Skip to content
freemkv freemkv

Unlocked drives

Some optical drives can run modified (“unlocked”) firmware in place of the manufacturer’s stock firmware. Unlocking lifts restrictions the manufacturer built in, most notably rip-lock (the artificial speed cap), as well as the host-certificate requirement, so ripping is faster and more reliable. If you rip a lot of discs, an unlocked drive is the nicer experience.

You don’t need an unlocked drive (stock drives work), but a supported unlocked drive is the smoothest path, especially for 4K UHD.

Which drives does freemkv support?

Section titled “Which drives does freemkv support?”

MediaTek-based drives

Section titled “MediaTek-based drives”

The large majority of consumer Blu-ray drives use a MediaTek chipset, and freemkv supports them. This covers ~200 drive + firmware combinations, including:

  • LG: most LG Blu-ray writers. In Windows your drive may show up as “HL-DT-ST”; that’s LG (Hitachi-LG Data Storage), not a different brand. This is the most common family by far.
  • ASUS: the BW-16 series (e.g. BW-16D1HT, BW-16D1X-U) and BC-12 series. These are often LG hardware under an ASUS badge.
  • HP: a handful of rebadged BD-RE / BD-RW models.

If you own an LG, ASUS, or HP Blu-ray drive from roughly 2012-2020, it’s very likely supported.

Work in Progress

Section titled “Work in Progress”

Pioneer drives (the BDR-… series, built on a different chipset) are not supported yet; support is actively being worked on. Any unsupported drive falls back to the stock-drive AACS workflow.

How do I tell what I have?

Section titled “How do I tell what I have?”

Check the drive’s model number; it’s on the label, or in Windows under Device Manager → DVD/CD-ROM drives:

  • LG / “HL-DT-ST” / ASUS BW-16 / HP BD → MediaTek platform → likely supported.
  • Pioneer BDR-… → work in progress.

”It works in other software but not freemkv”

Section titled “”It works in other software but not freemkv””

If a drive rips fine in some other tool but not here, it’s almost always a firmware-support difference: different programs cover different drive families and firmware versions. freemkv’s supported set is the list above, and it’s growing with every release.

Help us add your drive

Section titled “Help us add your drive”

Even if your drive already works, please share it. Every profile we collect helps us add features, handle edge cases, and support more drives. Whether yours works, doesn’t, or you just want to help, send us its firmware profile; it takes one command:

Terminal window
freemkv info disc:// --share --mask

This captures your drive’s identity and capabilities so we can add or verify support. --mask hides your serial number. freemkv can submit the profile straight to GitHub for you, or just print it so you can copy-paste it into a new issue. Every profile helps us extend support to more drives.