100% Firmware Downgrade for ASUS BW-16D1HT and LG BH16NS55

[jonghotti]

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[mmaslar]

OK so for the next person who thinks it'll be more inexpensive to buy a new drive and flash it, versus buying a new old drive and not having to flash it, please refer to the previous post. It's still mind boggling how cheap 4K blu ray collectors can be.

Unfortunately, when you order the drive, there’s no way of knowing. Additionally, I had success flashing my old drive when I accidentally update the firmware, and thought it would be possible to do it again, but it won’t work this time around. I guess I could’ve taken the time to read through every post in this thread prior to buying a new drive, but it didn’t occur to me. If you can sell an old drive cheaper than $60, let me know, and I’ll return the other drive.

[jonghotti]

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[mmaslar]

OK so for the next person who thinks it'll be more inexpensive to buy a new drive and flash it, versus buying a new old drive and not having to flash it, please refer to the previous post. It's still mind boggling how cheap 4K blu ray collectors can be.

Unfortunately, when you order the drive, there’s no way of knowing. Additionally, I had success flashing my old drive when I accidentally update the firmware, and thought it would be possible to do it again, but it won’t work this time around. I guess I could’ve taken the time to read through every post in this thread prior to buying a new drive, but it didn’t occur to me. If you can sell an old drive cheaper than $60, let me know, and I’ll return the other drive.

I can’t even buy one for less than $80 and that’s before tax because I’ve agreed not to push the price matching in exchange for certain accommodations.

You know I’m just busting your balls folks I know I can’t do anything about flashing and neither can the manufacturers.

Yes when you order a drive through traditional sources you’ve no way of knowing what you’re going to get yet it’s less expensive in time and effort to take your chances there than simply piggyback onto what I’ve been working on since I first read this board.

Add up how much of your time it’s gonna take to mail a drive back and forth and assign a value to that never mind the postage and that you’re paying a stranger to load firmware onto onto your optical drive

Add it to the original cost of the unit and then realize one email and you’d have one in two days that works right out of the box from me. If the first cost is still less than mine then, in my opinion, you're seriously under valuing your precious spare time

Well, the good news is, after trial and error, I was able to flash the new drive using a different SATA port, so everything works now. The bad news is, I dropped $65 on a new drive and spent a day getting it working only to find out that the disks the old drive wasn’t reading were faulty, not the laser. I just happened to try multiple bad disks in a row. I guess on a positive note, I have a backup drive now in case the new one ever fails, and both are running 3.01 firmware.

[jonghotti]

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[Billycar11]

It's still mind boggling how cheap 4K blu ray collectors can be.

if they were not "cheap" they would just buy an official uhd player power dvd and all the latest gen intel/nvidia stuff to play it. instead of just buying a uhd friendly dive and make it work with current hardware.

[jonghotti]

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[rivey]

Actually, most of us are not cheap. I buy all of my UHD and blu ray discs and rip them so I can play them on any TV in my home. I do NOT rent discs and then rip them as I consider that to be piracy and theft but that is another issue. I could just buy a UHD player for my AV system but in the long run, this is a bit easier but not faster. It has nothing to do with being cheap, is has to do with not wanting my discs to become damaged. And no Jon, you do not offend me. You have seen me rant on this site before and when I do, I always post my real name at the end of the rant so everyone knows exactly who I am. You have been very helpful to many on this forum and I think that is a great thing you are doing. Do I think that you could be a little more diplomatic in your comments, YES. By the same token, there are times that I should be also.
Bob Ivey

[AmyGrrl]

Just wanted to say thanks for this thread! I bought the Asus BW-16D1HT for Newegg Canada last week because it was on sale. It arrived today the mail. Then I wondered if it would be able to play/dump 4k uhd Blu-Ray discs. Didn't even think to check if the drive was compatible before I bought it. Was just excited to finally have my first ever BluRay drive. So I came here to check since I have used MakeMKV to dump DVD's in the past. Was happy to discover this drive was on the compatibility list. My drive was manufactured on February 2018 and had firmware 3.02 on it. I read that while 3.02 is a compatible firmware. These newer drives may have a patched firmware. So I decided I would downgrade to a clean 3.02 firmware. Was able to successfully to use DOSFLASH to dump, and flash a patched clean 3.02 firmware. I don't have any 4k bluray discs to try and dump currently. But I can confirm that I can still play a standard bluray and make a dump of it using MakeMKV. So I assume everything is good and I am ready to dump a 4k disc now. I did notice that with the original firmware MakeMKV gave me an error message every time I loaded it. Which was something like --> scsi error - medium error:defect list error. With this patched clean 3.02 firmware. I no longer get that error message. Now I need to get a 4k uhd bluray disc so I can actually test if it works. Thanks again!

[jonghotti]

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[Billycar11]

Hey where can I find an good ASUS 3.00 firmware? I've flashed a unit with the 3.02 and it's sketchy.

Please advise, I'm a flashing fool.

its in TeddyRaspin's thread under "Steps for importing data from backup" firmwares http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic ... 16&t=17058 i used 3.01 on mine that came with 3.03 and was able to play/read all Jurassic parks in 4K. but i think you should leave the flashing to the experts like me.

[mmaslar]

Hey where can I find an good ASUS 3.00 firmware? I've flashed a unit with the 3.02 and it's sketchy.

Please advise, I'm a flashing fool.

There’s a link to clean firmwares in the first post, under “Steps for importing data from backup firmwares : (Automatic Method)”. I used 3.01, and it works well for my drive with a May 2018 manufactured date.

[d00zah]

Hey where can I find an good ASUS 3.00 firmware? I've flashed a unit with the 3.02 and it's sketchy.

Please advise, I'm a flashing fool.

More important, did you dump the original FW in order to preserve, & transfer the drive calibration data to the 'clean' image?

[mmaslar]

Hey where can I find an good ASUS 3.00 firmware? I've flashed a unit with the 3.02 and it's sketchy.

Please advise, I'm a flashing fool.

More important, did you dump the original FW in order to preserve, & transfer the drive calibration data to the 'clean' image?

This is extremely important. If you did not back up your original dump, you may end up with a useless drive should something go wrong with the flashing process.

[d00zah]

This is extremely important. If you did not back up your original dump, you may end up with a useless drive should something go wrong with the flashing process.

... or a 'sketchy' drive.