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.
DVDs and Blu-Rays are already showing up in the Thrift stores, Goodwills, Salvation Army stores, etc...............
Streaming... “you will own nothing and like it”. I bet Neil Young fans loved losing their “Neil Young collection” when he left Spotify.
Yes, I stream, but also still play/buy DVDs, CDs, and LPs.
That’s the problem with streaming. Easy for censors to get rid of problematic scenes in movies.
BR = Blu-Ray
Ditto on VHS & Beta Tape
Physical discs are also important in medicine. Since almost no X-rays are printed on film, discs are used to send studies from one facility to another. There are some online ways to send files that are gaining use, though.
I agree. I have hard copy DVDs/Blurays of all movies and TV I like, as well as CDs of the music I love. Could never trust streaming enough to give that up.
This line from the article made me laugh, though: “Users have realized they don’t really own their digital purchases.” We truly do live among idiots if there were a bunch of people out there who didn’t already realize this.
That’s nice. And then they can cancel any films at any time by removing them from streaming servers. And it’s also fun that to see any given film I might need to hit Paramount, Apple, Disney Plus, Amazon, etc etc.
Discs are where it’s at.
Most of the music I buy are pretty much CD only.
Limited editions of soundtracks of older movies and TV shows.
BR = Blu-Ray
AKA BRD or Blu-Ray Disc
“We’ve taken care of everything
The words you read
The songs you sing
The pictures that give pleasure
To your eye
One for all and all for one
Work together
Common sons
Never need to wonder
How or why”
If you don’t own the media, guess what buoys and gulls?
Buoys and gulls?
You’re all wet?
It’s not short-sighted.
It’s part of the war on private property and is very well thought out and purposeful.
Blu Ray is old technology and looks unimpressive to my eyes. You don’t know what you are missing until you have seen 4k Blu Ray (UHD) on a large OLED screen.
This is a war on physical media and private ownership of it.
I don’t care how good it looks.
Note to Hollyweird: There is NOTHING you produce that I can’t live without.
“ This is a war on physical media and private ownership of it.”
Agreed. It’s also about increasing margin on movie sales. On the rare occasion when I buy a movie it’s always on physical media. I will never buy a “digital copy”.
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