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.
Its a ice cream store chain its wonderful
Ditto. I don’t trust the studios and the streamers to keep my favorite movies available, and I finally rebelled when they started editing classic films. And it’s not just the garbagemeisters; even TCM and The Criterion Collection have been caught editing. So I’m back to physical media, not for everything but for movies that I think are keepers.
Many of the studios and streamers have pulled back on issuing a DVD or BluRay at all. Or in some cases, they’ll stream something in 4K but only issue an HD disc.
I always took pride in respecting intellectual property, never pirating, never going black or gray market, and paying the legitimate owner fair market price for a copy made in China and available on eBay.
Now, if it’s on eBay ....
That is what I would buy if/when I can find it. But good luck finding it. I will look first for an authorized release. Then I will look on eBay.
Nope. Unprofitable market segment. Still producing media for studios, that’s profitable.
More bits per cubic inch can be stored in a semiconductor, and cheaper with faster access. The DVD might be better archival storage.
I can't afford it. You have 4k privilege. In the name of equality you should provide me one as well. Or pay me reparations of some sort. let's encircle libh8er house.
"What do we want"?
"4K"
"When do we want it"?
"Today"
Streaming has gotten much better, and is certainly convenient, but it still can’t touch the video and audio quality of physical discs. If you have a good to excellent home theater system, the audio in particular is vastly superior on disc. As with the video, the higher quality is because discs can provide much higher bitrates.
I’m afraid, though, that middling quality will be seen as “good enough” by the masses, and home theater will suffer the same fate as high quality two-channel audio for music when MP3 crowded out far superior formats.
Just to clarify before someone jumps on my comment, I was referring to 4K Blu Ray discs, not the older 1080p discs.
Thrift stores and garage and estate sales are also good places to buy CDs and DVDs.
CDs and DVDs are better options for avoiding censorship.
That way, you have a hard copy you can watch whenever you feel like it and not worry about Big Brother editing it to make it PC.
Give me 4k or give me death !!
Actually 4k doesn’t cost a fortune. You would be hard pressed to find ANY tv at a local Walmart that is not 4k. 4k was a big thing when it came out 10+ years ago. Today it’s the bare minimum.
“cdS and DVDs are better options for avoiding censorship.”
Better than cloud for sure but memory sticks are offline and are a form of semiconductor storage.
Sad news, I make HD videos and have been using Sony writable Blu-Ray Discs since 2012, they are the top of line in quality.
GIVE ME MY BETAMAX!!!
Sony killed Betamax and now this !?
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