Trying to make sense of it all [Archive]

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TheNut

22nd November 2008, 14:40

So I went out and bought an LG GBW H20L blu-ray burner primarily to burn homemade productions, but also enjoy a blu-ray movie every now and then. So I picked up some movies (see details below) to test this hardware out. Installation was a breeze and Windows picked up everything, but to no avail the disk always shows up as empty when I insert a blu-ray disc. Explorer shows nothing, and neither does PowerDVD (8.0 Ultra). CDs and DVDs work fine, not so with blu-ray. Ok, so I figure the drivers are bad or the hardware is shot. Before I jump to those conclusions, I remember reading about AnyDVD a while back. Although my PC meets the secure requirements to run blu-ray content, I decided to give it a shot anyway. So all that said and done, AnyDVD is installed, but still no disc is present. Now here's the interesting part. While Windows and PowerDVD refuse to play nice, AnyDVD on the other hand detects a blu-ray disc! Ok, so maybe my hardware isn't shot then. So I went ahead and copied the blu-ray disc to my PC with protection still intact and with it removed. Mounting the image reports the disc is corrupted. So I don't know, out of options here ;\

So there's my story. I'm pretty techy with stuff and I know the ins and outs with DVDs and CDs, but blu-ray is still a new'ish thing for me. Now I don't if perhaps I missed something to cause this weird disc not found issue or if perhaps this is some sick joke the industry is playing on me, but I'm finding it bizarre that AnyDVD has no problems copying the disc and yet Windows can't even detect it.

Anyone care to shed some light on this?

Here are the details if it will help you help me make sense of this.

Hardware
Blu-ray Player: LB GBW H20L, stock firmware (as far as I've seen, there are no updates for this model).
Video: Asus GeForce 9800 GT with DVI hookup and with 180.48 drivers
Memory: 2GB

Software
OS: Windows XP SP3
Player: Power DVD 8.0 Ultra (tried this even before installing AnyDVD)
AnyDVD: 6.4.8.5
Virtual Drive: Alcohol 52% (perhaps this may cause problems?)

Blu-ray Movies
I-Robot (AVC) and Kingdom of Heaven (MPEG 2).

Adbear

22nd November 2008, 14:51

you need to install the toshiba udf 2.5 driver under XP if you want to be able to browse the file structure on the disc (UDF 2.5 driver is built in under Vista)

damnskippy

22nd November 2008, 15:02

Though PDVD should still be able to play the disk even if you can't browse it because you do not have the UDF file system drivers installed.

What version (build) of PDVD?

Adbear

22nd November 2008, 15:09

Update to latest PDVD 8, roll back the Nvidia drivers as I've seen others having problems with the latest ones, get rid of Alcohol and use Virtual Clone drive to mount the images

TheNut

22nd November 2008, 15:27

Well, good news. After uninstalling Alcohol (and trying out Virtual Clone Drive), everything is working fine. Windows is picking up the disc format now and I can also play the movies fine. I also downgraded to PDVD 7.3 that came with the OEM CD.

Long live the sheep? ;)

Adbear

22nd November 2008, 15:47

you know there are updates for the oem version available from the cyberlink site

fast eddie

22nd November 2008, 19:01

fast eddie

22nd November 2008, 19:15

@thenut

I have this unit LG GBW-H20L for approximately three months now. Works great.

Here are some concerns (rumors) about LG products.

1. Using any other ripping program (except AnyDVD HD) on a source Blu-ray disk with the latest copy protections, is causing the disk not to load on GBW-H20L and other LG reader/burners. The other ripping programs tries to load the disk for approximately 2 seconds and then goes blank. This only appears to be happening on the latest protected Blu-ray disks.

2. I have heard rumors about LG is going to put restructions on their Blu-ray readers/burners on what Blu-ray disks the unit will play. Maybe not be able to play homemade compliant Blu-ray structure anymore on BD-5, BD-9, BD-R, BD-RE. This would be done by way of firmware updates.
So you might want to be concerned about doing firmware updates on this unit when they come out and read the firmware change log very carefully before you update the firmware.

:agree:
Sounds like LG is climbing in bed with the MPAA

Adbear

22nd November 2008, 19:30

@adbear

There are no firmware updates for the LG GBW-H20L and haven't been for approximately 3 months.

The latest LG ODD auto firmware update
program version 8.01.0919.01 which I have loaded on my computer from their web-site.
The latest firmware version is YG01 and that is the version that came with the unit from the factory, and to my knowledge there have not been ANY updates on this unit.

I never said anything about firmware updates, I was referring to OEM PDVD updates, that's why I said they were available from the Cyberlink site and not the LG site.

I also don't see them disabling reading and writing of BDMV discs otherwise that would stop all those people who write their own discs using the BDMV structure from being able to write or play them in their PC drive which would be hundreds of thousands of people world wide who would be well within their rights to demand a refund