www.makemkv.com

Hello Everyone,

The Pioneer BDR-209EBK in my PC partly died, it reads/plays CD but not DVD. So I was looking for a replacement and came across this forum, which is an absolute goldmine of helpful advice and information!

I only occasionally use the drive to play or copy disks to my Plex Media Server, but I want reliability, the Pioneer BDR-209EBK was hardly used at all, yet died when I finally got around to doing this project last week after only a few hours of work.

The two options that are available here in Czech Republic are Hitachi BU40N and Hitachi BH16NS55.

The Hitachi BH16NS55 will fit straight into the PC case, the Hitachi BU40N will need this adaptor bracket for it to fit into the PC case:

https://www.jscomputers.cz/produkt/Icy_ ... acket.html

I would like to ask your advice on which of these two I should buy, will these work 'out of the box' or would they need to be flashed first?

Would the flashing procedure be something I could do easily myself, or would it be better to take advantage of the remote flashing offered for a fee?

Thank you for any advice you can offer and for a fantastic forum, I didn't realise it was all so complicated but this has made it so much clearer for me!

Andrew.

SystemX80 wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 04, 2023 1:23 pm

Would the flashing procedure be something I could do easily myself, or would it be better to take advantage of the remote flashing offered for a fee?

Both drives would have to be flashed to rip UHDs. Hopefully you found the Ultimate UHD Drives Flashing Guide

On Windows, you can use the SDFtool Flasher. It should be pretty straight forward.

It is a bummer that your Pioneer died. Pioneer drives are considered to be very high quality.

Thanks for your reply. Yes I read through the Ultimate Guide and Recommended FW post, that's amazing, (Thank you Billy!) From reading thru the forum I get the feeling the BU40N is the one to go for.

May I please ask, Billy's Recommended UHD list, the BU40N is 'Official' and the BH16NS55 is 'Friendly' - may I please ask what is meant by 'Official' as opposed to 'friendly' (I understand this means can be flashed).

I am annoyed my old Pioneer BDR-209EBK failed, but until reading through this forum I wasn't aware I needed a UHD capable drive! d'oh... I don't actually own any UHD disks yet, but with the forthcoming release of Bowie's 50th Anniversary concert this will soon change, hence the urgency to replace/upgrade the drive.

Andrew.

SystemX80 wrote: ↑

Sat Aug 05, 2023 7:55 am

Thanks for your reply. Yes I read through the Ultimate Guide and Recommended FW post, that's amazing, (Thank you Billy!) From reading thru the forum I get the feeling the BU40N is the one to go for.

May I please ask, Billy's Recommended UHD list, the BU40N is 'Official' and the BH16NS55 is 'Friendly' - may I please ask what is meant by 'Official' as opposed to 'friendly' (I understand this means can be flashed).

I am annoyed my old Pioneer BDR-209EBK failed, but until reading through this forum I wasn't aware I needed a UHD capable drive! d'oh... I don't actually own any UHD disks yet, but with the forthcoming release of Bowie's 50th Anniversary concert this will soon change, hence the urgency to replace/upgrade the drive.

Andrew.

The BU40N is an official (proper) UHD drive. The BH16NS55 is not but can be made to read UHD discs via a loophole.

From the perspective of MakeMKV, official or friendly doesn't really make much difference. If you wanted to use official software on official hardware to play a UHD you'd need an official drive.