Xreveal 2.9.9 / 2.9.9.3 Beta

Xreveal sits in the system tray and works on whatever disc you put in the drive.

It does not copy anything by itself and it does not convert anything.

What it does is make a protected disc readable to every other program on the machine, which is why it is usually paired with something else rather than used alone.

What It Actually Does

Insert a disc and Xreveal reads it, strips the protection in memory and presents the result to Windows as an ordinary readable disc. Nothing is written to your hard drive during that step.

From there, any program can open it. That includes players, and it includes rippers such as MakeMKV or HandBrake that would otherwise refuse the disc outright.

It also removes region codes from DVD, Blu-ray and UHD, and removes the user prohibitions that stop you skipping trailers and warning screens. It can back a disc up to an ISO or a folder on its own if you do not need re-encoding.

It runs natively on x64, x86 and ARM64, and the vendor supports Windows XP through 11 - unusual reach, and genuinely useful if you keep an old machine attached to a drive.

Free Versus Pro

The split is real and it has moved over time. Several things that used to be free were reclassified as Pro in version 2.9.3.

Pro is $25 for a year or $45 for a lifetime licence, covering up to three computers. The vendor states plainly that there are no refunds, so the free tier is the trial.

Prices and the feature split were checked in August 2026 and are the vendor's own published figures. Both have changed before.

What You Need Before Any of It Works

This is where most people give up, and the reason is that Xreveal ships deliberately incomplete.

It contains no decryption keys at all. The project is built against the published AACS specification and nothing else, so you supply a key database - a keydb.cfg or keydb.db file - and point Xreveal at it in the settings.

Three more pieces matter depending on what you are opening.

• DVDs need libdvdcss. Since version 2.6.9 the DVD path depends on libdvdcss-2.dll being present, which catches people who assume DVD support is built in.
• BD+ discs need the plugins package. A separate 58 MB download supplies the third-party bd+.dll that handles BD+, and on the free tier it also needs an internet connection.
• UHD needs the right drive. Xreveal integrates with LibreDrive, so 4K playback and ripping depend on your optical drive and its firmware rather than on the software - an ordinary Blu-ray drive will not do it.

It also installs a kernel-mode driver, so the first install wants a restart before anything works.

What Changed in 2.9.9

Version 2.9.9 landed on 22 August 2026 and is a small maintenance release.

• Added an AVDP check for DVD discs and ISO files.
• Added auto-scrolling to the log window in the Content Hash Verifier.
• Added a configurable action for when a hash verification finishes.
• Improved patching of unprotected AACS discs.

A 2.9.9.3 beta followed on 25 August. If you are on the free tier, remember the beta clock is 30 days rather than 90.

Xreveal or MakeMKV?

This is the decision most people arrive with, and the honest answer is that they do different jobs.

MakeMKV decrypts and remuxes in one pass, producing an MKV file. It is the simpler tool if all you want is the film off the disc, and its DVD support is free permanently while Blu-ray stays free for as long as the beta key keeps being reissued - our guide on using MakeMKV for free covers how that works.

Xreveal is the better fit when you want the disc itself readable rather than converted. A 1:1 ISO, a folder structure that still plays like a disc with menus intact, or a protected disc opened live in a player are all things it does that MakeMKV does not.

They also coexist. Xreveal can verify the content hash of a copy MakeMKV produced, which is the usual way people check a backup completed cleanly.

The Free Extras Most People Miss

The vendor ships three separate tools that are free regardless of licence, and none of them are advertised well.

A Blu-ray playback plugin for VLC and Kodi lets VLC and Kodi play protected discs directly, which is the fastest route if watching is all you wanted.

A standalone content hash verifier and a change-iso-label utility both run on Windows, macOS and Linux, so they are useful even on machines that will never run Xreveal itself.

What to Pair It With

Once a disc is readable, the next tool depends on where the video is going.

For a smaller file, HandBrake re-encodes to H.264 or HEVC. For editing the result without re-encoding it, MKVToolNix handles track selection and remuxing losslessly.

For writing an ISO back to a blank disc, our guide on burning an ISO with ImgBurn covers it, and AnyBurn is the lighter modern alternative.

For playback of a ripped folder with menus, MPC-HC handles BDMV structures well.

Who Should Look Elsewhere

The tell is what you want at the end. If it is a video file, you are better served by a ripper than by a decrypter.

If you only ever handle DVDs, MakeMKV does that free and permanently, with no key database to source and no expiry to track.

On macOS there is no Xreveal at all, so MakeMKV for Mac is the direct answer.

If you would rather pay for something with commercial support behind it, AnyDVD and DVDFab are the long-established options.

DVDFab HD Decrypter is the free cut-down tier of the latter, and the rest of the field sits in the Media Backup section.

Quick questions

Download Xreveal 2.9.9 and see how it handles your drive, or tell us how you got on if you have used it before.