Users who have purchased the LG Blu-ray burner with a firmware version (1.03) that prevents the drive from reading Ultra HD Blu-ray discs, can now downgrade the firmware. Also users who flashed the newer firmware themselves and want to downgrade can use the method.
(image credit: czary2mary1)
The method involves using a patched flashing tool which was created by an user of the Redfox forums called TeddyRaspin. The patched tool, together with firmware version 1.02 of the LG BH16NS55 need to be copied to a bootable USB stick. After that some instructions need to be typed to make a backup of the current firmware, to erase the EEPROM and to do the actual flashing of the older firmware version. Also a patch for laser calibration data has been made available by TeddyRaspin.
Downgrading the firmware of the LG BH16NS55 is useful because it's a so-called Ultra HD Blu-ray 'friendly' drive. Such a drive is a type of Blu-ray drive category introduced by Russian software company Arusoft, developers of the popular Ultra HD Blu-ray ripping software, DeUHD.
The 'Ultra HD Blu-ray friendly' category has been adopted by insiders and consists of only Asus and LG drives (and some Asus drives are actually rebranded/rebadged/OEM LG drives).
These drives don't fully support the AACS 2.0 Ultra HD Blu-ray copy protection and therefore don't work with officially certified Ultra HD Blu-ray software like PowerDVD. However, for some reason, non-certified software is able to read the filesystem of Ultra HD Blu-ray discs with these 'friendly' drives. And when supplied with the correct keys (such as the recently leaked AACS 2.0 Volume Keys), a combination of the Ultra HD Blu-ray friendly drives and the correct software, makes it possible to rip Ultra HD Blu-ray movies. This is a major loophole in the AACS 2.0 copy protection with unintended effects.
LG has released firmware updates that close this loophole. Once that the newer update is installed, there is normally no way back. But when using patched flashtools and patched firmware there are users who successfully went back to an older firmware after which their drive could be used for Ultra HD Blu-ray ripping again. A similar method is also in the works by the guys from CDRinfo.pl for the LG WH16NS40 Blu-ray burner.
Discuss this in our Ultra HD Blu-ray Forum.
Update: Myce Forum user czary2mary has posted another method that also works for other Asus and LG Blu-ray burners.
