DVDFab has announced it's working on a tool that should make it easy to downgrade the firmware of so-called “UHD friendly” Blu-ray drives. Currently, UHD friendly drives come with an unfriendly firmware by default. With DVDFab's upcoming tool it should be possible to flash all supported drives to UHD friendly drives.
Ultra HD Blu-ray friendly drives are Blu-ray drives that can read Ultra HD Blu-ray discs, but which don’t work with official software such as PowerDVD. However, they do work with AnyDVD, DeUHD, DVDFab and MakeMKV. UHD friendly drives combined with any of these applications, make it possible to create a backup of Ultra HD Blu-ray movie discs.
Only a handful of Ultra HD Blu-ray drives are UHD friendly, and they are able to copy UHD movies because they can be flashed with a firmware that uses a loophole in the AACS 2.0 protection. In the beginning all drives had this firmware installed when they were sold, nowadays most drives come with newer firmware in which the loophole is closed.
Fortunately, it's possible to downgrade the firmware of recently purchased drives to a firmware version that still contains the AACS 2.0 loophole. To do this, users have to flash their drive. This requires obtaining the correct firmware version and following some steps that might be hard for the average computer user.
Users can currently obtain Ultra HD Blu-ray drives with the correct firmware installed from a handful of sources, but DVDFab has now announced it is also working on a solution.
“DVDFab has a solution on the way — we’re working on an extremely easy-to-use Firmware Downgrading Tool to help you dump the current firmware on your 4K UHD drive, so that you can make legal backups of your expensive and precious 4K Blu-ray discs,” the software company writes in its newsletter.
“This upcoming handy utility will be surprisingly friendly to non-tech savvies, even green hands. You don’t need a profound knowledge to perform the downgrading process”, the company added.
Users will need to be the owner of one of the drives that DVDFab lists as compatible. That list contains many of the popular Ultra HD Blu-ray drives from both LG and Asus.
Once you've such a drive in your hands, and DVDFab has released the tool, it's should be very easy to flash the correct firmware to the drive, that will guarantee it becomes an UHD friendly drive.
DVDFab has not released any information on when the tool will become available, nor anything about the price.
Also check out our The ultimate Ultra HD Blu-ray ‘friendly’ drive list – with recommendation of best | Discuss this in our Ultra HD Blu-ray Forum.
Thanks to member ILLP for reporting!
