Help a newbie looking for direction

[WiseWTF]

Hello everyone, thank you for being here.

I've only recently joined the bluray dumping community (I come from a hobbyist encoding background) and so far I'm loving it. I'm only looking for some directions about my specific drive which I will talk about in a minute. I've done some research and with all these serial numbers and codes and versions and whatnot it ended up being a ton of information dumped on my lap and I have no clue whatsoever anymore about what I should do. (And this comes from a sysadmin that is usually able to research pretty easily)

I've only recently bought an LG drive, the HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH16NS40. It's been serving me fine for FULL-HD Blu-Rays, I've dumped like 6 from my library and I have no problem whatsoever.

The trouble starts today when I got a UHD Bluray for HELLBOY (the last one) and it seems like MakeMKV (or the drive itself) won't read the disc. I hear it seeking pretty loudly but then MakeMKV says there's no disc inserted. Now I've read about downgrading the firmware, or flashing another LG drive's firmware over my own firmware but honestly the version name of my drive comes out so few times I'm honestly concerned at this point if it even can read or dump UHD BDs.

Before buying I did watch a couple of videos and they all said my drive is "UHD-Friendly" which I've come to learn it means everything, but it also means nothing.

This is the info I get from MakeMKV about my drive:

Drive Information
OS device name: F:
Current profile: BD-ROM
Manufacturer: HL-DT-ST
Product: BD-RE BH16NS40
Revision: 1.00
Serial number: K88CCIA4547
Firmware date: 2112-10-31 19:17
Bus encryption flags: 17
Highest AACS version: 75

LibreDrive Information
Status: Enabled
Drive platform: MT1939
Firmware type: Original (unpatched)
Firmware version: 1.00
DVD all regions: Yes
BD raw data read: Yes
BD raw metadata read: Partial
Unrestricted read speed: Yes

Disc Information
Label: HELLBOY
Timestamp: 2019-06-04 10:52:09
Data capacity: 43.56 Gb
Disc type: BD-ROM
Number of layers: 2
Channel bit length: 74,5 nm (25.0 GB max. per layer)

Now I see that the drive platform is possibly incompatible with any firmware that is required to make it compatible for UHD drives?

My final question is, is there anything I can do with this drive at all and if so what should I do?
Otherwise I might have to either forget about UHD movies (bummer) or find a drive that can actually do it (bummer cuz wallet cries).


Thank you

[dcoke22]

The short answer is, for UHDs, the drive platform is too old. You need MT1959. I'm pretty sure newer versions of that model have the newer drive platform. There should be a sticker on that drive somewhere that'll tell you the age of your drive. MT1959 started to appear around 2015.

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=19634

Your current drive should work fine for DVDs and blu-rays. MakeMKV supports using more than 1 optical drive at a time, so if you have a large collection of discs to rip, it can still be useful.

[rblood01]

Yes, keep this for the DVDs and other task and get yourself a newer approved drive. BH16NS40, make sure it is the version using the official guide. viewtopic.php?f=16&t=19634

Fortunately, it is pretty easy to get these drives now. Most places have them. If you have an electronic store near by you that sells "OEM" drives you can possibly even see the drive info on the bottom of the drive before you drive.

If you don't want to deal with flashing and chasing down a drive, there are vendors that will sell you approved properly flashed drives where all you have to do is install it.

I was in the same boat about a year ago as my old Asus died. It was pre 2015 model and not UHD friendly. If it was, I'd still be ripping my DVDs using it and saving the wear and tear on the new drive.