I started to notice that ever more frequently my 558 wouldn´t accept my homeburned dvds. That was surely a royal pain but it got worse and worse and suddenly it wouldn´t even read my store-bought dvds. Something had to be done. I browsed through the forums on http://www.mpcclub.com and realised that this was a common problem relating to the poor quality of the toshiba drive that is in the 558. I now had two choices it seemed. I could RMA my unit, wait at least 4 weeks and then get it back with a new toshiba drive just waiting to break. My other choice was to replace the drive myself....Guess which option I choosed :-)
This is how I went about it:
First I went and bought myself an ASUS DVD-E616P1 or so I thought, the dolts at the computer store sold me an DVD-E616A it might not seem like a big dealt but it is since you need to firmware flash it so the drive becomes Rpc1 that is region free. So I started again. I had a Benq DW1620 in my computer that I was going to change anyway so I went here http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_search.php to see if it was possible to flash this drive, and yes it was so I went to work.
It is a good idea to go here http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_search.php and see if the drive you are contemplating is flashable.
So bring out the toolkit. The first obstacle is the warrant seal. I obviously didn´t care about the warranty but if you do it is possible to remove it with a thin sharp knife
The casing is attached with two screws on each side and two in the back
So of with the casing and see whats inside
I was a little surprised to see that I had a western digital hdd inside but thats just good news I guess
time to remove the cradle, the powercable to the dvd felt like it was glued in there
after you remove the cables you need to flip the player and remove the 4 screws which attach the cradle to the casing. It´s a good idea to keep a hand on the cradle while removing the screws it probably won´t fall out but better safe than sorry.
So then the cradle was out
the player looking kinda empty
time to connect the new drive to my computer and flash it to make it region free. To make sure that the drive really is regionfree you can use a program called Discinfo which you can get here http://discinfo.rpc1.org/, this will show you some usefull info about the drive. Also remember to make the DVD-drive master.
Remember to remove the front of the new drive before trying to mount it in the 558 otherwise it won´t fit. I learned that the hard way.
You just need to remove the dvd-reader from the cradle the hdd can stay in there just 2 screws on each side and then slide out , slide in and voila the new drive is in there. The old front cover wouldn´t fit right away but you really need to put it on there otherwise the noise will be kinda loud. I attacked it with the same sharp knife and made it fit nicely
I put in new cabels also to try and increase the airflow inside the casing since it gets really hot in there.
Then it was time to plug in the 558 and hope that it would work. And it didn´t since it refused to play region1 dvds for som reason. This was because the region:all setting had been turned of for some reason. So if it doesn´t work enter the "hidden" menu and put regions to :All
Now it works like a charm it plays everything without a hitch storebought dvds from all regions, my burned dvds, music, XviD everything.
I´m just waiting for someone to write a firmware which allows me to make use of the fact that I now have a dvd-burner installed in my 558.
