Flashing LG model BP50NB40-NB52 - A Guide

[NeuroDawg]

I recently helped get an LG model BP50NB40-NB52 drive flashed using the CLI in Linux and thought I'd post here for anyone who may be looking for this information in the future. While the Ultimate flashing guide was helpful, we struggled a bit to understand what was needed for this drive with regards to the exact makemkvcon command line, so I thought the steps that were successful for us might be helpful for others.

The first issue we came across was that versions of makemkv after 1.17.6 do not work. The simply sit and burn cpu cycles after any "makemkvcon f" command. So you have to get an earlier version of makemkv to do the flashing.

Flashing the BP50NB40-NB52 requires three flashing steps to decrypt the current firmware, load a full version with bootloader, and then to crossflash to BP60NB10 firmware.

Here are the steps:
1. Download v.1.17.6 from https://makemkv.com/download/old/
2. Extract to contents of the tarball to your directory of choice. I chose to extract to $HOME/makemkv
3. Navigate to the /bin subdirectory, and then to the directory that corresponds to your CPU.
4. Download sdf.bin and save to this directory.
5. Download the All You Need Firmware Pack and extract the BP50NB40-NB50 (HL-DT-ST-BD-RE_BP50NB40-NB50-1.03-NM00800-212005070917.bin) and the BP60NB10 (HL-DT-ST-BD-RE_BP60NB10-1.02-NM00800-212005070935.bin) firmware to this directory.

Now you should have the makemkvcon binary file, sdf.bin, and two firmware files all the in the same directory.

6. Determine your drive identifier with

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./makemkvcon f -l

On my machine this returns the following - with my drive identifiers in red:

Found 3 drives(s)
00: dev_21:2, /dev/sr0, /dev/sr0
ASUS_BW-16D1HT_3.10_211901041014_KLZO82B1850

01: dev_21:4, /dev/sr2, /dev/sr2
HL-DT-ST_BD-RE_BP60NB10_1.00_211711211720_K0DGAN13422

02: dev_21:3, /dev/sr1, /dev/sr1
ASUS_BW-16D1HT_3.02_211711241413_

Since the drive identifier for my LG drive is "dev_21:4" I'll use that in the following code examples. Obviously, you'll need to replace this with the appropriate drive identifier from your machine.

7. Flash the drive to BP50NB40-NB50-1.03MK with encryption:

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./makemkvcon f -d dev_21:4 -f sdf.bin rawflash enc -i HL-DT-ST-BD-RE_BP50NB40-NB50-1.03-NM00800-212005070917.bin

8. Flash the drive BP50NB40-NB50-1.03MK with bootloader:

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./makemkvcon f -d dev_21:4 -f sdf.bin rawflash full -i HL-DT-ST-BD-RE_BP50NB40-NB50-1.03-NM00800-212005070917.bin

9. Now the final flash to BP60NB10:

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./makemkvcon f -d dev_21:4 -f sdf.bin rawflash main -i HL-DT-ST-BD-RE_BP60NB10-1.02-NM00800-212005070935.bin

Your BP50NB40-NB52 is now crossflashed to a BP60NB10 and should have LibreDrive fully enable and be able to rip 4k/UHD discs. Of course, if you are finding this guide many months/years hence, file names may have changed.

[the_sunflower]

Bro, thank you SO much for this. IDK when you'll see my reply as new accounts go into the moderator queue, but this is EXACTLY what I needed.

makeMKV 1.18.1 works for most things, but it did indeed sit at 100% CPU time with the makemkvcon -f commands. Thankfully, this didn't hurt anything it seems. I build 1.17.6 in a prefix (since I'd rather keep my 1.18.1 install).

Using updated filenames for the Sept 2025 guide, here were my commands:

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Found 1 drives(s)
00: dev_21:1, /dev/sr0, /dev/sr0
  HL-DT-ST_BD-RE_BP50NB40_1.03_212107081603_<serial_number_of_drive>

My drive was built in May of 2025.

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/home/user/prefixhell/makemkv1.17.6/bin/makemkvcon f -d dev_21:1 -f sdf.bin rawflash enc -i DE_LG_BP50NB40-NB50_1.03_MK.bin
/home/user/prefixhell/makemkv1.17.6/bin/makemkvcon f -d dev_21:1 -f sdf.bin rawflash full -i DE_LG_BP50NB40-NB50_1.03_MK.bin
/home/user/prefixhell/makemkv1.17.6/bin/makemkvcon f -d dev_21:1 -f sdf.bin rawflash main -i DE_LG_BP60NB10_1.02-MK.bin

Note: after each makemkvcon command, the drive seems to need 1-2 minutes to reboot or something. There's no light/sound/indication, but running the commands back to back will give you an error. Wait a few minutes and try again and it should go through. I did NOT unplug the drive. Just leave it alone. It will come back.