Asus BC-12D2HT unable to read UHD blu-ray discs

[Jabukon]

Hi, I have an ASUS BC-12D2HT drive which is supposed to be UHD friendly. I bought it in 2013 and never updated the firmware. Windows device manager says the driver version is 10.0.17134.137 which is from 2006, but thats probably just the driver not the firmware on the drive itself..

I inserted two different UHD blu-ray discs, Interstellar and Star Wars the last Jedi, and both did not even get recognized. Is there a process I have to do to make it work?

I found on the DVDFab homepage that this drive is UHD friendly when bought after 2015, with firmware 3.00. (https://de.dvdfab.cn/4k-uhd-drives.htm)

The ASUS driver I can download from the ASUS page directly is version 3.01, so probably a driver that would disable the UHD-friendly capabilities?

Any help would be great!

[st4evr]

I found on the DVDFab homepage that this drive is UHD friendly when bought after 2015, with firmware 3.00. (https://de.dvdfab.cn/4k-uhd-drives.htm)

Well... you found the answer to your own question over at that DVDFab link. Not sure what other answer you are expecting here. That manufactured date is a requirement for all Friendly drives due to specific hardware requirements that were only implemented on drives manufactured after that date. It’s not just a DVDFab requirement.

Searching this forum and Google will yield further discussions on the matter that date back a year+. That topic has been dicussed thousands of times here and other similar forums already.

Unless you want to brick your drive like many others have done, your best bet is to move on and buy a newer compatible drive and save yourself the headache.

[Jabukon]

Oh so its a hardware limitation? I thought since the model name was identical I could update the firmware to 3.0 and it'd work. If there's really no way to do it I guess the only way is really to buy a new one (or stick with 1080p BDs)..

[Woodstock]

Model numbers are, at best, a confusing guide, because the same drive model can cover a number of hardware configurations. I have an LG drive that is nominally on the list, but it isn't the correct "Service code", and the hardware inside is not the same as the same model # built after 2016.