August 19, 2009 by sharky
For now, Blu-Torrents doesn’t offer those 40+GB untouched BD rips found on popular Hi-Def trackers such as HDBits; nor does it provide many reencodes in x264/.MKV format - but instead they serve up their own unique "internals" that can be burned directly to BD25 discs. That’s right: Their BD torrents are in *.ISO format from untouched sources (and we should mention that are also region-free), ready to burn to BD-R media. Great idea; if only the cost of BD-Rs would come down, but thankfully there’s BD-RE (rewritable) discs and most of the torrents are formatted to fit onto BD25s (not 50s).
You may be asking, "Why would they go to the trouble to convert BDs into ISOs, and not just release the torrents as the original BD files?". Well, not everyone knows how to properly burn the file structure of a released BD (such as using UDF/UTF as the file system, or using ImgBurn in ‘build mode’, etc) - all of which can be overwhelming. (TIP: here’s a great guide for burning BD-R discs). So Blu-Torrents takes all this hard work out of the equation by providing ISO images of the BD disks, ready-to-burn.
BluRays on Usenet?
Interestingly, Blu-Torrents also releases many of their custom BDs on Usenet, in alt.binaries.blu-ray. For those who prefer not to download these huge torrents, here’s a leecher’s option. (We should mention that these are ‘password protected’ files from Usenet, but the passes are available to Power Users & up at Blu-Torrents through their /nzb.php link).
(Getting to PU at Blu-Torrents isn’t difficult - 4 weeks on the tracker with a +1.0 share ratio.)
Playing BluRay ISOs on a PC Without Burning
If you don’t own a BluRay burner for the PC, there’s still the option to download the freeware program Virtual CloneDrive, to name just one. Simply mount the BluRay *.ISO image file from the torrent, and play it on the home PC using a compatible media player such as the free VideoLAN VLC or WMP. Likewise, there’s also AnyDVD HD and WinDVD 9 (both proprietary, but likely both can be found on your favorite tracker).
You may be required to install a ‘codec’ compatible with BluRay disks, such as the K-Lite codec pack (choose ‘full’), or the CCCP home media pack.
Blu-Torrents Now Open For Signups
While most would assume that a new tracker such as Blu-Torrents would be readily open to new registration, but it took some FSF coaxing to get them to open the door back up. Signups were closed just before this article - no telling how long it will last.
• Signup URL: http://blu-torrents.net/signup.php
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