Getting VLC to be a DVD and Blu-ray player!

I've been using VLC forever as a very capable media player for movies on my PC, Mac or mobile devices.  It's just brilliant.  Can't recommend it enough.

But that's not all.  It has superpowers I never expected: it is a quite capable blue-ray player in its own right, even up to 4K, if you drive and computer can handle it.

Of course, nothing free is really all that easy.

First, vlc needs a couple of files to be able to handle the encryption.  Fine, here are the instructions for that:

https://www.easefab.com/resource/play-blu-ray-with-vlc.html

Next, you need to make sure you've got the right versions of everything. Not going to be long winded here:

I'm using Windows 11 22H2, VLC 3.0.20 Vetinari, and JDK jdk-17_windows-x64_bin.exe.

I'd already installed the keys and dll to be able to read a bluray disk, and installed the jdk at D:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk-17. Adjust JAVA_HOME below if you post elsewhere.

In Explorer, right click on 'This PC', select 'Properties'.
In the search box, type 'env', select 'Edit the System Variables'.
I created three new environment variables: 
    BD_DEBUG_FILE=c:\users\<myaccount>\vlc_debug.txt
    BD_DEBUG_MASK=0x02000
    JAVA_HOME=D:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk-17

Then, I prepended the bin directory of the jdk to BOTH my personal PATH, and the system PATH:
    PATH=D:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk-17\bin;C:\<blah,blah,blah>

Terminate VLC, and start it again.

Ensure there's a Bluray disc in the drive.
From the menu select: Media->Open Disc...
Click on Blu-ray radio button
Click Play.

The Blu-ray menu should come up after a little while like it was always meant to do.  If not, you have that vlc_debug.txt file that hopefully is explaining why.

Hope that helps someone.