The Firmware Page

I'm looking to replace the stock optical drive in my laptop.

Is there any slimtype drive that could be considered best, eg, that MCSE have full or close to full support for? I want to remove riplock and region if possible. Any hints?

Slimtype drives are notoriously slow, riplock removing ususally gives nothing if its even possible...

Maybe you can use a slimtype drive from Liteon, would make things easy.
BUT, that depends on your Laptop / maker and drive support.

I just got a broken laptop from a friend, and it had a HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GT20N in good condition (broke just after the end of warranty) and this drive can both have riplock removed and rpc2 auto reset, so now I'm using it. Working fine.

Sorry to revive this old topic, but since my question is on-topic I hope it's ok.
I'm looking for an external slimtype blu-ray writer and have the option on the following models:
Samsung SE-506AB
LG BP40NS20

Essential to me is that I can get it RPC-1 and I've browsed the site and google a bit, but haven't found a patched firmware. There isn't any yet?
Or anyone have another suggestion for a slimtype blu-ray?

There aren't any patched firmwares available yet for any of them.

The Samsung is a good drive but the chance of a RPC1 firmware for it is very slim I would say.

The LG drive is relatively new, so I haven't seen any quality scans for it yet and I can't say how good it is, but in terms of LG drives you stand a much better chance for a region free firmware (typically an auto-RPC2 patch). If you look around, the LG drives are pretty much the only BluRay drives which can be region patched at the moment. I would also add that since there aren't any firmwares available for this drive yet, you'll have to dump the firmware from it yourself and make it available on the forum before someone can patch it. Maybe I should also mention that LG's firmware support for their slim external drives is historically speaking very poor, so don't expect (m)any firmware updates...

Get the 506 and AnyDVD and all is fixed.

Thanks for the replies.
I've been out of the loop for a while and I still have the thought that for dvd (not blu-ray) a drive has to be RPC-1 patched. I used DVD Genie back in the days for import dvd's, but I still needed to flash the drive. With AnyDVD this is not the case?

EDIT:
Reading their site now:

Guess so then
Though my previous experience with AnyDVD HD and my internal blu-ray drive was very unstable... (but that has been some years).

There is no better option in case of software...

You can get their trial to test it first.

I recently bought a LG bp40ns20 for the solely purpose of backing up my BDs movies into my external hardisk using AnyDVD and Aiseesoft Blu Ray Ripper. I like to make full HD mp4 movies so that my little son do not handle the disks at all.
I have no big complaints apart obviously it takes ages to rip a 1080 movie due to riplock, as far as I've read. I do hope there'll be a patched firmware soon. Anyways I think it was worth the money, and to boot is compatible to M-Disk, tho I haven't tried it yet.

This is not the right place to make a request, if you want to make one.

Newer drives from LG seem all to have the M-Disc ability built in....

In case of speed, what can you expect from an SLIMTYPE drive, even if it is external or internal. Not much!!

@adolfofranco

As I said earlier:

Use DevilsClaw's Renesas Flasher (viewtopic.php?f=2&t=46137) to dump the main and the core firmware of your drive and then post a request for a patched firmware in the appropriate forum section (viewforum.php?f=32) along with a link to your firmware dump (you can upload it to a free host somewhere and post the link).

Yeah, please do as cvs pointed out. Thanks.

Hello. No, it was not a request, only my thoughts on the drive itself!
On topic, I'd like to add that the LG drive's body seems kind of floppy and fragile, at least least when compared to my slim Samsung external DVD burner.
Anywayz I'll try to dump the firmware, thanks for the tip