Now, thanks to the fairly easy to follow instructions in this forum, I discovered that I already owned a UHD-friendly Blu-Ray drive, and within five minutes (two firmware updates), I was able to get my LG-BP50NB40 reading and ripping the single UHD disk I own.
But damn you all as well. My wife wasn't happy that I just spent $300 to upgrade many of my DVDs to 4K UHD discs.

Again, I say thank you everyone who has contributed to makemkv and firmware updates for UHD drives.