LG Electronics WH16NS40 16X Blu-ray/DVD/CD Multi compatible Internal SATA Rewriter Drive, BDXL, M-DISC Support, Black

As I write this review, Amazon is currently not offering this drive for sale themselves and only has it available via resellers.If your only question is "Is this drive reliable for writing to CD/DVD/BD/BD-XL discs?" then the answer is "Yes". If your question is "Can this drive have the firmware downgraded to UHD friendly firmware for ripping?" then the answer is also "Yes", but you're not going to like what I had to do to accomplish this.This drive shipped to me with firmware version 1.05, which is encrypted and is not considered to be "UHD friendly" for ripping UHD discs. Please note that I can't guarantee you that if you buy this drive and follow my directions that you will have success downgrading the firmware. I have over 30 years of IT work experience and I still had problems downgrading the firmware.First I tried using the SDFtool program that MakeMKV recommended. It failed. It did start up, but it displayed weirdly, not looking much like it was supposed to, although it did try to patch the LG drive. It failed with some kind of weird 5-6 digit hex error code. I didn't write down the code because there is no way to look up the code and see what it means. Not sure what the writer of SDFtool was thinking of in having it display this kind of error code. Then I did some internet searching and one guy swore that you couldn't use the graphical SDFTool but if you did command line patching instead, it would work. It didn't. Generated a different 5-6 digit hex code for failure. I checked and the firmware remained on 1.05. At this point I am running out of options, so I found that DVDFab says it can patch the firmware for you, but the tool to do so costs about $100. Sigh. I bought a package of this tool and UHD ripping software and hoped for the best. And spent a lot more than $100 on said package. On my first attempt to patch, it did start and seemed to run OK without generating an error code but the program became a run away and never ended. After 30 minutes I tried everything I could to cancel the program and nothing worked. I even tried throwing the power switch on LG drive and the program still refused to stop. DVDFab documentation said it should only take 2-3 minutes to patch. So I forced a hardware interrupt and rebooted my PC. At this point I think the LG drive was actually successfully patched, but I forgot to check, so I ran the DVDFab patching program again. Same response - it started and after 2-3 minutes it ran away, never to end. I left it alone for 30 more minutes and forced another hardware interrupt/reboot. At this point I remembered to check the firmware and it was downgraded to 1.02. The drive has worked flawlessly since the downgrade and can rip UHD discs successfully to my hard drive. Note that I used Vantec external device enclosures with a power supply on my BD drives. Some people have reported having problems changing firmware on BD drives in Vantec enclosures, but it did work OK for me. If you're not sure if paying this money to DVDFab and trying this is for you, MakeMKV does list some resellers who downgrade firmware on drives they sell. This drive has done everything I need it to do so I do recommend buying it.

No surprise here. I had hoped it might work on the XP side of my PC, but I knew it likely would only work on the Windows 7 side. XP doesn’t even recognize the drive. Keep in mind that Windows 7 and newer don’t show an optical drive if there is no media in it. So if it doesn’t appear on the GUI after install, try inserting any optical disc into it. Bought this to burn Blu-Ray discs, and it has performed adequately. It doesn’t come with software, so you may have to buy software to read Blu-Ray media as older software might only read DVD formats. LG makes solid hardware, so I’m confident I will be quite happy with this product.

Works as expected, but my Blu-Ray software player (WinDVD) still doesn’t play my Blu-Ray DVDs, which I hoped this new drive could fix.

This thing is really great and really fast. I use it to rip my blurays and DVDs to my personal library. It works well for that, though when it says x16 speed, don't think that all blu-rays will read at x16 speed. Many discs are limited and I have never actually seen it go above x11. Overall, super satisfied and its a really great drive.

Paired this drive with the Unitek SATA to USB 3.0 adapter model Y-3324 and is working flawlessly with it. I was able to flash it for use with Makemkv using the SDFTool Flasher in order to be able to read 4k Blu-rays. I have not had any issue reading normal 1080p BDs, 4k BDs, and even DVDs (god they look terrible on modern displays) but there is the option for the old schools that still use DVDs. The read speeds I don't have any complain about it, using the Unitek adapter I am getting speeds of 12-35 MB/s using the back I/O panel of my desktop computer. Of course the back panel must have USB 3.0 or greater to achieve those speeds.Overall I am satisfied with this little boy and for anyone looking for using MakeMKV, I highly recommend buying this drive and once it is flashed to the 1.02 MK version, it is a breeze porting your physical Blu-Ray and 4Ks library into the digital format.

I bought a 5 hour French silent film on Blu-ray last year that had no English subtitles. The film was easy enough to follow, even without understanding French, but being retired and needing a winter project, I decided to convert its 600+ French subtitles into English. I rarely watch a movie on my PC, so I didn’t want to spend a lot of money replacing its DVD player with a BD player. After some research, I decided on this LG player. Install was easy, unplugging the old player and using the same cables for the LG. I didn’t even have to unplug them from the motherboard.Since the LG does not come with software, I had 2 choices: use free software like vlc, or purchase one. As I really dislike vlc, but didn't want to spend loads for high end, I spent a couple of days researching and went with videobyte. The software and LG work very well together playing Region 1 or Region 2 dvd’s and blu-rays. The LG player and software got a workout as my project required the LG to be running, with frequent long pauses, along with a Word document and 4 France translator internet sites open. It was a tedious project, taking over a month, while testing my patience, my PC’s capability, the LG and software. High praise for the LG and software I chose.My PC specs for those interested: I built it 10 years ago. It still has the original Sabertooth 990FX R2 motherboard with FX8350 processor. I’ve kept it alive this long by increasing memory to 16GB, upgrading video cards (currently GTX 1650), and adding an 860 EVO SSD when upgrading to Win10. My original WD 1 TB drive became my backup drive.