Having bought MakeMKV to create MKV copies of my blu-ray videos, I also read up on a way to make the XBMC/Kodi media center play blurays directly using the libmmbd.dll library. The library acts as a middle man between the player and MakeMKV to remove encryption.

• For XBMC: copy libmmbd.dll from MakeMKV’s folder to <path-to-XBMC>\system\players\dvdplayer twice and rename them to libbdplus.dll and libaacs.dll.
• For VLC, same procedure as above, only the files are copied to VLC’s root folder instead.
• Same procedure with VLC apparently also works for Handbrake to encode MKVs without making a “backup mkv” with MakeMKV first.

There is also a libmmbd64.dll library for 64 bit applications (?). Use this instead for appropriate applications.

Sadly this doesn’t let XBMC display BR menus. Must examine further.