Any good internal Blu-Ray Burners that support LibreDrive but also allow UHD/4K Playback?

[Cyber Akuma]

I currently have an internal Blu-Ray burner in my desktop that supports up to Dual-Layer. Since the upgraded Motherboard/CPU now supports UHD (Yes, I am well aware of all the hoops one needs to jump through to make this work on a PC) I wanted to replace it with a newer drive that has more support for the newer formats, and could possibly let me rip all the movies I have on disk since I have been getting quite the collection recently and it's becoming a bit of a pain to deal with them physically. This comes second to just trying to get a quality burner that supports BDXL and UHD though.

My main purpose of the drive is to try to read and write as many standard formats as possible (CD, CD-RW, DVD-RAM, DVD-DL RW, BDXL RE, etc.. I know I won't be able to get support for some of the more obscure/never popular formats like HD-DVD and that's fine... though apparently getting quad-layer support will be hard? From what I understand, this was depreciated over triple-layer but there are some quad-layer disks on the market?), as well as have UHD support for watching my HD, 3D, and 4K Blu-Rays on a PC. Trying to Google this as well as read the drive reviews on other forums, very few drives fit the bill, I was able to come up with three:

Asus BW-16D1HT - This seems to be (or at least was apparently) the "go to" for being able to rip your UHD movies with LibreDrive, but does not appear to be what I am looking for at all. From what I understand, these drives are apparently not reliable and break down a lot, as well as are very picky with what blank media (Mostly CD) you use and will not work with many of them. On top of that, apparently it's UHD support was removed in a firmware update... and the process to downgrade it to restore it is apparently involved, requires specific motherboard features, and could brick the drive if you do it wrong. Also, apparently if I do this, I can no longer use the drive to play UHD movies? So while I saw this drive mentioned a lot in the past, I think this one is not viable anymore and there are better alternatives now?

LG WH16NS60 - The second one I saw mentioned. Apparently even the latest firmware at the time of this post is supported in LibreDrive. But like the Asus drive, I read that supposedly it's known to break down a lot and not be reliable?

Pioneer BDR-212UBK - The most recent one that I found. Not mentioned a lot as it appears to be newer. From what I understand, people claimed these are better quality than the LG and Asus and are less likely to be picky about media or break down as easily? However, apparently you can't use it to rip 4K/UHD movies? (Yet? It's not clear if that's old information and it recently got supported or not. I saw a post on this very forum about this drive where the second to last post claimed it was working now with a screenshot... but then the post right after claimed it's not).

Also, what is not clear is if I will lose UHD playback if I setup LibreDrive with my drive? From what I was able to Google from some older forum posts, this is the case... but apparently for some of the newer drives this is no longer true? Can anyone clarify this? Again, LibreDrive support would be a nice bonus on top of just plain good read/write support and UHD playback, so I would not want to lose any of those features for LibreDrive support.

Did I get any of that wrong? Are there any other drives one can recommend that fit the bill? Again, being able to rip UHD disks is, nice, but that's more of a secondary benefit over just finding a good drive that can play my HD/3D/UHD movies as well as read/write all of my disks properly, including up to re-writable BDXL.

[MartyMcNuts]

I currently have an internal Blu-Ray burner in my desktop that supports up to Dual-Layer. Since the upgraded Motherboard/CPU now supports UHD (Yes, I am well aware of all the hoops one needs to jump through to make this work on a PC) I wanted to replace it with a newer drive that has more support for the newer formats, and could possibly let me rip all the movies I have on disk since I have been getting quite the collection recently and it's becoming a bit of a pain to deal with them physically. This comes second to just trying to get a quality burner that supports BDXL and UHD though.

My main purpose of the drive is to try to read and write as many standard formats as possible (CD, CD-RW, DVD-RAM, DVD-DL RW, BDXL RE, etc.. I know I won't be able to get support for some of the more obscure/never popular formats like HD-DVD and that's fine... though apparently getting quad-layer support will be hard? From what I understand, this was depreciated over triple-layer but there are some quad-layer disks on the market?), as well as have UHD support for watching my HD, 3D, and 4K Blu-Rays on a PC. Trying to Google this as well as read the drive reviews on other forums, very few drives fit the bill, I was able to come up with three:

Asus BW-16D1HT - This seems to be (or at least was apparently) the "go to" for being able to rip your UHD movies with LibreDrive, but does not appear to be what I am looking for at all. From what I understand, these drives are apparently not reliable and break down a lot, as well as are very picky with what blank media (Mostly CD) you use and will not work with many of them. On top of that, apparently it's UHD support was removed in a firmware update... and the process to downgrade it to restore it is apparently involved, requires specific motherboard features, and could brick the drive if you do it wrong. Also, apparently if I do this, I can no longer use the drive to play UHD movies? So while I saw this drive mentioned a lot in the past, I think this one is not viable anymore and there are better alternatives now?

LG WH16NS60 - The second one I saw mentioned. Apparently even the latest firmware at the time of this post is supported in LibreDrive. But like the Asus drive, I read that supposedly it's known to break down a lot and not be reliable?

Pioneer BDR-212UBK - The most recent one that I found. Not mentioned a lot as it appears to be newer. From what I understand, people claimed these are better quality than the LG and Asus and are less likely to be picky about media or break down as easily? However, apparently you can't use it to rip 4K/UHD movies? (Yet? It's not clear if that's old information and it recently got supported or not. I saw a post on this very forum about this drive where the second to last post claimed it was working now with a screenshot... but then the post right after claimed it's not).

Also, what is not clear is if I will lose UHD playback if I setup LibreDrive with my drive? From what I was able to Google from some older forum posts, this is the case... but apparently for some of the newer drives this is no longer true? Can anyone clarify this? Again, LibreDrive support would be a nice bonus on top of just plain good read/write support and UHD playback, so I would not want to lose any of those features for LibreDrive support.

Did I get any of that wrong? Are there any other drives one can recommend that fit the bill? Again, being able to rip UHD disks is, nice, but that's more of a secondary benefit over just finding a good drive that can play my HD/3D/UHD movies as well as read/write all of my disks properly, including up to re-writable BDXL.

Pioneer drives are not UHD rip capable, yet...

The only internal 5.25" LibreDrive compatible drive capable of UHD playback (and ripping) is the WH16NS60. There are some folks saying their drives have died rather quickly, however there are also some that are still working just fine. I've had mine for almost 2 years and it is still working good.

Another option is to get a slim drive such as a BU40N and source a drive bay adapter so you can fit it into a 5.25" bay.

Also, be mindful, that to play UHD discs directly, (without any decryption), your PC must meet all of the very stringent "UHD playback requirements". If you don't know what these requirements are, I suggest you google it.

[Cyber Akuma]

Pioneer drives are not UHD rip capable, yet...

The only internal 5.25" LibreDrive compatible drive capable of UHD playback (and ripping) is the WH16NS60. There are some folks saying their drives have died rather quickly, however there are also some that are still working just fine. I've had mine for almost 2 years and it is still working good.

Hmm..... are the Pioneer drives good drives for non-UHD ripping purposes otherwise? As ion drive quality, reading quality, burning quality, UHD playback, etc? Or do you know of any other drives that fit everything I am looking for?

Maybe it would be good to go that route and wait, or go that route for just a good drive, and get another drive only for ripping, like that LG.... or...

Another option is to get a slim drive such as a BU40N and source a drive bay adapter so you can fit it into a 5.25" bay.

Actually, the current backup PC I am on now was an old workstation, and uses (oddly) a slim drive.... even though there is a spare unused full-size optical drive bay right next to said slim (though it only works in a vertical orientation so I am not sure if any 5.25 would work...) I suppose I could just swap out it's current slim DVD-burner for a BU40N.

(The rest of the system being capable of UHD doesn't matter for using something like LibreDrive or DVDFab to rip them just as long as your drive and firmware is compatible with that software right? Said workstation is rather old.)

Also, be mindful, that to play UHD discs directly, (without any decryption), your PC must meet all of the very stringent "UHD playback requirements". If you don't know what these requirements are, I suggest you google it.

Yeah. From what I understand, your CPU needs to support it and it's currently only supported on Intel platforms (Mine does, i7-10700K) the motherboard needs to support it (Mine mentions UHD updates in it's recent BIOS updates, Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Pro AX), you need to have an officially supported UHD drive (What I am looking for in this topic), it can only output through the CPU's IGP? (Not 100% sure on that one) and you need to connect it to a HDCP 2.2 display via HDMI (I have a 4K tv capable of that).

Did I get all that right? Or did I miss something?

[MartyMcNuts]

Pioneer drives are not UHD rip capable, yet...

The only internal 5.25" LibreDrive compatible drive capable of UHD playback (and ripping) is the WH16NS60. There are some folks saying their drives have died rather quickly, however there are also some that are still working just fine. I've had mine for almost 2 years and it is still working good.

Hmm..... are the Pioneer drives good drives for non-UHD ripping purposes otherwise? As ion drive quality, reading quality, burning quality, UHD playback, etc? Or do you know of any other drives that fit everything I am looking for?

Maybe it would be good to go that route and wait, or go that route for just a good drive, and get another drive only for ripping, like that LG.... or...

Another option is to get a slim drive such as a BU40N and source a drive bay adapter so you can fit it into a 5.25" bay.

Actually, the current backup PC I am on now was an old workstation, and uses (oddly) a slim drive.... even though there is a spare unused full-size optical drive bay right next to said slim (though it only works in a vertical orientation so I am not sure if any 5.25 would work...) I suppose I could just swap out it's current slim DVD-burner for a BU40N.

(The rest of the system being capable of UHD doesn't matter for using something like LibreDrive or DVDFab to rip them just as long as your drive and firmware is compatible with that software right? Said workstation is rather old.)

Also, be mindful, that to play UHD discs directly, (without any decryption), your PC must meet all of the very stringent "UHD playback requirements". If you don't know what these requirements are, I suggest you google it.

Yeah. From what I understand, your CPU needs to support it and it's currently only supported on Intel platforms (Mine does, i7-10700K) the motherboard needs to support it (Mine mentions UHD updates in it's recent BIOS updates, Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Pro AX), you need to have an officially supported UHD drive (What I am looking for in this topic), it can only output through the CPU's IGP? (Not 100% sure on that one) and you need to connect it to a HDCP 2.2 display via HDMI (I have a 4K tv capable of that).

Did I get all that right? Or did I miss something?

Yes, the pioneer drives are generally excellent quality drives and especially good for writing.

Yes, the system doesn't really matter too much with ripping. If you have a compatible drive/firmware you are good to go. Swapping out the slim drive for a BU40N sounds like a good idea. FYI, the BU40N is a 9.5mm drive.

Yes, UHD playback is only via the CPU graphics and HDCP 2.2 along the complete chain. It sounds as though your system is ready, just need a drive.

[earlymorningmarch]

Yeah. From what I understand, your CPU needs to support it and it's currently only supported on Intel platforms (Mine does, i7-10700K) the motherboard needs to support it (Mine mentions UHD updates in it's recent BIOS updates, Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Pro AX), you need to have an officially supported UHD drive (What I am looking for in this topic), it can only output through the CPU's IGP? (Not 100% sure on that one) and you need to connect it to a HDCP 2.2 display via HDMI (I have a 4K tv capable of that).

Did I get all that right? Or did I miss something?

Regarding the output through the CPU IGP, I am pretty sure it means connect your display to the motherboard. You are basically not able to use your graphics card for this.