NEW OPTION: 'UHD Friendly' Firmware Downgrade / Cross-Flash Using Official (Modified) ASUS Flasher for ASUS & LG Drives

[pepe_69]

Hi All,
Very stupid question: when run, after selecting the firmware, the ASUS_ODD_FW_Changer tool let user select drive, and drives are displayed with what seems to be the current firmware of the drive, correct?
In my case 1.01 for an ASUS BW-16D1HT bought in classifieds, supposingly from 2016. I have hard time to verify current firmware beside going via windows systems info\components and get something meaningless to me "SCSI\CDROM&VEN_ASUS&PROD_BW-16D1HT\4&4DDA929&0&020000"

Thanks in advance for your help

[SamuriHL]

Makemkv will tell you the drive info when you start it and select the drive. However if that drive has a 1.x firmware on it do not, I repeat, do not flash it. You will brick it.

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk

[pepe_69]

Thanks for the reply.
Can't the drive be upgraded first with official ASUS firmware update tool to official 3.10 and then downgrade to custom 3.02
Still a brick for my future house?

[pepe_69]

Damned.. I've asked for the purchase date (2016), but I should have asked for the firmware instead.
Got it for few $ but still lost $
Now I see that there is a difference between models on the front panel. One should purchase one without the M disc sign, at least, isn't it?

[SamuriHL]

The front isn't what matters. It's the chipset within the drive. Those on the 1.xx firmware for the BW16D1HT are the older chipset and will brick if you try to flash them with the 3.xx firmware. They just don't work with UHD and never will.

[trippycat]

I have an LG BE16NU50 and LG BH16NS55 drives. Thanks to this guide I have succesfully flash a DE firmware and I can rip 4K and burn blank media.

Is it possible to crossflash these drives to enable scanning of burned bluray? (Qpxtools or Opti Drive Control).

Could this change possibly break the possibility of burning new discs?

I'm almost exactly one year late to the party, but as I've been looking to do this too, and information is extremely difficult to find about this topic, and it's only getting worse as time passes, I figured it can be of some use to drop my findings here. You know, for posterity (and lost souls coming from search engines).

Only a few models are able to do quality scans on optical media, using softwares such as Opti Drive Control, KProbe or QPXTool. This is true since the CD era.
Unfortunately, nowadays most of these models are long gone, and are proving impossible to find now. It's even worse for Blu-Ray because there has never been a lot of models that supported quality scanning to begin with. Apparently the Lite-On iHBS series were the most often used, but Lite-On is out of the business of optical drives since a few years now.

To answer MartyMcNuts 's question, doing quality scans require specific drives with specific firmware, because in most firmwares, the required commands simply don't exist. These commands are completely undocumented, and vendor-specific. Maybe more models are able to do quality scanning, but nobody knows which low-level commands to toss at them to do this, and even less how to interpret the bytes they would answer on the bus.

Long story short, there seems to be only one model left in 2020 that seems to be able to do this: the LG WH16NS58. I don't know in your country, but in mine it can't be found. It's not hopeless though: apparently crossflashing from BH16NS55 works. However the regular firmware of WH16NS58 does NOT have the commands to do quality scanning, so it doesn't work. However, a company named Vinpower has modified this drive for his own use (they sell duplicators), and built a firmware which, for some reason, has the commands to do quality scanning. Apparently at some point they also sold these drives directly to consumers. Their firmware versions always have "V" in them. This is how you tell them from the regular LG firmwares. Only a few people ever had their hands on them, and of course even less dumped their firmwares to make them available for others.

But there's a good news: in the MK firmware pack, we have a nice WH16NS58-1.V5 firmware. It sounds like a Vinpower firmware, so... maybe it'll work. I ordered a BH16NS55 today, I'll flash it to BH16NS55-MK (as it'll probably come with the 1.04 firmware version with downgrade protection), then crossflash it to WH16NS58-1.V5-MK. I'll cross fingers and report whether it works here.

If it doesn't, well, we're probably out of luck (and I've been looking into this topic for a bunch of hours).

[Coopervid]

Quality scans are OK. But LG drives are lousy burners. So doing a quality scan with a LG drive on discs burnt with LG drives doesn't help. It will just confirm that the quality is bad. This is especially true for BD50 double layer discs burnt with LG drives. Pioneer drives produce a much better quality with BD50 discs, especially if Japanese Verbatim discs are used.

[trippycat]

I thought most of the BD-R burners available today were mainly rebranded LGs. Does Pioneer still manufacture drives of their own making?
Quality scans are not only useful right after burning a disc, it can also be useful to review your BD-R backup discs fleet once a year, and notice when a disc is degrading too much (if you have the right-after-burning quality scan reference), before you actually loose data. At least, that's my use case.

[GregoryV]

Hello

Total noob here! I downloaded the modified tool with the firmwares and followed the directions and keep getting failure #5 messages

im trying to get my brand new lg bp60nb10 to 1.0 so it will be dvdfab friendly.

thank you in advance for any help

gregory

[MartyMcNuts]

Hello

Total noob here! I downloaded the modified tool with the firmwares and followed the directions and keep getting failure #5 messages

im trying to get my brand new lg bp60nb10 to 1.0 so it will be dvdfab friendly.

thank you in advance for any help

gregory

What firmware is it on now? You cannot go directly to 1.00. Flash the equivalent MK firmware first. So, if the drive came with 1.01, flash 1.01-MK, then flash 1.00.

Also, you are better off using the new SDFtool Flasher. Get it from here. viewtopic.php?f=16&t=22896

[GregoryV]

Hello

I believe it is 1.02. i just downloaded the other tool and will give it a try. So flash the 1.02 mk then the 1.0 correct?

Thank You in advance!

[GregoryV]

Hello
Thank youas the newer tool worked to get me to 1.02 mk. Will now try to get to 1.0.

Your help is massively helpful!

[GregoryV]

Hello

Well the new tool showed a success but the firmware never changed. I flashed the 1.2 and it said success.I then flashed 1.0 and again it said success but version never changed.then redid 1.2 then 1.1 both showed success but now version number change. Can the firmware actually be changed on this drive? Ive tried all day to get this to work. its getting to where i just might send this drive back to Newegg and pay through the nose for a drive from Japan.

[MartyMcNuts]

Hello

Well the new tool showed a success but the firmware never changed. I flashed the 1.2 and it said success.I then flashed 1.0 and again it said success but version never changed.then redid 1.2 then 1.1 both showed success but now version number change. Can the firmware actually be changed on this drive? Ive tried all day to get this to work. its getting to where i just might send this drive back to Newegg and pay through the nose for a drive from Japan.

GregoryV,

Here are the steps:

1. Flash the drive to BP60NB10 1.02-MK.
2. Flash the drive to BP60NB10 1.00-MK.

That's it. Done. The drive should ow be on BP60NB10 1.00-MK.

[GregoryV]

Just to clarify no version I have flashed has been successful. I thought it was since EVERY time no matter what it says successful but there is no change in the firmware number.
I am using the firmware from the Asus flasher and firmware versions download link from the OP.
So my question I guess is Are those firmwares the Mk versions? If not where can I get the MK versions of 1.02 and 1.0?