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New to AnyDVD HD - Need tips to watch BD from other regions

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I’ve recently bought some movie packs that contain region B and C Blu Rays (I’m region A in the US) and am trying to find a reliable and consistent way to be able to watch my movies. I wasn’t sure where this post should go since it isn’t an issue with the AnyDVD HD software (most likely) and at least part of the issue isn't hardware but I’m not sure what the issue is.

I would prefer to be able to watch the movies from the disc each time, so I don’t have to rip and save all the region B/C movies, but if ripping ends up being the only way to make it work consistently, that would be an acceptable solution. At the end of the day I would like something fairly straight forward so my wife and son could load up a movie and watch it without a long manual of instructions.

What I’m looking for, initially, is a recommended process and set of software to use that will let me watch a movie. Preferably that I can just insert a disc, open the software, and play the movie. I don’t mind purchasing software, where needed, but am just trying to get something working as a starting point, and can then improve it with better offerings. I’ve tried a few things with varying levels of success, and don’t know whether the issues I’ve encountered are software issues, configuration/settings issues, hardware issues, or if the issue resides between the keyboard and chair.

If I do end up needing to burn the discs in order to watch them, if there is a good format/process to compress them, that would be great. I don’t need uber quality; these are mainly just Disney/Pixar movies to watch as a family. I have 2TB to save on our NAS, but I don’t want to fill it up at 25GB per movie.

I’m running Windows 10
LG 14X Blu-Ray Burner WH14NS40 (confirmed I have the latest firmware installed)
Intel Core i3-7100 Dual-Core 3.9 GHz

I have AnyDVD HD set to ask for the Blu Ray region every time, but it only asked on the first few movies and now doesn’t ask anymore, even though the setting still says to ask every time. It’s getting the region correct so I’m not worried about this at the moment, but if there’s something I can do to make sure it asks every time again, that would be helpful. After inserting a disc, I’ve loaded up Leawoo and told it to play from the optical drive. This has been very inconsistent in results. Most of the times I’ve tried this either the disc has locked up or the playback has been stuttered / laggy. When this happens, the drive is also very loud with a regular clunking sound instead of the normal whir. This sound is not present if I am ripping a disc. After trying the same movie a few times, and letting Leawoo auto-play through all of the opening screens, I was able to get the movie to play fine once. The next several movies I tried had the same stutter issue and loud drive noise.

Trying another path, I used AnyDVD HD to rip the disk directly to an ISO. This has worked with no issues on several discs, including the ones that had issues with live playback. After reading around it sounded like VLC might be a good player to play the ISO, but this didn’t work very well. VLC was pretty clunky with the menus and occasionally locked up. I tried going back to Leawoo and it seemed to handle the ISO better, but it was still pretty laggy going through menus and skipping through previews. Once the movie was playing it seemed to do fine. So worst case, if this continues to work, we can just get the ISO ripped a half hour before we’re ready to watch a movie. Not ideal, but workable.

Any suggestions on things I can check or try so I can watch a movie directly from the drive would be great. If that doesn't work, any suggestions on what to try to get VLC or Leawoo working more smoothly on a ripped ISO would be great. And finally, if I do end up needing to rip the movies to watch them, what would be the recommended process and software to use to have a decent copy with a more compressed format so I don't need as much space to save all the movies.
 
So from what I am getting after reading all that, is you are wanting to play a region B disc in a region A BD-RW drive?

If you burn the ISO you made of the original to a blank disc or make a copy of an original disc (either 1:1 or shrunk down to fit on a smaller medium), I think you can remove the region coding and make it region free so your burned copy won't be region specific.
 
there's no such thing as a region A/B or C BD-RW drive. The player checks the disc's region code, the drive couldn't care less about it.

If you just want to play the discs on PC, all you need to do is insert the disc > activate BD region removal > set the inserted disc's region (or always ask) and anydvd will do the rest
 
@StoneyJSG Burning a new copy without region protection from the ISO is an option I hadn't considered. I'll keep that in mind depending on how the other options work out.

@Ch3vr0n I have the software set to always ask, but it does not ask. It asked the first 3-4 discs that I put in, but hasn't asked ever since then. I have checked a few times and the always ask is still selected, and I have even reinstalled and activated the license key since it stopped asking and it is still not asking. For the time being this isn't an issue, because it seems to be recognizing the region correctly. The player does not error out for the wrong region, so that seems to be fine. But even so, when I try to play directly from the disc the drive is making a loud clicking sound, and the playback is stuttered (may play for 2-3 seconds then hang for 10 seconds then play for a few seconds then hang, without ever playing smoothly). The stuttering and clicking sound are not present if I rip the disc to an ISO; I just hear the normal whir of the disc spinning.

I've verified that I have the latest firmware for the BD drive, and I don't have any similar issues when playing back a region A BD. That's why I'm not sure if it's a drive issue or a setting issue or something else.
 
@StoneyJSG Burning a new copy without region protection from the ISO is an option I hadn't considered. I'll keep that in mind depending on how the other options work out.

@Ch3vr0n I have the software set to always ask, but it does not ask. It asked the first 3-4 discs that I put in, but hasn't asked ever since then. I have checked a few times and the always ask is still selected, and I have even reinstalled and activated the license key since it stopped asking and it is still not asking. For the time being this isn't an issue, because it seems to be recognizing the region correctly. The player does not error out for the wrong region, so that seems to be fine. But even so, when I try to play directly from the disc the drive is making a loud clicking sound, and the playback is stuttered (may play for 2-3 seconds then hang for 10 seconds then play for a few seconds then hang, without ever playing smoothly). The stuttering and clicking sound are not present if I rip the disc to an ISO; I just hear the normal whir of the disc spinning.

I've verified that I have the latest firmware for the BD drive, and I don't have any similar issues when playing back a region A BD. That's why I'm not sure if it's a drive issue or a setting issue or something else.
If you have a problem, please post an AnyDVD logfile from a disc where "it doesn't ask".
 
Sorry it took so long; it's been a hectic week. I rebooted my computer so it would have a clean start. Then inserted a region B disc. I get the window saying AnyDVD is scanning the disc then a message that the disc is ready for use. I have double-checked that I have the always ask set. Attached are a logfile after inserting the region B disc that did not ask for the region, and a screen clip of the BD settings.
 

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Sorry it took so long; it's been a hectic week. I rebooted my computer so it would have a clean start. Then inserted a region B disc. I get the window saying AnyDVD is scanning the disc then a message that the disc is ready for use. I have double-checked that I have the always ask set. Attached are a logfile after inserting the region B disc that did not ask for the region, and a screen clip of the BD settings.
You have AnyDVD speedmenus enabled. AnyDVD doesn't need to know the region with speedmenus.
 
I changed that setting and it started asking for the region again, so that was all that was happening. Thanks.

I still can't play back discs from other regions directly from the drive, so I need to figure out what other option will work best for me. I think I would like to keep the movies burned on my PC so we can rewatch them without having to burn again, but I don't want to use up 40-50GB per movie. What would be a good format / software to use that would drop the filesize (maybe 5GB or less per movie) but keep reasonable quality? As I said, some quality loss is okay; these are just Disney/Pixar movies to watch with the family. Anything I wanted to keep really high quality I can keep as the full image.
 
I changed that setting and it started asking for the region again, so that was all that was happening. Thanks.
Tell AnyDVD the region of the DISC when asked, and it will work. If you used a playback software with the disc before, tell it to play from the beginning. Do NOT resume.
 
Tell AnyDVD the region of the DISC when asked, and it will work. If you used a playback software with the disc before, tell it to play from the beginning. Do NOT resume.
But it doesn't work. The playback issue precedes me changing the setting, and is still continuing after having set it back. I put in a disc, tell AnyDVD the region, and then open Leawoo to try to play the disc in the drive. The drive starts making a loud noise while reading the disc and the playback is extremely laggy.

As I said in my first post, I don't think this is a problem with AnyDVD, and is most likely an issue with my drive. The drive works fine playing region A BD discs, DVD discs, and works fine when ripping region B/C discs to image. Leawoo works fine with region A discs or playing an image that's been ripped to the harddrive. It only has problems when trying to playback a region B/C disc from the drive (and I've checked multiple movies and they all have the same issue). So it's possible there is something else going on, and if so, I would prefer to figure that out and get the playback working correctly. But assuming that I can't get it working, I'm now trying to figure out the best alternative; what compression/format would give me a smaller image.
 
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