit? If I go to Help > About, it just says 3.0.4 Vetinari. I'm on 64-bit Windows 8.1 btw.

If the worst comes to the worst, I'll just install VLC instead but I much prefer to stay as portable as possible because they stay on the D drive and the programs will work on another machine and will survive a reformat etc.

Pawnless Endgame · 11 Nov 2018 at 19:31

P.S. further to my above post, I managed to get VLC player to play some of my blu-rays but not all of them.

I figured out that portable VLC is only 32-bit because I tried the 32-bit DLL file and that got it going with blu-rays.

For portable, the paths were:

\%appdata%\Roaming\aacs and place KEYDB.cfg in there
\VLC\App\vlc for the libaacs.dll DLL file (the full path was D:\Programs\Video\VLC\App\vlc)

A blu-ray that works ok is Sleeping Beauty. The film that I was trying to watch last night though was Moana and that didn't work. It was also rejected by the VLC fix.

Pawnless Endgame · 30 Dec 2018 at 00:38

Okies, the problem in my last post was: Sleeping Beauty = yay, Moana = nay.

Slight necro-post on this thread then, but just to update you guys on what I did.

DVDFab Passkey for Blu-ray seems to be the answer.

This was the nearest replacement that I could find. Remember, all I wanted to do was to watch blu-rays in Media Player Classic (or VLC as a last resort) as I don't like the more bloated programs. So no ripping, no converting, just to view them. Basically AnyDVD was a driver that allowed me to watch blu-rays in my favourite program. DVDFab Passkey seems to do the same thing but it allowed me to watch Moana as well. I'm running it in a 30-day trial which expires on 29th January. To buy it costs around $55.

Have any of you tried this program?