My father passed away without ever completing his project of ripping his nearly 3,000 movies to a server he bought. Going to be attempting to complete that project this year. I am going to come back to this video soon for reference!
And that's why streaming services are popular: sooner or later people get to the age where they realize they won't live forever. Some even don't. Watch them with a player or read books, my advice.
I swear, for some reason this is the only video that was understandable and showed the steps for flashing without only saying "Go read the page and try to decipher it yourself". Amazing content and thanks!
I ordered the LG drive you tested in the video from Amazon and was able to flash the firmware without issue, so as of 1/3/2024 it seems to still be a good buy. I'm making my first backup as I type this comment. Appreciate the guide!
the #1 reason to keep your own copy... you can watch it 20 years from now... 30 years from now... even 70 years from now if the disk lasts that long... no-one else controls WHEN I want to watch something if I have purchased it... Also, disks are a pain in the... Plex makes life so much easier... I buy my box sets, rip them, and watch them in pure convenience...
I bought the LG version and it worked without issue. Didn’t need an enclosure. Popped it in my pc and it’s ripping as we speak. Firmware worked like a charm and this drive is much faster than my old pioneer Blu-ray drive. Thanks!
wow good thing I haven't updated my drive. I bought one maybe like 2-3 years ago and I've never bothered to update it because I was worried something like this might be patched. I just did Deadpool & Wolverine on it and it came out great.
Great as far as the ripping tutorial. Please though, you do NOT need to blow $60 on a fancy drive enclosure, unless you really care about it looking "pretty". Just use a decent 12V POWERED SATA to USB adapter. ($16-$25 or so). Been using these for years and they work fine, and if you really need it to look "pretty"- build yourself a box around it or mount it under a desk.
Thanks for watching! Yep those adapters should work just as well and they are mentioned as compatible in the MakeMKV thread. For us the utility of having it all in one compact box without much effort was nice but it's definitely a little overkill if you just want to get your movies ripped.
The enclosures effectively protect a fragile device. It is overpriced, but for long-term use something like this is probably a good idea, besides being the more elegant solution.
Came to say the same thing! I used the same drive with a SATA to USB3 powered adapter cable. I picked the cable up off Amazon for 15 bucks with power supply.
After-publishing Notes & FAQ; - The parts for this project totaled $114 USD. $55 for the drive itself + $59 for the USB enclosure. Once the drive is installed in the USB enclosure, it is essentially a USB external drive that can be hooked up to any kind of laptop/computer. You do NOT need a desktop computer to follow this guide. - If the All You Need Firmware Pack you download looks different from the one shown in this video, try this version: drive.google.com/u/0/uc?id=1HRnbXiM8TkwcAcvqYFR31bbJsEZ0FCdM&export=download there seem to be two versions of it which have some of the same contents organized differently. We're not sure why this is the case.
I did NOT follow the directions the first time around! After re-watching this video a second time, I found that I failed in choosing the right flasher file for my drive. Once I corrected my mistake, the rest was cake and I'm my way to 4K UHD ripping heaven! Thanks for this video!
I had an LG WH16NS40 from a while back that I've been using. I bought another one today just as a backup unit for the future. No problems downgrading the firmware. No need whatsoever for a screwdriver.
Its nice to see consumer rights to make a backup for our own use hasn't been completely squashed by the big corporations (not for lack of them trying tho.). Thanks for sharing.
@@The_Ballo curious comment. You assume if it's a right, no one would ever try to infringe upon it. Nor would companies ever lobby politicians for laws infringing on our rights.
I keep my old media collection its massive, I do it for all the reasons you mentioned in quality but also to avoid detection (they do periodically remove shows and movies) but also to avoid editing to meet current tastes. there are people who try and ban episodes for truly stupid reasons. its been happening for years but its not always easy to catch minor changes
I have one of those OWC enclosures. It actually performs better for me with my Blu-ray drive vs. connecting it directly to my motherboard via SATA. It seeks faster and doesn't hang when playing Blu-rays. The drive I have is an LG BH16NS55.
I have one too with an older WH16SN40 drive that can't be flashed to rip 4k (MT1939). I've had the drive for over 10 years and the enclosure for about 3ish. Never had any issues with either one. Really is a very nice enclosure.
I use to back DVDS in the early 2000s. Basically a freeware version of decrypted. Now for me it not a top priority due to my Strokes. I like keeping up with how it's becoming more complicated with more procedures. Basically ripping disc's for a copy and backup and quality. Now with 4k quality and the ability to play all your library has become a real option I never had at that time. Glad to see it's evolving to be able to use the disc's instead of gathering dust. You condensed everything to make it understandable. Thanks 😊
Just got my drive after watching the video, My drive was manufactured Sep 2022 Rom 1.05 and it worked great with the flash. Thanks for posting video cause I really didn't want to spend 200-300 on one already flashed. Great Video
followed your instructions to include buying the LG drive and it works like a charm. Tenet 4k gave me trouble but after dloading java script, it was able to rip and back up to my server. thanks again
Followed your previous tutorial and lucked out with a good version of the pioneer drive. The quality is excellent and puts streaming to shame. Love having Dolby Vision 4k titles with 7.1 atmos in Plex.
Still works Dec. 17, 2024. I did get an error when I flashed the firmware, but Make MKV shows it is patched as it ought to be. [Mission Failed Successfully] I will try to update if there are any other issues to report. No update from me should be good news. It is also worth noting that I bought my drive in 2023 around the time this video was originally updated, but I just now unboxed and flashed the firmware. Mine is connected internally to a Desktop PC, so I did not need the extra enclosure.
For years Ive wanted to do this...convert my collection to digital. But it was one of those things you'd start trying to figure out and just hit a bunch of dead ends or people trying to sell you software that may or may not work. Plus Im super ADD, if it seems annoying i just move on til i think about it again. Anyways, my eyes lit up when I saw the LG optical drive. I rushed to check my Amazon order history, not there...WAIT, Newegg! Logged in, check order history and voilà...it was the exact same drive I purchased in 2013 for the first PC I ever built. DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I ALMOST THREW THAT THING AWAY??? My wife may have won the battle over the 4 bags of RCA and VGA cables, but today I emerge victorious, justified, and vindicated. This is for all my fellow technology hoarders out there. So what if its a proprietary cable extension to a mouse from 2009? Deep down you just know you'll need that someday. Stay strong 💪
I have a couple of WH16NS40 drives installed on my Linux Debian workstation at home. The tools to flash the drives are the same but with CLI commands which are easy to follow. I can tell you is to be careful of flashing the boot portion on the drive as I bricked mine. I had to order another one. Plex is awesome playing the MKV files but a tip in the filename. Put in the movie's release year i.e. (2023) as part of the filename so Plex can sort out the duplicates based on year.
OK I jumped too late and the LG WH14NS40 Internal SATA Blu-ray Drive is now out of stock on Amazon. No doubt it will be replaced by another drive that cannot rip 4K. Fabulous guide. Thanks very much.
@@JeffreyFrye I'm in UK and WAS in my basket but I let it slide. Was OK less than a week ago too which pisses me off. Prices on ebay are through the roof, naturally evn if in stock.
My old asus internal bluray player have a custom firmware that still works fine, today I've tried to rip a 4k harry Potter movie with makemkv and it works without any problem, 84gb with all subtitles removed and only English sound, the asus burner is more then 5 years old.
I bought a LG slim ultra HD drive about a year ago I was so excited to see they had my firmware I flashed it and it's working flawlessly great tutorial🎉
I would recommend against renaming Audio and Subtitle tracks as virtually every single alternative to Plex and handles reading of this data properly and for all of us keeping multiple audio tracks those names are necessary.
Thank you so much for this video! I got the exact same drive and it works great! Though, the "All You Need Firmware Pack" has been updated and has included a file for the WH14NS40, but when i tried to use that, "Command produced error 0x82052603" popped up. I then tried the firmware for WH16NS60 (DE_LG_WH16NS60_1.02_MK.bin) and then the firmware flashed just fine. Weird that they'd include specific firmwares for different LG drives that don't work But again, it works great and I can finally backup my blurays, thank you!
@@TwoGuyzTech brother, after flashing LG drive, can we play all region 4K ultra HD bluray disc? it is support dolby vision or HDR 10 ? can we connect and play on zidoo z9x pro? Thanx if you can explain 😎
I got really lucky. I saw this video after I had already bought a Blu Ray drive for about 100€. The store was clearing out old stock and the firmware on the drive was 3 years old. So LibreDirve just worked out of the box.
Thanks so much for this guide! It was incredibly easy to understand. I just bought the drive/enclosure with your affiliate links on Amazon. I'll be coming back to this video when they arrive. Hope you earned some money this Black Friday! =)
OMG, I've avoided flashing my drive due to how complicated the forums made it sound, this simplified the process in only few steps and it WORKED for my slim LG drive. Thanks for the video tutorial.
I bought that Pioneer drive and it's the best drive I own. I have a couple LG drives and while they are faster than the pioneer drive, if the LG drives can't rip it, unless the disc is damaged or defective, the pioneer drive always works. Sadly defective discs has been more of an issue as of late. My first 300+ discs ripped without issue in one drive or another. In the last 100 discs I've ripped probably 10 of them had to be replaced.
Very clear video but I would like to share my experience with this drive. I have absolutely no problem creating back ups of BluRay discs but this drive has failed every single time I tried a 4K BluRay disc. I will update the comment if anything changes.
Great guide! I didnt know where to start but this video was exactly what I was looking for. Also I was able to flash the relatively new Asus BW-16D1X-U thanks to the timely posts on the MKV forums and this very helpful tutorial. 🔥
Good job. I've discovered very recently that you can't (reliably) play an "uncompressed" UHD that has a bitrate above 80Mpbs to a Roku Ultimate running a Plex client because it has only a 10/100 Ethernet port and, well, above 80 sustained is a lot to ask of the hardware. This has proven true with two titles. Handbrake or FFMPEG using CPU only can take days to do very high quality compression. I have to experiment with Nvidia hardware compression. I'm told it can't compress nearly so well as HandBrake -- resulting file sizes are much larger and the image quality is also degraded more. But I don't know yet how much it will matter to me.
An alternative to your Roku/Plex approach is a Media File Player such as those offered by Zidoo and Dune. I've yet to have a problem with full bitrate UHD rips to .mkv files. Currently I'm using a Zidoo Z9x, playing files from a Synology NAS
My own observation: I inserted a blu-ray disk in at the start to test the new installed drive then forgot to remove the disk so it messed up this entire process. Removed and it's done. Thanks for your help!
Grreat video. Showed exactly what to do. I bought one of the LG drives from amazon. Worked great. But Just in case I kept my old (very) BD drive which still works. Thanks a bunch.
I turned my Raspberry Pi4B into a NAS with an 18TB external USB HDD. I built the Samba share on a larger computer, but the Pi4B serves the share without performance issues.
Just in case anyone else was in the same predicament I was in: if you have an LG BH16NS40 drive, you can use the LG WH16NS60 1.02 firmware and it'll work.
You mention at 5:13 that MakeMKV is available for macOS. Does that mean I can complete these steps on my MacBook Pro without needing access to Windows?
Thanks for watching! Aside from the process of flashing your drive, yes you should be able to do all of these steps on a Mac. At the moment we're only aware of a Windows tool for flashing the drive though, so if you have an Intel Mac you might need to install Windows via Bootcamp to get that part done. Hope this helps.
Great tutorial, thanks! One reason I still buy movies on disc is the commentary tracks, which of huge value to movie buffs like myself. I use Prime, Apple and Criterion Channel, and also got frustrated when my favorite movies and TV shows either got locked to rental or completely disappeared from the catalogue altogether. I don't feel that I own the full product with those services.
1 BIG UPDATE. If you get this drive or the 16NS40, YOU HAVE to patch it with the 16NS60.bin file ONLY!!! The other ones wont work even if it matches your drive number. This is listed on the MAKE MKV flashing guide as well. Thanks for the video on this!!!
I bought an LG Blu-Ray drive that is compatible with MakeMKV, then bought another as a spare. Because I am insane. And I will not watch compressed streams when I want to see a movie. I want the full quality on the physical media that I paid for. I also will not eat the bugs, or live in the pod.
I just got started with the ASUS BW-16D1HT drive and am ripping my first disc as we speak (LOTR Fellowship of course). This guide was extremely helpful and if all goes well I’ll comment again letting you know how long it took. My hardware is a Ryzen 3600 cpu and it’s writing to a Seagate Exos x20 20TB HDD.
Happy to report back that this is going just great. I learned that once you rip the disc into mkv format, it needs to be converted to MP4 before Plex can use it, but besides that this is working excellent. The Lord of the Rings theatrical movies took about 90 minutes apiece and most movies take an hour. Couldn’t have done it without your help. Thank you.
@@kevinwiley5325 Whether or not you need to convert from MKV to MP4 is situational and not always required. I have a Synology NAS and all of my media is still in MKV format. It works just fine when streaming all of my standard Blu-Ray and DVD content to a Roku 4K from 2018, an Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K from 2018, and my Xbox Series X, but I haven't got into 4K media yet so I don't know about that. I'm just letting you as well as others know that some Plex combinations (servers and clients) can handle MKV formats without any issues. At least when it comes to 1080P and 720P content on a home network. I hope this information is helpful.
Depends on what streaming client you are using, for ex. I use my nvidia shield pro and it plays mkv files just fine. But Apple TV may need mp4 as you mentioned.
Thanks for the updated video! I saw the previous one and was pretty close to going that route until I saw this one. I got the LG one in this video from amazon and it interestingly already had the 1.02 firmware.
I have a LG WH16NS40 with MT1959 platform and SDFtool Flasher 1.3.5 says I don't have correct platform (MT1959) cannot be flashed. There is even firmware that matches my drive. There is a red X next to MT1959 on mine but you have the same platform and it's green. Something weird is going on. I tried both USB and direct SATA connection. I have currently 1.02 loaded on the drive that came with it.
Man, I got really lucky with my pioneer uhd reader. I got the last batch with the firmware that works. Saw reports on the forum that readers produced the same month as mine no longer worked.
Ah, just as I decided to delve into 4K discs for my Plex server a couple weeks back! I had an earlier version of the drive you selected as I started ripping Blu-Ray back in early 2015, but this version was not compatible with the necessary flashed firmware, so I ended up with the same drive you have. I fully recommend it, and even the earlier version was flawless with standard Blu Ray.
yeah, i've been procrastinating on finding instructions on how to rip 4K discs as last i checked you usually had to get drives from people with collections of drives to sell. thankfully the one i've had for 4 years seems to work with this ezpz guide 💚 AND just tested within the last 30 mins that i could still dump my PS3 games 🥳
Great video! still worked like a charm in 2024. I bought the LG WH16NS40, but not the Mercury Pro. Instead I bough a new PC case (Fractal Design Pop Silent) that could house a dvd bay. It was time to clean my PC anyway and I like rebuilding my PC. This PC case was way cheaper than the Mercury Pro in the Netherlands. Currently downloading my first 4K blu-ray! Next up, need to find out how to get a plex server going.
Thanks. Previously my bluray drive used to work. Mine is lg wh14ns40. But nowadays I always get ripping errors. I will try again today and will see how it goes
Thanks for watching! Hope you can get that working. If you have the drive installed in a PC then it might be worth making sure that your SATA cable is in good shape - we haven't experienced any read errors after ripping a few dozen 4K and 1080p Blu-ray discs. Hope this helps!
Great video! Makes the complex seem very simple ... but, like others in the comments, I can not get SDF Tool to flash my LG WH16NS40 with firmware v. 1.05. Still get the command errors everyone else is getting. Tried both versions of SDF and all the .bin files I could. Using Windows 11, which might make a dif
I have the same drive and I had to use the firmware that has a "MK" at the end of it.. 'WH16NS60 1.02MK' I think it only works with mkv software, but that's what I use, and it's the only firmware I could get to work and flash properly without that command error. I know it says '60' and not '40' in the name, but it works.
Great tutorial! I built a TrueNAS Core system and started ripping my physical media for playback with Plex a few years ago. It has been a great project; fun, easy to set up, and ready access to media all around the house. Your external drive set up looks really good. I may have to upgrade. 😊 Thanks for sharing.
Quick update. The LG optical drive has officially failed. I’ve been testing with a single 4K UHD Blu-ray disk since I received the drive. MakeMKV started throwing hashread errors last night, and as of this morning, read speeds reduce down to .2x while attempting to create the mkv file. This was not the case up until yesterday. Will return and order a replacement. Hoping this is not a common theme with the drive.
@@dave-xe6pc Hey there, hopefully you can send it back and get a replacement. That's really odd, we've been using ours constantly since we got it and haven't had any errors. Thankfully we haven't gotten any other reports of issues yet but if more people do start experiencing physical failure of the drive then we'll be sure to note it in the pinned comment.
@@TwoGuyzTech This is a direct quote from one of the pre-flashed seller's page on the makemkv forum: "I do not and will not sell desktop LG or ASUS drives 25% of them like the Asus BW-16D1HT or LG WH16NS60 are defective and will get read errors on UHD discs". The read errors are common if their statement is accurate. FYI, still waiting for my replacement drive to ship. Hoping it will not be part of the 25%.
Great video very informative. Do you have a lan connecting your NAS to whatever you are watching on? I assume watching it through wifi over the network would bog everything down
Thanks for watching! Yes we do usually stream our Blu-ray rips over LAN/Ethernet. But we also have a pretty capable router, so we don't usually notice any problems streaming over Wi-Fi unless the device is really far away from the router. Hope this helps!
How is 4K UHD Blu-ray playback with these drives? I heard they need to use Intel's SGX CPU instruction to enable playback, but it has since been removed from and no longer supported on their newer CPUs due to repeated security vulnerabilities caused by the instruction. Are there any workarounds the can get playback working on AMD CPUs and Intel CPU again or is the firmware flashing taking care of all of that? There's no clear information discerning the difference (if there is one) between reading/detecting the content on a 4K UHD disc and playing back the content on a 4K UHD disc.
Thanks for watching! Ripping the disc is going to be your best bet. We have chose not to mess with playback since it's always really hard to get working just right, and there is no difference between the quality of a rip and the quality of direct playback (unless you choose to compress the rip afterwards of course, which is a manual and deliberate process). Hope this helps :)
@@TwoGuyzTech Thanks for the response, I can't seem to get an answer anywhere else. I wanted to stick a UHD compatible drive in my HTPC and start acquiring 4K Blu-ray movies, but the issue with the drives needing the Intel SGX instruction enabled to have 4K playback with no problems is a monkey wrench in the gears, especially since my HTPC is an AMD APU system and doesn't use SGX or have an equivalent feature AFAIK.
@@yourma-uh5um Yep, unfortunately that's the conclusion we've pretty much settled on as well. I use an AMD Ryzen system for most of my work and haven't had any luck getting 4K playback working. I suppose you could invest in older supported Intel hardware but that might be an extra unnecessary expense that I wouldn't blame you for not wanting to go through! Sorry we couldn't be of more help here. :/
@@TwoGuyzTech I have an Intel dual core Kaby Lake and mini-ITX board lying around, but it's a lot of hassle to replace the current HTPC with a lesser system just to have 4K playback. Not to mention the system may be upgraded at some point in the future which would mean the loss of 4K playback so it's probably a lot less hassle just to settle for a regular 4K Blu-ray player. DRM is fucking bullshit, it's supposed to prevent piracy yet all it does it make it the preferred option.
Have you done any guides for HD DVD backups? If not it could be very interesting since so many people still have the disc's and so few programs support playing them. Last I knew not even vlc would play the disc's just ripped files.
Thanks for watching, we've never tested this since we're not sure where you would get a compatible drive, though some users online have reported success while using an older version of MakeMKV. Once you have a compatible drive and software, the process should be similar, but again we've never tried it ourselves. Hope this helps!
The trick with HD-DVD is to look at the years things were released, then go and grab the usual named software of those years and get the old versions off sites like old-versions etc. Most big software of the era handled HD-DVD before the format was abandoned.
Bought this same drive a month and a half ago, it's already starting to fail. Really unfortunate, outside of the failure everything was working well. Thankfully I dumped the firmware before writing the custom one, so I plan on reverting that before putting a warranty claim on it.
Thanks for your info and advice. Bought an external slim drive (LG BP50NB40 SVC:NB52) patched the firmware and ripped my first Bluray movie. So happy it worked. Now just 1000 more movies to rip. 😃
Have you run into any issues with the slim over the one in the video? Any buyers remorse? I'm currently torn between the 2. The slim one would be ideal since it takes up less space, but at the same time I don't want to get a worse product when they're both the same price😅
I have an LG WH16NS40 downgraded the firmware to 1.03 (which doesnt have the sleep bug) in an Vantec NST-536S3-BK NexStar DX USB 3.0 External Enclosure and this thing works like a dream and so much cheaper than other externals too. After that if I need to tweak some things around I use MKVToolNix 1:1 copy. Or if I need to encode them to 10Bit HEVC with AC3 audio I use RipBot in CQ mode with the file size is about 2-4GB. Sadly, it's no longer being updated but it still works great and the quality and speed is the awesome.
Great video thanks! It would be interesting to learn how to make a server with a collection of films, so that in any part of the house you can simply insert a lan wire into your computer or laptop and view your collection of films
I started getting into it and it’s great. But, due to my current internet plan that has only 10mbps of upload speed, watching my content outside of my local network can be a bit laggy.
I turned my Raspberry Pi4B into a NAS with an 18TB external USB HDD. I built the Samba share on a larger computer, but the Pi4B serves the share without performance issues.
I picked up the LG Electronics WH14NS40 with the OWC Mercury Pro 5.25" Optical Drive External Enclosure and a Western Digital 4TB My Cloud Home Personal Cloud Storage - WDBVXC0040HWT-NESN. I flashed the drive with the steps in the video with no issues.
When trying to rip my first 4k Movie it has ran for over 3.5 hours and I only have 3GB of the 31GB about 9.6% completed. What would be normal for a 4k rip?
I found in the log a No Java Found error with pages and pages of read errors. I installed Java and restarted Make MKV it’s now working with no issues. I have ran 15 disks with no issues.
Built my first pc a few months ago with this being something on my mind as wanting to do. got my asus drive at the weekend and now i got some free time i flashed the drive and am this very second ripping my first 4k. looking forward in a few months time to getting some sweet 4k monitors so i can take advantage of this, thanks
I didn't realize that my old-ish LG BD drive was capable of this. Since I have a new LG 42" C3 monitor for my computer, I was motivated to try your advice. *It worked perfectly!* I had to run to Walmart to buy a 4K disc to try it out, and I'm now transferring the disc to my server with Make MKV. *Thanks!*
Thanks for watching! The drive does not necessarily have to be marked/sold as a 4K compatible or UHD friendly drive in order to be able to rip Blu-rays. In some cases this is just on a model by model basis, which is why it's crucial to read the MakeMKV forum thread to find a current compatible drive. Hope this helps!
If you are ripping 4k Blu-ray discs you specifically need a 4k Blu-ray drive that works with MakeMKV. Otherwise, the drive will not have a compatible laser head to read the smaller pits on a 4k Blu-ray disc. That same drive will also read regular Blu-rays and DVD's.
Thank you for such a comprehensive guide. I just want to make 1:1 physical copies of each movie in my collection for backup purposes. What software would you recommend for the job? thanks!
Good refresher for me as my system has been down for 2 years. I flashed my LG firmware long ago and had no trouble ripping 4k’s for use in my NAS. So I was most interested in making the backup file you mentioned. When inserting a Blu-ray for ripping I decided to try the back-up but my yellow file icon on MakeMKV is greyed out and not usable. I’m right now testing the next icon over which seems to do a backup also. Wondering why the yellow file folder button is grayed out??
Just ordered and received the same stuff he is using, they came in today. Flashed the drive without any issues took 2 minutes and already copied a few different movies over to test and works perfectly.
7:29 - the firmware pack has changed a little (I found the files in an "Internal Desktop Drives" directory), but while I was going through your video, I noticed something: You have the WH14NS40, per your screen, but you are flashing the WH16NS40 firmware. Would that cause any issues?
My father passed away without ever completing his project of ripping his nearly 3,000 movies to a server he bought. Going to be attempting to complete that project this year. I am going to come back to this video soon for reference!
Thank you for watching and I wish you all the best in seeing it through. We hope the video is helpful for you!
Cool way to make your father proud! Good luck on your project🎉
And that's why streaming services are popular: sooner or later people get to the age where they realize they won't live forever. Some even don't. Watch them with a player or read books, my advice.
I so admire that. This is my hobby for thr last 20 years as well. It was always my dream.
You can do this without any physical alteration. Do your homework for sure.
I swear, for some reason this is the only video that was understandable and showed the steps for flashing without only saying "Go read the page and try to decipher it yourself". Amazing content and thanks!
Glad I could help! Thanks for watching & for taking the time to comment :)
@@TwoGuyzTech my drive says libredrive enabled for pioneer bdxl drive but it cant read 4k discs
I ordered the LG drive you tested in the video from Amazon and was able to flash the firmware without issue, so as of 1/3/2024 it seems to still be a good buy. I'm making my first backup as I type this comment. Appreciate the guide!
Get a spare. The LG is great but they don't last.
Cheers, glad to see people giving updates like this without having to scour the forum
Does this drive work with Dolby Vision/Atmos and 4K UHD Discs?
The discription is unclear.
the #1 reason to keep your own copy... you can watch it 20 years from now... 30 years from now... even 70 years from now if the disk lasts that long... no-one else controls WHEN I want to watch something if I have purchased it... Also, disks are a pain in the... Plex makes life so much easier... I buy my box sets, rip them, and watch them in pure convenience...
I got lucky that out of every 4K drive I could have bought, I bought that pioneer drive before the patch. It’s the best thing ever!
The LGs work fine, for a while. If you use a lot of 4K content, the drive will eventually die because I don't think it's well made.
I bought the LG version and it worked without issue. Didn’t need an enclosure. Popped it in my pc and it’s ripping as we speak. Firmware worked like a charm and this drive is much faster than my old pioneer Blu-ray drive.
Thanks!
Steve be advised I have killed 2 LG's in a year so don't be surprised if one day the drive starts clicking. I have a spare ready to go just in case.
wow good thing I haven't updated my drive. I bought one maybe like 2-3 years ago and I've never bothered to update it because I was worried something like this might be patched. I just did Deadpool & Wolverine on it and it came out great.
@@patrickdrabblewhy? Due to all the ripping? I rarely use it. Once I a while I’ll rip something.
Great as far as the ripping tutorial. Please though, you do NOT need to blow $60 on a fancy drive enclosure, unless you really care about it looking "pretty". Just use a decent 12V POWERED SATA to USB adapter. ($16-$25 or so). Been using these for years and they work fine, and if you really need it to look "pretty"- build yourself a box around it or mount it under a desk.
Thanks for watching! Yep those adapters should work just as well and they are mentioned as compatible in the MakeMKV thread. For us the utility of having it all in one compact box without much effort was nice but it's definitely a little overkill if you just want to get your movies ripped.
The enclosure is overpriced, but it is a plug and play solution.
Do you have a link for it? Or for one that plugs into usb c?
The enclosures effectively protect a fragile device. It is overpriced, but for long-term use something like this is probably a good idea, besides being the more elegant solution.
Came to say the same thing! I used the same drive with a SATA to USB3 powered adapter cable. I picked the cable up off Amazon for 15 bucks with power supply.
After-publishing Notes & FAQ;
- The parts for this project totaled $114 USD. $55 for the drive itself + $59 for the USB enclosure. Once the drive is installed in the USB enclosure, it is essentially a USB external drive that can be hooked up to any kind of laptop/computer. You do NOT need a desktop computer to follow this guide.
- If the All You Need Firmware Pack you download looks different from the one shown in this video, try this version: drive.google.com/u/0/uc?id=1HRnbXiM8TkwcAcvqYFR31bbJsEZ0FCdM&export=download there seem to be two versions of it which have some of the same contents organized differently. We're not sure why this is the case.
Might want to pin your comment to the top of the vid.
I did NOT follow the directions the first time around! After re-watching this video a second time, I found that I failed in choosing the right flasher file for my drive. Once I corrected my mistake, the rest was cake and I'm my way to 4K UHD ripping heaven! Thanks for this video!
I had an LG WH16NS40 from a while back that I've been using.
I bought another one today just as a backup unit for the future. No problems downgrading the firmware.
No need whatsoever for a screwdriver.
Its nice to see consumer rights to make a backup for our own use hasn't been completely squashed by the big corporations (not for lack of them trying tho.).
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for watching! :)
Unfortunately theres no law protecting consumer backups other than recordings
Curious comment. If you had a right to do it, there would be no impediment.
@@The_Ballo curious comment. You assume if it's a right, no one would ever try to infringe upon it. Nor would companies ever lobby politicians for laws infringing on our rights.
@@goldenheartOh The OP is clearly making a distinction between the de jure recognition of a right versus the de facto ability to do something.
I keep my old media collection its massive, I do it for all the reasons you mentioned in quality but also to avoid detection (they do periodically remove shows and movies) but also to avoid editing to meet current tastes. there are people who try and ban episodes for truly stupid reasons. its been happening for years but its not always easy to catch minor changes
Where was this video when I figured all this bullshit out 6 months ago? Glad somebody made a really easy to follow guide finally.
I have one of those OWC enclosures. It actually performs better for me with my Blu-ray drive vs. connecting it directly to my motherboard via SATA. It seeks faster and doesn't hang when playing Blu-rays. The drive I have is an LG BH16NS55.
I have one too with an older WH16SN40 drive that can't be flashed to rip 4k (MT1939). I've had the drive for over 10 years and the enclosure for about 3ish. Never had any issues with either one. Really is a very nice enclosure.
Good info, thanks
I also received a BH drive, did you end up flashing it? Or did you not have to?
@@VELI-Productions No, it didn't require flashing.
I use to back DVDS in the early 2000s. Basically a freeware version of decrypted. Now for me it not a top priority due to my Strokes. I like keeping up with how it's becoming more complicated with more procedures. Basically ripping disc's for a copy and backup and quality. Now with 4k quality and the ability to play all your library has become a real option I never had at that time. Glad to see it's evolving to be able to use the disc's instead of gathering dust. You condensed everything to make it understandable. Thanks 😊
It worked for me on my first try yesterday after I got an ASUS BW-16D1HT Drive in the mail Wednesday!!! You are the best!!!
Just got my drive after watching the video, My drive was manufactured Sep 2022 Rom 1.05 and it worked great with the flash. Thanks for posting video cause I really didn't want to spend 200-300 on one already flashed. Great Video
Glad I could help! Thanks for watching :)
followed your instructions to include buying the LG drive and it works like a charm. Tenet 4k gave me trouble but after dloading java script, it was able to rip and back up to my server. thanks again
It makes sense to rip a use copy of your media. If your a collector it limits the wear and tear that can occure to the original.
Followed your previous tutorial and lucked out with a good version of the pioneer drive. The quality is excellent and puts streaming to shame. Love having Dolby Vision 4k titles with 7.1 atmos in Plex.
Still works Dec. 17, 2024. I did get an error when I flashed the firmware, but Make MKV shows it is patched as it ought to be. [Mission Failed Successfully] I will try to update if there are any other issues to report. No update from me should be good news. It is also worth noting that I bought my drive in 2023 around the time this video was originally updated, but I just now unboxed and flashed the firmware. Mine is connected internally to a Desktop PC, so I did not need the extra enclosure.
Glad to hear it's still working, and thanks for the update!
For years Ive wanted to do this...convert my collection to digital. But it was one of those things you'd start trying to figure out and just hit a bunch of dead ends or people trying to sell you software that may or may not work. Plus Im super ADD, if it seems annoying i just move on til i think about it again. Anyways, my eyes lit up when I saw the LG optical drive. I rushed to check my Amazon order history, not there...WAIT, Newegg! Logged in, check order history and voilà...it was the exact same drive I purchased in 2013 for the first PC I ever built. DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I ALMOST THREW THAT THING AWAY??? My wife may have won the battle over the 4 bags of RCA and VGA cables, but today I emerge victorious, justified, and vindicated. This is for all my fellow technology hoarders out there. So what if its a proprietary cable extension to a mouse from 2009? Deep down you just know you'll need that someday. Stay strong 💪
I have a couple of WH16NS40 drives installed on my Linux Debian workstation at home. The tools to flash the drives are the same but with CLI commands which are easy to follow. I can tell you is to be careful of flashing the boot portion on the drive as I bricked mine. I had to order another one.
Plex is awesome playing the MKV files but a tip in the filename. Put in the movie's release year i.e. (2023) as part of the filename so Plex can sort out the duplicates based on year.
Helpful does not begin to describe this video!!!
Thanks so much for the great and simple explanation!
Hey no problem! Glad you found it helpful, and thanks for watching :)
For the savvy people with bluray collections and kids, this is a godsent.
The route I took: Purchased a Asus Powerful Blu-ray Drive BW-16D1X-U external blu-ray drive from Amazon. Flashed it to the LG WH16NS60.
OK I jumped too late and the LG WH14NS40 Internal SATA Blu-ray Drive is now out of stock on Amazon. No doubt it will be replaced by another drive that cannot rip 4K. Fabulous guide. Thanks very much.
Same here, looks like according to Keepa, it's been in stock every few days so might not be too late
@@JeffreyFrye I'm in UK and WAS in my basket but I let it slide. Was OK less than a week ago too which pisses me off. Prices on ebay are through the roof, naturally evn if in stock.
According to the MakeMKV post, the WH16NS60, WH16NS40 and BH16NS55 models should work too, and they only cost a few bucks more
@@theburner4522 Managed to snag an LG WH14NS40 from Amazon UK shipping from Amazon US.Hope it's the right one, fingers crossed.
Bit the bullet and grabbed an LG drive and flashed it following your procedures.
Easy, and works like a champ.
😊
Glad to hear!! Thanks for watching :)
My old asus internal bluray player have a custom firmware that still works fine, today I've tried to rip a 4k harry Potter movie with makemkv and it works without any problem, 84gb with all subtitles removed and only English sound, the asus burner is more then 5 years old.
I bought a LG slim ultra HD drive about a year ago I was so excited to see they had my firmware I flashed it and it's working flawlessly great tutorial🎉
I am using DVDFAB and a LG BluRay, the same as yours, in a NexStar enclosure. WD PR4100 and 4-22tb drives running PLEX. Works great!
I would recommend against renaming Audio and Subtitle tracks as virtually every single alternative to Plex and handles reading of this data properly and for all of us keeping multiple audio tracks those names are necessary.
Thank you so much for this video! I got the exact same drive and it works great!
Though, the "All You Need Firmware Pack" has been updated and has included a file for the WH14NS40, but when i tried to use that, "Command produced error 0x82052603" popped up. I then tried the firmware for WH16NS60 (DE_LG_WH16NS60_1.02_MK.bin) and then the firmware flashed just fine. Weird that they'd include specific firmwares for different LG drives that don't work
But again, it works great and I can finally backup my blurays, thank you!
been doing tihs for 2 years now and i dident know that you could rename the soundtrack, Thanks for that tip! :)
This is a great video. Your video is the first one I have found that goes over flashing the disc drives in steps. Thank you.
Great to hear!
@@TwoGuyzTech brother, after flashing LG drive, can we play all region 4K ultra HD bluray disc? it is support dolby vision or HDR 10 ? can we connect and play on zidoo z9x pro? Thanx if you can explain 😎
I can confirm that this still worked in June 2024 with the same hardware. Thanks!
I got really lucky. I saw this video after I had already bought a Blu Ray drive for about 100€. The store was clearing out old stock and the firmware on the drive was 3 years old. So LibreDirve just worked out of the box.
Thanks so much for this guide! It was incredibly easy to understand.
I just bought the drive/enclosure with your affiliate links on Amazon. I'll be coming back to this video when they arrive.
Hope you earned some money this Black Friday! =)
Hey thank you very much for taking the time to comment! We really appreciate your support, glad the video was helpful to you. :)
Excellent Excellent vid! Anyone in doubt, watch it all the way through👍🏼👍🏼
Much appreciated!
OMG, I've avoided flashing my drive due to how complicated the forums made it sound, this simplified the process in only few steps and it WORKED for my slim LG drive.
Thanks for the video tutorial.
Glad it helped!
Hey. What model drive did you use if you don't mind? Thanks for your time
Thank you VERY MUCH for your time and availability to record this video. You've got a new subscriber.
Awesome, thank you!
I bought that Pioneer drive and it's the best drive I own. I have a couple LG drives and while they are faster than the pioneer drive, if the LG drives can't rip it, unless the disc is damaged or defective, the pioneer drive always works. Sadly defective discs has been more of an issue as of late. My first 300+ discs ripped without issue in one drive or another. In the last 100 discs I've ripped probably 10 of them had to be replaced.
Very clear video but I would like to share my experience with this drive. I have absolutely no problem creating back ups of BluRay discs but this drive has failed every single time I tried a 4K BluRay disc. I will update the comment if anything changes.
Great guide! I didnt know where to start but this video was exactly what I was looking for. Also I was able to flash the relatively new Asus BW-16D1X-U thanks to the timely posts on the MKV forums and this very helpful tutorial. 🔥
Great to hear!
Is your burner compatyble with the flash?
Can u please link me to the post about the flash file, please. I have the same model. Thank you!
This was super helpful and made sense. Thank you
You're so welcome! Thanks for watching!
Bought an Asus BW16D1HT yesterday, and this guide saved me a lot of time, worked like a charm, thx a lot mate =)
Would it be a good idea to backup the current stock firmware before flashing your drive?
Yes
Good job.
I've discovered very recently that you can't (reliably) play an "uncompressed" UHD that has a bitrate above 80Mpbs to a Roku Ultimate running a Plex client because it has only a 10/100 Ethernet port and, well, above 80 sustained is a lot to ask of the hardware. This has proven true with two titles.
Handbrake or FFMPEG using CPU only can take days to do very high quality compression. I have to experiment with Nvidia hardware compression. I'm told it can't compress nearly so well as HandBrake -- resulting file sizes are much larger and the image quality is also degraded more. But I don't know yet how much it will matter to me.
An alternative to your Roku/Plex approach is a Media File Player such as those offered by Zidoo and Dune. I've yet to have a problem with full bitrate UHD rips to .mkv files. Currently I'm using a Zidoo Z9x, playing files from a Synology NAS
@@johnggraves I'll have to try using the Roku's USB port. Thanks for the suggestion, I'd forgotten it had one.
My own observation: I inserted a blu-ray disk in at the start to test the new installed drive then forgot to remove the disk so it messed up this entire process. Removed and it's done. Thanks for your help!
Thanks for watching!
Grreat video. Showed exactly what to do. I bought one of the LG drives from amazon. Worked great. But Just in case I kept my old (very) BD drive which still works. Thanks a bunch.
Glad it helped!
I’m trying to do this from a Mac. What tool do I need to use to flash the firmware from the Mac?
Were you able to do this on a Mac?
I turned my Raspberry Pi4B into a NAS with an 18TB external USB HDD. I built the Samba share on a larger computer, but the Pi4B serves the share without performance issues.
Great setup.
Just in case anyone else was in the same predicament I was in: if you have an LG BH16NS40 drive, you can use the LG WH16NS60 1.02 firmware and it'll work.
You mention at 5:13 that MakeMKV is available for macOS. Does that mean I can complete these steps on my MacBook Pro without needing access to Windows?
Thanks for watching! Aside from the process of flashing your drive, yes you should be able to do all of these steps on a Mac. At the moment we're only aware of a Windows tool for flashing the drive though, so if you have an Intel Mac you might need to install Windows via Bootcamp to get that part done. Hope this helps.
@@TwoGuyzTech I have an ARM Mac, so I can’t install Bootcamp. Is it possible to flash a drive using Parallels (or a different VM)?
Great tutorial, thanks! One reason I still buy movies on disc is the commentary tracks, which of huge value to movie buffs like myself. I use Prime, Apple and Criterion Channel, and also got frustrated when my favorite movies and TV shows either got locked to rental or completely disappeared from the catalogue altogether. I don't feel that I own the full product with those services.
1 BIG UPDATE. If you get this drive or the 16NS40, YOU HAVE to patch it with the 16NS60.bin file ONLY!!! The other ones wont work even if it matches your drive number. This is listed on the MAKE MKV flashing guide as well. Thanks for the video on this!!!
Great step by step video! Always enjoy the content. You got me to jump all in on a synology 1522+ to start a media server! Thanks a bunch
Amazing tutorial! Love the updated guide guys. Keep up the great work :))
I bought an LG Blu-Ray drive that is compatible with MakeMKV, then bought another as a spare. Because I am insane. And I will not watch compressed streams when I want to see a movie. I want the full quality on the physical media that I paid for. I also will not eat the bugs, or live in the pod.
I got my pioneer right after I saw your video and it’s so easy I’m glad I got it before they modify the software. So at this point my still working.
I just got started with the ASUS BW-16D1HT drive and am ripping my first disc as we speak (LOTR Fellowship of course). This guide was extremely helpful and if all goes well I’ll comment again letting you know how long it took. My hardware is a Ryzen 3600 cpu and it’s writing to a Seagate Exos x20 20TB HDD.
Happy to report back that this is going just great. I learned that once you rip the disc into mkv format, it needs to be converted to MP4 before Plex can use it, but besides that this is working excellent. The Lord of the Rings theatrical movies took about 90 minutes apiece and most movies take an hour.
Couldn’t have done it without your help. Thank you.
@@kevinwiley5325 Whether or not you need to convert from MKV to MP4 is situational and not always required. I have a Synology NAS and all of my media is still in MKV format. It works just fine when streaming all of my standard Blu-Ray and DVD content to a Roku 4K from 2018, an Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K from 2018, and my Xbox Series X, but I haven't got into 4K media yet so I don't know about that. I'm just letting you as well as others know that some Plex combinations (servers and clients) can handle MKV formats without any issues. At least when it comes to 1080P and 720P content on a home network. I hope this information is helpful.
Did you use an ASUS firmware or LG that he showed in the video? @@kevinwiley5325
@@kevinwiley5325 Plex handles MKV just fine... lol
Depends on what streaming client you are using, for ex. I use my nvidia shield pro and it plays mkv files just fine. But Apple TV may need mp4 as you mentioned.
Thanks for the updated video! I saw the previous one and was pretty close to going that route until I saw this one. I got the LG one in this video from amazon and it interestingly already had the 1.02 firmware.
Good to hear! We're still really happy with this method, thanks for watching :)
It amazing how little this has changed since IW as ripping just plain DVD
I thought the same.
I have a LG WH16NS40 with MT1959 platform and SDFtool Flasher 1.3.5 says I don't have correct platform (MT1959) cannot be flashed. There is even firmware that matches my drive. There is a red X next to MT1959 on mine but you have the same platform and it's green. Something weird is going on. I tried both USB and direct SATA connection. I have currently 1.02 loaded on the drive that came with it.
Man, I got really lucky with my pioneer uhd reader. I got the last batch with the firmware that works. Saw reports on the forum that readers produced the same month as mine no longer worked.
Ah, just as I decided to delve into 4K discs for my Plex server a couple weeks back! I had an earlier version of the drive you selected as I started ripping Blu-Ray back in early 2015, but this version was not compatible with the necessary flashed firmware, so I ended up with the same drive you have. I fully recommend it, and even the earlier version was flawless with standard Blu Ray.
Thanks for watching! And glad to hear you had a great experience.
yeah, i've been procrastinating on finding instructions on how to rip 4K discs as last i checked you usually had to get drives from people with collections of drives to sell. thankfully the one i've had for 4 years seems to work with this ezpz guide 💚 AND just tested within the last 30 mins that i could still dump my PS3 games 🥳
Great video! still worked like a charm in 2024. I bought the LG WH16NS40, but not the Mercury Pro. Instead I bough a new PC case (Fractal Design Pop Silent) that could house a dvd bay. It was time to clean my PC anyway and I like rebuilding my PC. This PC case was way cheaper than the Mercury Pro in the Netherlands. Currently downloading my first 4K blu-ray! Next up, need to find out how to get a plex server going.
10:18 so is it actually Atmos? Why does it say 7.1?
ATMOS can sit on top of 7.1 or 5.1.
Thanks. Previously my bluray drive used to work. Mine is lg wh14ns40. But nowadays I always get ripping errors. I will try again today and will see how it goes
Thanks for watching! Hope you can get that working. If you have the drive installed in a PC then it might be worth making sure that your SATA cable is in good shape - we haven't experienced any read errors after ripping a few dozen 4K and 1080p Blu-ray discs. Hope this helps!
Great video! Makes the complex seem very simple ... but, like others in the comments, I can not get SDF Tool to flash my LG WH16NS40 with firmware v. 1.05. Still get the command errors everyone else is getting. Tried both versions of SDF and all the .bin files I could. Using Windows 11, which might make a dif
I have the same drive and I had to use the firmware that has a "MK" at the end of it.. 'WH16NS60 1.02MK' I think it only works with mkv software, but that's what I use, and it's the only firmware I could get to work and flash properly without that command error. I know it says '60' and not '40' in the name, but it works.
Does this same set up work for movies that are not 4k or Blueray?
Way easier
Yes but you don't have to struggle as much as 4K
6:49 do you have to choose READ instead of WRITE if you only want to read 4K discs??? or will write cover both reading and writing 4k discs?
Thanks!
Thank you so much for your support! :)
Great tutorial!
I built a TrueNAS Core system and started ripping my physical media for playback with Plex a few years ago. It has been a great project; fun, easy to set up, and ready access to media all around the house.
Your external drive set up looks really good. I may have to upgrade. 😊
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for watching and good to hear!! Totally agree, an in-home setup was the best investment we've ever made.
@@TwoGuyzTechhow much $ did u make with those 50$ USB case links ?
Thanks for the tutorial! Just ordered the optical drive and enclosure through your affiliate links.
Hey we appreciate it so much!! Thanks for watching and we're glad the video was helpful :)
Quick update. The LG optical drive has officially failed. I’ve been testing with a single 4K UHD Blu-ray disk since I received the drive. MakeMKV started throwing hashread errors last night, and as of this morning, read speeds reduce down to .2x while attempting to create the mkv file. This was not the case up until yesterday. Will return and order a replacement. Hoping this is not a common theme with the drive.
@@dave-xe6pc Hey there, hopefully you can send it back and get a replacement. That's really odd, we've been using ours constantly since we got it and haven't had any errors. Thankfully we haven't gotten any other reports of issues yet but if more people do start experiencing physical failure of the drive then we'll be sure to note it in the pinned comment.
@@TwoGuyzTech This is a direct quote from one of the pre-flashed seller's page on the makemkv forum: "I do not and will not sell desktop LG or ASUS drives 25% of them like the Asus BW-16D1HT or LG WH16NS60 are defective and will get read errors on UHD discs".
The read errors are common if their statement is accurate.
FYI, still waiting for my replacement drive to ship. Hoping it will not be part of the 25%.
Great video very informative. Do you have a lan connecting your NAS to whatever you are watching on? I assume watching it through wifi over the network would bog everything down
Thanks for watching! Yes we do usually stream our Blu-ray rips over LAN/Ethernet. But we also have a pretty capable router, so we don't usually notice any problems streaming over Wi-Fi unless the device is really far away from the router. Hope this helps!
How is 4K UHD Blu-ray playback with these drives? I heard they need to use Intel's SGX CPU instruction to enable playback, but it has since been removed from and no longer supported on their newer CPUs due to repeated security vulnerabilities caused by the instruction.
Are there any workarounds the can get playback working on AMD CPUs and Intel CPU again or is the firmware flashing taking care of all of that? There's no clear information discerning the difference (if there is one) between reading/detecting the content on a 4K UHD disc and playing back the content on a 4K UHD disc.
Thanks for watching! Ripping the disc is going to be your best bet. We have chose not to mess with playback since it's always really hard to get working just right, and there is no difference between the quality of a rip and the quality of direct playback (unless you choose to compress the rip afterwards of course, which is a manual and deliberate process). Hope this helps :)
@@TwoGuyzTech Thanks for the response, I can't seem to get an answer anywhere else.
I wanted to stick a UHD compatible drive in my HTPC and start acquiring 4K Blu-ray movies, but the issue with the drives needing the Intel SGX instruction enabled to have 4K playback with no problems is a monkey wrench in the gears, especially since my HTPC is an AMD APU system and doesn't use SGX or have an equivalent feature AFAIK.
@@yourma-uh5um Yep, unfortunately that's the conclusion we've pretty much settled on as well. I use an AMD Ryzen system for most of my work and haven't had any luck getting 4K playback working. I suppose you could invest in older supported Intel hardware but that might be an extra unnecessary expense that I wouldn't blame you for not wanting to go through! Sorry we couldn't be of more help here. :/
@@TwoGuyzTech I have an Intel dual core Kaby Lake and mini-ITX board lying around, but it's a lot of hassle to replace the current HTPC with a lesser system just to have 4K playback. Not to mention the system may be upgraded at some point in the future which would mean the loss of 4K playback so it's probably a lot less hassle just to settle for a regular 4K Blu-ray player.
DRM is fucking bullshit, it's supposed to prevent piracy yet all it does it make it the preferred option.
What if I want to save it as an ISO file or something similar. Edit: 12:11 thanks!
Have you done any guides for HD DVD backups? If not it could be very interesting since so many people still have the disc's and so few programs support playing them. Last I knew not even vlc would play the disc's just ripped files.
Thanks for watching, we've never tested this since we're not sure where you would get a compatible drive, though some users online have reported success while using an older version of MakeMKV. Once you have a compatible drive and software, the process should be similar, but again we've never tried it ourselves. Hope this helps!
The trick with HD-DVD is to look at the years things were released, then go and grab the usual named software of those years and get the old versions off sites like old-versions etc.
Most big software of the era handled HD-DVD before the format was abandoned.
Advice on how to get past the SDFTool Flasher if i’m on a mac? thank you!
Maybe use Windows OS in Parallels, or use virtual machine software to run Windows or GNU/Linux virtual machine.
Great info. It's really easy to follow along even for a noob like myself.
Thanks & keep it coming.
We appreciate it!! Glad it was helpful.
Bought this same drive a month and a half ago, it's already starting to fail. Really unfortunate, outside of the failure everything was working well. Thankfully I dumped the firmware before writing the custom one, so I plan on reverting that before putting a warranty claim on it.
I have DVDFab Copy software that comes with firmware roleback software. You can do this with the free trial version
Thanks for your info and advice. Bought an external slim drive (LG BP50NB40 SVC:NB52) patched the firmware and ripped my first Bluray movie. So happy it worked. Now just 1000 more movies to rip. 😃
Have you run into any issues with the slim over the one in the video? Any buyers remorse? I'm currently torn between the 2. The slim one would be ideal since it takes up less space, but at the same time I don't want to get a worse product when they're both the same price😅
I have an LG WH16NS40 downgraded the firmware to 1.03 (which doesnt have the sleep bug) in an Vantec NST-536S3-BK NexStar DX USB 3.0 External Enclosure and this thing works like a dream and so much cheaper than other externals too. After that if I need to tweak some things around I use MKVToolNix 1:1 copy. Or if I need to encode them to 10Bit HEVC with AC3 audio I use RipBot in CQ mode with the file size is about 2-4GB. Sadly, it's no longer being updated but it still works great and the quality and speed is the awesome.
Great video, thanks for this! Is there any way to retain Dolby Vision or HDR data with the mkv's???
MakeMKV does retain them.
So what do I do with the the pioneer drive with the the new firmware 1.03 then do I just throw it away please !
Great video thanks! It would be interesting to learn how to make a server with a collection of films, so that in any part of the house you can simply insert a lan wire into your computer or laptop and view your collection of films
I started getting into it and it’s great. But, due to my current internet plan that has only 10mbps of upload speed, watching my content outside of my local network can be a bit laggy.
Thanks for watching! We do plan to make a guide like this, so stay tuned! :)
I turned my Raspberry Pi4B into a NAS with an 18TB external USB HDD. I built the Samba share on a larger computer, but the Pi4B serves the share without performance issues.
I picked up the LG Electronics WH14NS40 with the OWC Mercury Pro 5.25" Optical Drive External Enclosure and a Western Digital 4TB My Cloud Home Personal Cloud Storage - WDBVXC0040HWT-NESN.
I flashed the drive with the steps in the video with no issues.
When trying to rip my first 4k Movie it has ran for over 3.5 hours and I only have 3GB of the 31GB about 9.6% completed. What would be normal for a 4k rip?
I found in the log a No Java Found error with pages and pages of read errors. I installed Java and restarted Make MKV it’s now working with no issues. I have ran 15 disks with no issues.
Built my first pc a few months ago with this being something on my mind as wanting to do. got my asus drive at the weekend and now i got some free time i flashed the drive and am this very second ripping my first 4k. looking forward in a few months time to getting some sweet 4k monitors so i can take advantage of this, thanks
Great tutorial ! Thanks much for posting !
Glad you enjoyed it!
I didn't realize that my old-ish LG BD drive was capable of this. Since I have a new LG 42" C3 monitor for my computer, I was motivated to try your advice.
*It worked perfectly!*
I had to run to Walmart to buy a 4K disc to try it out, and I'm now transferring the disc to my server with Make MKV.
*Thanks!*
Enjoy!
So you don't need a 4K Blu-ray drive to rip the mkv files? Just a regular blu-ray drive that's MakeMKV compatible?
Thanks for watching! The drive does not necessarily have to be marked/sold as a 4K compatible or UHD friendly drive in order to be able to rip Blu-rays. In some cases this is just on a model by model basis, which is why it's crucial to read the MakeMKV forum thread to find a current compatible drive. Hope this helps!
If you are ripping 4k Blu-ray discs you specifically need a 4k Blu-ray drive that works with MakeMKV. Otherwise, the drive will not have a compatible laser head to read the smaller pits on a 4k Blu-ray disc. That same drive will also read regular Blu-rays and DVD's.
Awesome video! It is very direct with the flashing part (I was really unsure about that) and has some nice tips at the end.
Thank you for such a comprehensive guide. I just want to make 1:1 physical copies of each movie in my collection for backup purposes. What software would you recommend for the job? thanks!
Good refresher for me as my system has been down for 2 years. I flashed my LG firmware long ago and had no trouble ripping 4k’s for use in my NAS. So I was most interested in making the backup file you mentioned. When inserting a Blu-ray for ripping I decided to try the back-up but my yellow file icon on MakeMKV is greyed out and not usable. I’m right now testing the next icon over which seems to do a backup also. Wondering why the yellow file folder button is grayed out??
Ok…. Nevermind. Would help if I used MakeMKV properly. Select the yellow file first and don’t click the drive to read it first
I have a random question. Can I still buy this LG WH14NS40 drive and flash the correct firmware on it? I’m writing this comment as of 3/27/2024
Just ordered and received the same stuff he is using, they came in today. Flashed the drive without any issues took 2 minutes and already copied a few different movies over to test and works perfectly.
Is there any flasher tool that works with Mac? The link you provided only works with Windows.
I'm stuck in this exact place right now. I'm hoping to find something or I might just have to borrow a windows laptop
7:29 - the firmware pack has changed a little (I found the files in an "Internal Desktop Drives" directory), but while I was going through your video, I noticed something:
You have the WH14NS40, per your screen, but you are flashing the WH16NS40 firmware. Would that cause any issues?
i saw that too anu word on this?
Another great enclosure for that drive (I have four) is the Vantec NexStar DX2. Nice video!