New to the UHD game - issues and questions

[DQ]

So I am very new to the UHD situation. I recently flashed my drive over and bought a single UHD disk as a proof of concept.

While everything seemed to work initially with AnyDVD and my disc (I even ripped a playlist with handbrake) I am now having issues. My drive no longer seems to recognize the disc with our without AnyDVD.

I am not sure what is needed but here is some info if anyone can lend a hand.

- Drive -> WH16NS40 with 1959 Chip flashed to MK 1.05 for that drive
- Disc -> Hellboy 2004 4K USA

- Current Issue -> drive no longer recognizes the disc at all and I have cleaned it and it is brand new

What I have done?
- rebooted
- powered off
- taken the disc in and out several times
- cleaned the disc with warm soap and water

Footnote - Post drive flash I did copy several Blu-Rays as a test without issue

Thank you

EDIT#1 - Well I had a sneaking suspicion something was amiss. I just popped in a regular Blu-Ray and it is not recognized either. Something I should add is somewhere in this process I did change the Region of my player because it was not set and AnyDVD always complained about that. I am region 1.

EDIT#2 - My PC won't even boot now if there is a disc in the drive. That's really odd.

EDIT#3 - I can confirm my drive no longer reads any disc although it does still present itself to Windows as normal. AnyDVD will either day it's disabled for my drive or that there is no disc inserted.

 

[DQ]

@coopervid , I was thinking of reflashing this drive to a different firmware to assist my issue. I believe you have mentioned more than once on this forum that one of the ASUS firmwares worked better? Can you confirm that for me and let confirm if it is indeed BW-16D1HT that should be the replacement? Thank you.

PS - I am currently on firmware
"HL-DT-ST-BD-RE_WH16NS40-NS50-1.05-NM00900-212005061440"

 

[coopervid]

Did you follow my guide?

https://forum.redfox.bz/threads/guide-for-flashing-uhd-drives-for-anydvd.79023/

Yes, that ASUS software can be flashed to your drive. But before you should solve your problems. The original firmware on your drive is or was encrypted.

 

[DQ]

Did you follow my guide?

https://forum.redfox.bz/threads/guide-for-flashing-uhd-drives-for-anydvd.79023/

Yes, that ASUS software can be flashed to your drive. But before you should solve your problems. The original firmware on your drive is or was encrypted.

Yes sir, I most certainly followed your guide.

I was not encrypted initially because I was on 1.03 or at least that was my understanding that 1.03 was not encrypted.

EDIT - I did flash it to the Asus firmware (without issue) but the drive still behaves the same not recognizing any disc. The more I think about it the more that it seem this behavior began when I set the region for the drive. Hopefully that was not a fatal mistake on my part.

EDIT2 - Thinking back to when I did pull a playlist off of the UHD disk the once, the drive scanned the playlist list very slowly and made A LOT of noise doing so. However once it got down to creating the video file it was normal. But again every playlist scan took forever and was very noisy as if the drive was struggling.

EDIT3 - Starting to think I should just get a new Asus drive (BW-16D1HT) and be done with it since it seems this drive no longer functions.

 

[DQ]

The LG drive refuses to work at all. I have gotten a lot of mileage off of it so I just ordered a new Asus BW-16D1HT. With that said if I can still "fix" this drive it would be great if someone can help out with that as I am out of answers. I am assuming that it was on the brink of failure (it has had occasional issues in the past) and scanning the 4k disk just finished it off. I am of course open other possibilities. Thank you.

 

[coopervid]

Trying to clean the laser lens is pretty much the last resort I can recommend. Buy a CD lens cleaner disc. Yes, CD. The drive might still read these and the BluRay DVD and CD lasers are at the same physical position. If that fails I guess your drive is dead. Try first if it still reads CDs.

 

[DQ]

Trying to clean the laser lens is pretty much the last resort I can recommend. Buy a CD lens cleaner disc. Yes, CD. The drive might still read these and the BluRay DVD and CD lasers are at the same physical position. If that fails I guess your drive is dead. Try first if it still reads CDs.

Appreciate the info. It going bad would explain a few things. I have had a number of discs in the past I had to read on a secondary drive because it would not. So it might be the UHD disk was just the last straw.

I do plan on flashing the MK firmware to the Asus drive when it comes in and going on from there with the UHD discs.

Thanks again for your help. The info you have provided on this forum (and others) has been invaluable.

 

[coopervid]

De nada! You are very welcome!

 

[DQ]

De nada! You are very welcome!

Hey man just 1 last question as I try to fully understand this process. It "seemed" that my drive was working fine post firmware update even for UHD. Although it did sound like it was struggling with UHD, it was taking forever to read all the playlists and do the initial scan. However it was functioning UNTILL I set the region on it. Is that just pure coincidence or did that have something to do with it going non-functional ? Thank you.

 

[coopervid]

Setting the region should not have any influence on the functionality.
If you have any discs you burned with your drive try to read such BD-R, DVD-R and CD-R. The drive has 3 lasers for each type. Sometimes one of those goes bad. Sometimes only the laser lens is polluted. Then the cleaning disc helps.

 

[Ch3vr0n]

A drive hardware region only comes into play for DVD's. For (UHD) BD's, it's the discs code that checks the region of the player.

 

[DQ]

@coopervid
@Ch3vr0n

Thank you both for your input and knowledge. It is very much appreciated.

I have tried to read both UHD and Blu-Ray after "the incident" and neither type of disc gets detected at all. When I put a disc in it sounds like it tries to read it but it never gets detected. In fact after it tries and stops, if I try to "open" the drive in windows it ejects the tray telling me to put in a disc.

Just to be very transparent (and in the hopes it assists someone else) this was the order of operation:

- flashed drive with MK firmware (successful)
- tried to rip a playlist with Handbrake on a UHD (successful)
- realized I ripped the wrong playlist and went to try again but this time used CloneBD (disc initially read but I stopped it to try different codec)
- some where in this area I set the region on the drive through windows
- tried to read UHD disc (failure)
- tried to read Blu-ray (failure)
- flashed to Asus MK (successful)
- but still no disk will read

a few important observations:
- the drive has previously on rare occasion had trouble reading discs (I would use another drive and they would read fine)
- when scanning that UHD disc initially (like Handbrake does) it was making pretty awful noises like it was really struggling and this process took like 20mins

My conclusion:

-I have given up on the drive (unless someone has any ideas) thinking it was on the brink beforehand and the UHD disk just sent it over the edge. I have one of the Asus drives on the recommended list coming in tomorrow.

 

[DQ]

For anyone following this or in the event it's ever helpful for someone here is the conclusion of my drive saga.

It appears the Blu-Ray laser went out on my drive. I concluded this (with tons of help from coopervid) because it would read DVDs but not Blu-Rays or UHD discs. It simply would not see them at all.
This is not totally surprising as it has had some issues in the past with Blu-Ray and I put a lot of discs through it in the 3 years I had it.

I purchased a new drive, flashed it to MK and I am reading Blu-Rays and UHD discs with no issue again.