Question Ultra HD external player, Intel SGX frustrations ?

[SuperChuchu]

I'm trying to decide whether to keep or return an LG external Blu-ray burner that reads Ultra HD/4K Blu-rays. As of now, it looks like a return, because it's useless for the only purpose I bought it for, 4K Blu-ray playback. As every other burner, it comes with the Cyberlink suite, of which I only chose to install the player, PowerDVD. However, when I try to play a 4K Blu-ray, it tells me that it needs to install something, I click OK, and it prepares an installer, which in the end gives me this error:

https://imgur.com/a/P72QUhZ

So I go into the BIOS, and my motherboard is the Asus ROG STRIX Z790-E GAMING WIFI II, so the BIOS has options for everything you can imagine, but nothing that says SGX. So I go online, and I get more confused than before, especially when I find a page on Intel's website that takes me to a program on the Microsoft Store that supposedly enables SGX, but the button that normally says "Get" is disabled.

And then I read something somewhere that says that in Windows 11 Microsoft got rid of SGX, so it looks like this thing is useless.

Can anyone give me an educated idea on what's the deal with this SGX thing? If that's an absolute requirement to have on the motherboard, then I mine doesn't have it, because a search for SGX on the PDF manual gives me nothing.

 

[JeffreyP55]

I'm trying to decide whether to keep or return an LG external Blu-ray burner that reads Ultra HD/4K Blu-rays. As of now, it looks like a return, because it's useless for the only purpose I bought it for, 4K Blu-ray playback. As every other burner, it comes with the Cyberlink suite, of which I only chose to install the player, PowerDVD. However, when I try to play a 4K Blu-ray, it tells me that it needs to install something, I click OK, and it prepares an installer, which in the end gives me this error:

https://imgur.com/a/P72QUhZ

So I go into the BIOS, and my motherboard is the Asus ROG STRIX Z790-E GAMING WIFI II, so the BIOS has options for everything you can imagine, but nothing that says SGX. So I go online, and I get more confused than before, especially when I find a page on Intel's website that takes me to a program on the Microsoft Store that supposedly enables SGX, but the button that normally says "Get" is disabled.

And then I read something somewhere that says that in Windows 11 Microsoft got rid of SGX, so it looks like this thing is useless.

Can anyone give me an educated idea on what's the deal with this SGX thing? If that's an absolute requirement to have on the motherboard, then I mine doesn't have it, because a search for SGX on the PDF manual gives me nothing.

You won't be burning 4k blu-ray disks if that's what you are after. Zero support for 4k blu-ray except if you have the correct BIOS on certain LG and Asus Blu-ray players. 4k disks, like you have noticed are read only. If you upgrade the burner BIOS you will no longer to even read a 4k blu-ray. Buy a stand alone to avoid heartburn. Blu-ray works AOK. Good luck.

 

[thestryker]

UHD blu-ray playback requires specific Intel SGX extention support which is only available on 7th-10th Gen Core i processors. You can basically do everything but playback when you aren't using one.

The firmware situation mentioned by the above poster is a workaround which allows you to use multiple pieces of software to live decode and play back.

 

[BFG-9000]

And then I read something somewhere that says that in Windows 11 Microsoft got rid of SGX, so it looks like this thing is useless.

It's not Microsoft, Intel shut down all of the SGX verification servers last month so no Windows PCs can play Ultra HD Blu-Ray anymore even if you have a processor that supported SGX.

 

[Misgar]

You won't be burning 4k blu-ray disks if that's what you are after.

I burn 4K UHD GoPro footage as MP4 files to 25GB BD-R optical discs, but it's my own video so there's no DRM encryption. Not "proper" Blu-ray format, but it keeps things simple when archiving home movies.

it's useless for the only purpose I bought it for, 4K Blu-ray playback.

You might be able to flash your drive with LibreDrive firmware to make 4K discs readable, but ripping commercial UHD discs is illegal in many countries. Perhaps this restriction also applies to just playing back discs you've paid good money for? Not very friendly.
https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18856

If you already have your own 4K footage, FastFlix supports UHD HDR10 and HDR10+ x265 encoding.
https://www.trishtech.com/2025/05/fastflix-simplifying-video-encoding-with-a-powerful-gui/

For commercial 4K discs, I use a dedicated Panasonic 4K player connected to the big TV downstairs.

 

[JeffreyP55]

I burn 4K UHD GoPro footage as MP4 files to 25GB BD-R optical discs, but it's my own video so there's no DRM encryption. Not "proper" Blu-ray format, but it keeps things simple when archiving home movies.


You might be able to flash your drive with LibreDrive firmware to make 4K discs readable, but ripping commercial UHD discs is illegal in many countries. Perhaps this restriction also applies to just playing back discs you've paid good money for? Not very friendly.
https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18856

If you already have your own 4K footage, FastFlix supports UHD HDR10 and HDR10+ x265 encoding.
https://www.trishtech.com/2025/05/fastflix-simplifying-video-encoding-with-a-powerful-gui/

For commercial 4K discs, I use a dedicated Panasonic 4K player connected to the big TV downstairs.

We are talking commercial disks I believe not somebody's 4k home video which works fine.