The Firmware Page

Hi all, I have spent an absolute age reading through this site over the last month. It is full of very useful information so I thank all those that contribute and maintain this site.

I currently have a 24" iMac (amoung others) and it would appear as though a firmware has not been release for this yet to enable anyone to patch it. That's fine, I have decided to buy an external drive (I could do with another drive anyway) but this is where I get a little confused. I can see the advise is to buy ANY Liteon, LG, Pioneer (and i think there maybe another) as these can all be made RPC-1; however I found a few threads from people buying new drives and finding out that a firmware has not yet been released.

I found a specific cheap LG Drive (LG GE20LU10) but the first post I found stated that the firmware was not out (or was out but MCSE didnt support it) and I couldn't work out if it was now supported or not (I have a feeling it maybe from the final post I saw, but it wasn't conclusive).

Anyway, onto the crux; can anyone recommend an external DVD drive that they are sure can be flashed with an RPC-1 firmware?

Many, many thanks for you help

Paul

this drive is supported by MCSE, and can be patched

Check this out, some drive recommendations in there:
viewtopic.php?f=30&t=45298

OK, well I finally bought the LG GE20NU10 - £39 from Currys.

Firmware update posted on this board did not recognise my drive to enable an update (either pre or post MCSE)

I found an official firmware upgrade here: http://www.lge.com/uk/support/product/s ... ct-profile

(If the link is broken just google LG GE20NU10 firmware and look for the link to LGE.com page)

I ran this app first (pre MCSE) to see if it would detect the drive and it would. I then ran the firmware through MCSE selecting RPC Reset.

I then ran the update against my drive (took about 30 seconds - 1 minute). The drive rebooted and I moved to my mac and I ran DVD Info X on it. This told me the drive was RPC2 and that I had 5 changes set and that the region was no set. I then placed a Region 2 into the drive. Mac OSX asked me to confirm the region selection (R2) which I did and I played some of the movie with the OS X DVD player. I then ejected the disc and ran DVD info X again, when to my surprise it claims the drive is now RPC1 !

I have yet to to some testing on switching from R1 to R2 discs but when I do I will post another update

Paul

OK, I think I had tested this to death now. Although I would say the results are actually a little confusing, but let me say up front that if you follow what I have stated above you will end up with a working drive capable of playing discs from all regions.

The drive is external and externally powered. I flashed the drive before setting the region, so each time I reboot the drive it returns to it's factory condition.

On several occasions after rebooting I didn't have to set a region at all, it just switched without prompting.
At various times, and I can't find the pattern, the region count would simply return to factory conditions. It is almost as if the drive goes to sleep and when it wakes it has reset it counter.
On 2 occasions I ran the region change count down to 0 and without needing to reboot the drive the next change simply reset back to 5 available changes.

So, my final thoughts are. The drive works perfectly well for me. I have watched 3 films all the way through from 2 different regions and I have switched regions on many occasions (over 30 now) and can still switch at will. I have ripped two films using handbrake and the results are as expected.

I hope you have fund this helpful.

Paul

well yeah, this is what Autoreset firmware does, its nothing new, its operating as it should

Is it?
So by design the firmware here is supposed to act inconsistently? Following the responses to other posts in this forum it would appear that auto reset is supposed to reset the region count when powered off; not just at random.

ala introduced the new patch recently, where by if you had no changes it would reset back to factory defaults