Lite-On DH-401S reads PlayStation 3 discs

Up until now, it seemed like there was an extra layer of copy protection added to Sony PlayStation 3 game discs that prevented all PC Blu-ray drives from being able to recognise or read them.  Well, our review coordinator EMEA Jan has just discovered that his Lite-On DH-401S not only can recognise his PlayStation 3 discs, but can also browse through the complete directory structure and read content from them.  These same discs refuse to be recognised in any other Blu-ray drive he tried so far. 

While the disc content can be read in this drive, don’t get over excited just yet!  When he has tried writing the content onto a BD-RE disc, the PS3 just reported the disc as a data disc instead of a game disc.  On the other hand, by being able to read PS3 game discs this drive may bring us one step closer to the possibility of making backups of PS3 games, at least when it comes to reading the content of the game discs. 

It is unclear at this time if this is just a once off case; such as if Lite-On will plug this loophole in a new firmware update or future drives that will supersede this.  However, so far we have not been able to find any report of any other drive apart from the PS3’s own drive capable of reading the contents of PS3 game discs.

Further information including Windows Vista screenshots and a directory structure listing can be seen in this thread on our forum.  Feel free to comment or ask questions in this thread.

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