Posted on 07/09/2024 12:36:55 PM PDT by Red Badger
Last week, Sony broke the news that it is putting the kibosh on its writeable Blu-Ray disc business. While that’s not catastrophic news for physical media fans, it’s certainly disappointing.
The first hint about the death of Sony’s recordable discs business was a rumor about layoffs at the company’s optical media plant that recently circulated the web. That rumor was ultimately confirmed by Japanese outlet AV Watch last week. Tom’s Hardware subsequently picked up the news last week and translated it into English, setting off a minor panic about what impact this could have on Blu-Ray fans’ collecting habits.
While the exact date and time when the discs in question will become unavailable isn’t known, what is known is that their days are numbered.
Thankfully, Sony does not currently have plans to kill Blu-Ray releases from studios. Those discs will continue to be available for the foreseeable future. “We will continue to sell B2B products by making them in advance, and for consumer products, we will decide on the specific end date in the future through discussions with distribution partners such as mass retailers, but we will continue to sell them for the time being,” the company told AV Watch.
That said, Sony is still messing up by getting out of the writeable disc business. You’ll now have one less option for archiving that show or movie you want to watch. There’s been a wave of renewed interest in physical media as streaming splinters in a million directions and users have realized they don’t really own their digital purchases. The ability to create copies of your library is essential to preservation. And honestly, Blu-Ray is just a great storage format.
Gizmodo reached out to Sony for more information about its decision to phase out writeable discs and will update this story when it responds.
NOOO! I have a nice Sony Blu-Ray.
These need to stay around.
Ping!....................
I’m guessing this has something to do with the cult of the climate change crazies.
Red Box filed for Bankruptcy last week................
People are streaming so physical discs are not needed any more...............
Not going anywhere. There’s a bit of a coup going on in gaming and movie circles right now. Streaming has become almost insulting. You can’t even RENT a movie from Amazon without having to sit through a 30-45 second commercial at the beginning of it!
I’ve been snatching up movie series on BR where I can find them and supplementing my Kindle collection with physical books that I find important.
Nation state actors are targeting media delivery services like CDNs with DDoS and takedown attacks rendering services unavailable to many streaming services. It’s only a matter of time before this is weaponized on a large scale.
I never stepped up to blue-ray. I have many music CD’s and movie DVD’s. On a large screen I have no complaints about DVD quality. Some Blue-Ray movies I have seen on other TV’s look too crisp, almost as if you can tell its a movie set or CGI. The lower definition of a standard CD looks more like the real world to my eyes.
Then again, in the past couple of years, they’ve really been hammering on the accelerator on digital distribution, right along with movies, TV, and basically everything else. So it wouldn’t come as a shock for Sony to declare, “No more discs. 100% digital distribution for everything, and we hold the keys.”
You will own nothing, and by God, you will by happy.
I’m a firm believer in having physical copies of what TV, movies, and music I like.
Most of that is vintage stuff from 69s, 70s, and 80s.
what is BR
Bingo!
Yahtzee!!!
If you don't own the media, guess what buoys and gulls?
YOU DON'T OWN THE CONTENT!!!
for fun, check out ok.ru, the Russian tik tok or Russian Youtube. I found old forgotten films and tv episodes there that were literally unavailable anywhere here on youtube, amazon, Netflix, Prime, Hulu, Tubitv, etc.
“physical discs are not needed any more”
They might be useful once the streaming rewrites history and the hard core brainwashing begins.
The world may become like the Stalinist Soviet Union. People may become “unpersons” and politically incorrect ideas may be erased.
Again they are forcing the quality and ownership for convenience trade off. Streaming cannot come close to matching the picture and sound quality of the disc mostly due to the compression. A 4K DVD gives far superior picture and sound and you own it.
I made sure to get a DVD of Blazing Saddles a few years ago, anyway.
Did Han shoot first ?
Cause did on my original Japanese import laserdisc
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