OK, It looks like I got ahead of myself. VLC can play the codec used for Blu-Ray Disc (BD) but it cannot as of yet get past the copy protection but they are working on it. Since I do not have a BD drive, I have gotten my DB movies in ISO format and mounted them to a virtual drive. So I was wrong about BD on Windows. M$ instead passed on the financial burden of BD playback to the end user. You have to Buy a BD enabled media player.

I think your issue with PowerDVD is a version issue. If your version is 7 or earlier it will not play DB's. There are two versions currently available from CyberLink, 10 and 11. Each version comes in three flavors - Ultra, Deluxe and Standard. Unfortunately only the Ultra version plays DB's. Version 10 is $59.00 US and version 11 is $99.00 US. One more thing. It seems that PowerDVD needs an HDCP enabled monitor before it will play BDs.

There is a commercial program called AnyDVD that will "Unlock" any copyrighted disc. It is legal in the US because of a law called "The Fair Use Act" which entitles the user to make backups or convert media to an alternate form (example - ISO). This law exempts the the authors of AnyDVD (Slysoft Corp.) from lawsuits and places the burden of law on the end user. Like PowerDVD, AnyDVD is expensive. They want 63.00 EUR for a one year license.

This should interest you. It is from Slysofts website.
Quote Originally Posted by Slysoft
Legal issues

Advertising, sale, and lending of AnyDVD is outlawed in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Western Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...

(but possession and use on personally owned media is not), as it removes copy prevention from DVDs. The Heise news portal
Heinz Heise
Heinz Heise is a German publishing house. It was created in Hanover in 1949 as an address and telephone directory publisher, then later expanded to include magazines and loose leaf collections. In 2001, the company was divided into separate enterprises, all of which came under the umbrella of their...

was sued by the record industry for linking to SlySoft's website in a news report. The publisher subsequently counter sued with claims of violation of their constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the press and has as of April 2007 lost two appeal proceedings. The German Federal Constitutional Court
Federal Constitutional Court of Germany
The Federal Constitutional Court is a special court established by the Grundgesetz, the German basic law...

has decided not to rule on Heise's appeal for the time being because remedies in the ordinary courts had not been exhausted.
The legal status of AnyDVD in other countries is unclear.