Can not play Blu-ray ISO image :(

Kopcap

I've bought the player because in a promo video there was Blu-ray Disc (and Ultra HD Blu-ray) logo. I thought it could play 3D Blu-ray movies from ISO images, but the player does not even show ISO images in a list of folders/files/movies!
PS Picture quality is very good for other video formats. I would give it 5 stars if it plays ISO Blu-ray images!

GregZone

For a start, SkyBox haven't implemented MVC support yet, so this would at least need to be in place first.

Currently, to watch 3D Blu-ray (or any Blu-ray) in SkyBox, you first need to rip your Blu-ray to your hard drive or NAS (media server).
I use MakeMKV to rip my Blu-ray discs to a single .MKV file for media player playback (I then catalog / browse them using Plex).

However, due to lack of MVC support, SkyBox still cannot play the 3D Blu-ray .MKV rips.

For SkyBox to be able to play your ripped 3D Blu-ray, you currently need to convert the 3D rip .MKV file into a Side-By-Side .MKV file. Unfortunately this is a lossy / image degrading process, in addition, it adds to your storage space requirements by needing you to create this lesser quality duplicate copy of your 3D Movie (you don't want to delete the direct Blu-ray .MKV rip file, as this is the original quality MVC encoded 3D movie file).

So, for this step I use BD3D2MK3D. I de-select the "Half" checkbox, which otherwise immediataly halves the horizontal image resolution. I also select "slower" and "18" in the settings, to provide an acceptable? outcome from this lossy re-encoding process.
After conversion you have another .MKV file which is 3840x1080p (twice width for left + right images side-by-side).
nb. Make a note of the forum topic on file naming conventions.

This SBS file will now play as 3D in SkyBoxVR! However, there are still a couple more SkyBox issues to deal with. When you initially select the 3D mode for 3D playback you end up with a squashed 32:9 aspect image, so you then need to go into the advanced settings and select 16:9 Aspect Override. Then you are all good for watching in glorious 3D! :-)

However, there is still one other issue in that SkyBox doesn't currently retain this setting, so everytime you view the 3D movie you need to again go into the advanced settings and select 16:9 Aspect Override!

Finally, I do recommend using Plex server to catalogue / serve-up your files to your media player(s). By enabling the DLNA server functionality in Plex, your Plex server will then appear in the Network menu in SkyBox, and you will be able to nicely browse your Plex catalogued movies via organised folders.

Hope all this helps. You might also want to add your vote for MVC support to the "Support for MVC 3D file format" topic.

Kopcap

GregZone Thank you.
I understood that Blu-ray Disc (and Ultra HD Blu-ray) logo in the Oculus Store promo video is a misleading unfair advertisement :-(.
I tried to extract BDMV container from ISO image - and Skybox doesn't recognize it as Blu-ray, too.
I can go down to STREAM folder and play some of m2ts video files, but it's hard to find the necessary file among dozens. Besides, sometimes a movie is located in several such files and there is no way to play them without interruption...
So, there is no even 2D Blu-ray support, certain file convertion is required...

GregZone

Kopcap I do agree on the Oculus Store video seeming to be a bit misleading. I had to watch the video again, and pause to see the brief list of logo's including Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray.
Unless I'm overlooking something also, I can't see how these are supported by SkyBoxVR, unless they are just implying that you can rip these formats for playback?

Perhaps someone from SkyBox will clarify this?

I also used to rip my Blu-ray's to ISO, several years back, but then I transitioned to MKV ripping, for a number of reasons. Apart from providing broader media player compatibility, ripping to MKV also saves on storage space, by allowing you to drop all the languages / bonus features that you really don't need to keep (instead of ripping the entire Blu-ray disk image).

Important bonus feature videos can also be ripped, as seperately catalogued MKV files. With a media server (like Plex) you can automatically catalogue each content video via the integrated TheMovieDB & TheTVDB integration etc.

Yes, you can just play the individual .m2ts files, but you'll find that many Blu-ray disks not only split the movie into multiple files, they also obfuscate the content with multiple fake playlists with files in the wrong sequence. So first you need to locate the correct playlist with the correct file segment sequence.

Technically, you could join all the segments into a single large .m2ts file, but again there are plenty of free .MKV container tools out there, and MKV as a container is now pretty universally supported, and the remux'd Blu-ray streams are retained in their original format (ie. there is no lossy re-encoding involved in remuxing them into a .MKV container).

So, this brings us back to the issue that SkyBox do not yet support the MVC encoding format used by 3D Blu-ray video streams (which transfer over to the .MKV file).

When SkyBox hopefully add MVC support (PLEASE!), we should hopefully be all good to go for straightforward 3D Blu-ray playback (via ripped to MKV 3D Blu-ray content). In the meantime, for non-3D Blu-ray content, my preference would still be to just continue ripping Blu-ray disks / images to MKV (in order to save on storage space), rather than have SkyBox spending time on direct Blu-ray disk (or ISO image) structure playback support. Just my 2c :-)

Kopcap

Yes, MKV could be a good choice if it supports MVC.
The reason I prefer ISO is that some hardware mediaplayers can manage them as a real Blu-ray with menu, chapter navigation, bonus features etc.
But I agree: if SkyBox team is limited in resources, MVC support is the highest priority.
Where can I vote for this feature?

GregZone

Kopcap You could add your request / support for MVC to the post: https://forum.skybox.xyz/d/201-future-request-support-for-mvc-3d-file-format