Hi everyone, I'm in a somewhat unusual situation and wanted to check whether there has been any progress in this area, or if anyone in the scene is actively researching it. I'm lucky enough to own: A PS5 Slim on firmware 12.00 with a properly paired Blu-ray disc drive. A PS5 Pro on firmware 13.60 with an unpaired disc drive. I have also experimented with a Samsung external USB Blu-ray writer on the Pro. I've tested: PS2/PS3 game discs together with their respective emulators. Audio CDs using Prospero HiFi. Blu-ray movies/DVD movies (even no-DRM) through Media Player Classic. Various file explorers. Unfortunately, none of these setups ever recognized the discs. My main goal is actually pretty simple: I'd like to get some form of disc drive support on my PS5 Pro 13.60, whether through the internal drive or an external USB BD/DVD drive. More than gaming, I'd love to be able to enjoy my existing collection of Blu-ray movies and audio CDs on the console. Ultimately, I'd like to make the Pro my only PS5. If a reliable solution for disc drive functionality ever becomes available, I'd probably sell my 12.00 Slim with its paired Blu-ray drive and keep the Pro. That's why I'm very interested in whether there is ongoing research or development in this area. So I have a few questions for the community: Is anyone currently working on bypassing or removing the disc-drive pairing restrictions on newer PS5 firmwares? Has there been any progress toward enabling optical media access on systems with unpaired drives? Has anyone here successfully played audio CDs or Blu-ray movies through homebrew, rather than just accessing game discs via PS2/PS3 emulators? If you have managed to get media playback working, what hardware did you use? External USB Blu-ray writer? External DVD/BD-ROM reader? Something else? tried Mihawk OS too, external blu ray disc drive doesn't get recognized. I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who have actually tested optical media beyond gaming use cases. Have you tried with Linux + external blu ray disc drive reader maybe? What about drivers? Thanks in advance for any information, findings, or experiments you can share. Even partial results or ongoing research would be interesting to discuss.   submitted by   /u/macho_man1988 [link]   [comments]