To start out, I'm UHD-ripping virgin trying to play catch-up as fast as I can, so please keep that in mind. I only found out that ripping UHDs was possible a month or so ago, but have had my hands tied doing other things until the past couple of days when I started reading in earnest. I found that I had a couple of drives that may not be the best, but I bought them a year or 2 ago and never used them. Two of them are LG WH14NS40's svc code ND50, ROM ver 1.02, so from what I read they should be good to go, and might even be able to cross-flash with ASUS firmware?
I also saw the door closing on the supply of 'friendly' drives, so yesterday and today I went to a couple of stores and searched through stacks of disc drives and found 2 Asus BW-16D1HT drives dated Feb 2017 that I found have ROM ver 3.00, and a 3rd Asus BW-16D1HT that was Jan 2018 and has ROM ver 3.02.
I had thought I would use Asus' official updater and update the 2 ver 3.00 drives to ver 3.02, but while reading this thread I saw a comment from another member that said in his case while ver 3.02 was faster, [he] was having more read errors than the slower ver 3.00; it wasn't really clear to me whether [he] was talking about using Asus firmware on an Asus drive, or if it was cross-flashing to another manufacturer/drive.
Any advice, pros and cons of which firmware to use for each drive for good performance without sacrificing stability will be appreciated. I don't have a lot of discs to rip now, and they'll always be a trickle, so speed is nice I don't what to sacrifice integrity or stability.
Also, there are a lot of LG WH16NS40 svc code NS50 drives out there with ROM ver 1.03 that are pretty reasonably priced now, do you think that they are the equal of drives with native ROM ver 1.02 after being retrograde flashed? Might be worth picking up a few spares now, in case LG comes out with a new drive that can't be downgraded.
Sorry for the long post, will keep it shorter in the future.
Edit: I just read in another thread that the v3.02 firmware for the Asus drive needs to be from January 17, 2018 or before; MakeMKV reports that the date of the v3.02 firmware on my drive is " 2117-11-15 17:16: "... is that really a typo and actually means "2017-11-15..." ?
The date of the archived file within the zip I downloaded from Asus (date modified) is 12/21/2017; not doing any upgrading until I find out more.
"Appears Asus has fixed the loophole silently on their most recent versions of 3.02. Downloading it directly from Asus or getting a recently manufactured drive (around January 2018+) with this firmware can break UHD friendly functionality.
You would need a version of the same firmware from January 17, 2018 or before. This has also been confirmed."
https://forum.redfox.bz/threads/anydvd-uhd-drives-and-firmware-questions.74495/page-11#post-487438
Post 213
I also saw the door closing on the supply of 'friendly' drives, so yesterday and today I went to a couple of stores and searched through stacks of disc drives and found 2 Asus BW-16D1HT drives dated Feb 2017 that I found have ROM ver 3.00, and a 3rd Asus BW-16D1HT that was Jan 2018 and has ROM ver 3.02.
I had thought I would use Asus' official updater and update the 2 ver 3.00 drives to ver 3.02, but while reading this thread I saw a comment from another member that said in his case while ver 3.02 was faster, [he] was having more read errors than the slower ver 3.00; it wasn't really clear to me whether [he] was talking about using Asus firmware on an Asus drive, or if it was cross-flashing to another manufacturer/drive.
Any advice, pros and cons of which firmware to use for each drive for good performance without sacrificing stability will be appreciated. I don't have a lot of discs to rip now, and they'll always be a trickle, so speed is nice I don't what to sacrifice integrity or stability.
Also, there are a lot of LG WH16NS40 svc code NS50 drives out there with ROM ver 1.03 that are pretty reasonably priced now, do you think that they are the equal of drives with native ROM ver 1.02 after being retrograde flashed? Might be worth picking up a few spares now, in case LG comes out with a new drive that can't be downgraded.
Sorry for the long post, will keep it shorter in the future.
Edit: I just read in another thread that the v3.02 firmware for the Asus drive needs to be from January 17, 2018 or before; MakeMKV reports that the date of the v3.02 firmware on my drive is " 2117-11-15 17:16: "... is that really a typo and actually means "2017-11-15..." ?
The date of the archived file within the zip I downloaded from Asus (date modified) is 12/21/2017; not doing any upgrading until I find out more.
"Appears Asus has fixed the loophole silently on their most recent versions of 3.02. Downloading it directly from Asus or getting a recently manufactured drive (around January 2018+) with this firmware can break UHD friendly functionality.
You would need a version of the same firmware from January 17, 2018 or before. This has also been confirmed."
https://forum.redfox.bz/threads/anydvd-uhd-drives-and-firmware-questions.74495/page-11#post-487438
Post 213
