Ripping my 4k UHD BluRay discs with the Verbatim 43888

Photo by cottonbro studio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-person-in-black-sweater-holding-compact-disc-5473402/

I own some 4k UHD BluRay discs and like all my DVDs I wanted to have them as plain files on my NAS. Enabling me to watch them anytime via my TV/Laptop/PC/Smartphone. After a bit of googling I found out that the Verbatim 43888 external DVD/BluRay drive (Amazon) is compatible to LibreDrive off the shelf and hence able to rip UHD BluRays.

What LibreDrive is, is described in the MakeMKV forum, but the important part is:

A LibreDrive is a mode of operation of an optical disc drive (DVD, Blu-ray or UHD) when the data on the disc are accessed directly, without any restrictions or transformations enforced by drive firmware. A LibreDrive would never refuse to read the data from the disc or declare itself “revoked”. LibreDrive compatible drive is required to read UHD discs.

For many drives this requires a flashing of the firmware in order to work with LibreDrive. The Verbatim 43888 does not. It works out of the box. However you have to pay attention on where to buy the drive. Turns out there are three caveats when buying this drive.

1. The 43888 drives sold in EU and US are different. The US version uses a chipset which is NOT LibreDrive compatible. And as Verbatim solely uses Amazon to sell it's drives you have to explicitly switch to Amazon Germany to buy the drive. This, of course, makes it more expensive and people not living in Gemany/EU should consider other alternatives.
   If you are in doubt, this is the link I used to buy the Verbatim 43888 https://www.amazon.de/dp/B07MTP9VKX/ and the model number is listed down below in the technical details.
2. Do NOT update the firmware of the Verbatim 43888. It uses a Pioneer chipset and in 2022 Pioneer released new firmwares for lots of drives which sole intention was to cripple LibreDrive support. While I do not know for sure that the new firmware for the 43888 would remove the LibreDrive support I also wasn't keen on spending 100€ and updating the firmware just to have a drive which can't do what I bought it for..
   The MakeMKV forum has a long thread on the topic where the MakeMKV developers write a little bit about the challenges and current status to get those drives working again: Pioneer firmware update February 2023
3. When buying from Amazon: Pay attention you actually buy new and not used hardware. Turns out Amazon tries to sell you their so-called "Amazon Warehouse deals" first. These are often products who were returned to Amazon for various reasons.
   The first drive I bought was an Amazon Warehouse deal and the drive wouldn't even be recognized by neither Windows nor Linux. The LED didn't even turn green. So yeah, looks like Amazon doesn't do a good job in ensuring their Warehouse deals are actually in working condition..

Apart from that I often read that external drives in general tend to be more frail then internal drives. And my experience supports this.

• The first drive I bought was defect, wouldn't even turn own.
• The second drive I bought from Amazon was new hardware, not an Amazon Warehouse deal, but made loud clicking noises and wouldn't read BluRays. DVDs worked somewhat with lots of Read Errors. Even called the Verbatim support and they just said I should return it. And that is, what I did.
• Drive 3 was damaged while being delivered to me. 😆
• The fourth drive finally arrived in working condition and does what it should.

All in all: This is what MakeMKV should display when you have a Verbatim 43888 with working firmware:

Drive Information
OS device name: \Device\CdRom0
Current profile: BD-ROM
Manufacturer: PIONEER
Product: BD-RW BDR-UD04
Revision: 1.14
Serial number: REMOVED
Firmware date: 2020-06-15
Bus encryption flags: 1B
Highest AACS version: 78

LibreDrive Information
Status: Enabled
Drive platform: RS8A10
Firmware name: PIONEER BDR-US04
Firmware type: Original (unpatched)
Firmware version: 1.14
DVD all regions: Yes
BD raw data read: Yes
BD raw metadata read: Yes
Unrestricted read speed: Yes