With the Aurora Player on BDJ went to do a quick test, & at the same time ran through a few other players for comparison.
The Aurora Blu-Ray Player & the recent GOTD Aiseesoft Blu-Ray player seem for the most part identical, & though the Aurora version has a few more options, including some undocumented tests included in the menus, the Aiseesoft player seemed more polished & had a subjectively better display. Both played the movie on a disc with DRM fine, allowed you to choose different titles, audio, & sub tracks, but neither would play the Blu-Ray menus. Note that in a great many cases title selection is useless -- you're not going to try 100 or so titles hoping to find the one you want. Both players have a decent full-screen view with disappearing controls.
The basic version of PowerDVD that came with my Blu-Ray burner wouldn't play the disc at all -- it couldn't handle the DRM. Cineplayer [no longer sold by Roxio] & Nero 12's Blu-Ray Player worked just like they were supposed to, though Cineplayer like PowerDVD switches the display to basic [turns off Aero] when playing HD. Display was subjectively the best overall, & these players handled everything the disc had to offer, meaning not only menus & special features, but a seemingly endless stream of trailers & promos before you got to the main movie menu. Note that a design weakness of Blu-Ray means you can't just mouse over menu items but have to use roughly simulated remotes -- both Cineplayer & Nero are a bit weak here, since you have to turn the remote display on/off, in Cineplayer to access the Next button, in Nero to get it off screen & out of the way of the movie.
Some people have mentioned VLC as a solution... As expected VLC would not play the disc due to DRM. Pointing VLC to a folder with the same files/folders you'd find on a Blu-Ray disc fared only a little better -- I had to point it to the folder holding the actual video streams, & then VLC had no idea which title to play, so it started with # 1... not much good if the title with the movie is 800, nor is it useful if several titles make up the movie. VLC is also a bit of a PITA to get to a good full-screen view, & won't go to a smaller Windowed mode unless you manually resize it each time you play a movie. In fairness if you make a non-DRM copy or were running AnyDVD HD to remove DRM on the fly, VLC might work OK with a disc.
MPC Home Cinema is a very popular player, allowing you to use Direct Show filters to improve playback & display. Like VLC it couldn't do anything with the disc because of DRM, but it can tell which title in a Blu-Ray folder on your HDD to play, & getting to a full-screen view & back is much nicer than with VLC.
Summary: the Aurora & Aiseesoft players do work, & I can understand them having to price the players as they do -- maintaining servers with directions on bypassing constantly changing DRM has costs. OTOH the Nero Blu-Ray player doesn't bypass anything, letting you play everything on the disc as intended, & again today I got an offer for Nero 12 Platinum bundled with 4 other apps for $39 -- nothing was mentioned about upgrades [I'd post the link but it includes my email address]. I've also seen Nero fairly often for $0 after MIR. Considering all you get with Nero or Nero Platinum, I can't justify recommending that anyone pay $50 for Aurora's Player.
