Comment by phire
1 day ago
With this news, I have to wonder how much longer bluray will live.
Will we continue seeing new bluray releases of movies and TV shows for decades, or are their days numbered?
The loss of console gaming presumably removes a guaranteed revenue source that was keeping Bluray pressing plants alive.
Sales of DVDs and Bluray have been declining for years [1] [3]. Some people have been excited pushing the news that UHD bluray sales increased in 2025, [2] but that ignores the fact that the total optical sales still dropped.
[1] https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=...
[2] https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=...
[3] This article has a more complete graph: https://www.statsignificant.com/p/the-rise-fall-and-slight-r...
The PC burners/readers are disappearing. We had like ASUS, LG and Pioneer manufacturing. Pioneer had thrown in the towel last year (they were heads above the best in quality). I think ASUS might be gone as well. LG's drives are super hit or miss and I wouldn't be surprised if they give it up eventually.
This is probably due to the fact that they relied on Intel SGX security which has been busted wide open and itself been discontinued by Intel so instead of redesigning the security model, just depreciate the entire format on PC.
I don't think there is that much of a market left for set top players either.
Of all the companies you'd think are committed to the format, it would be Sony right?
Well they currently list one model of set top player on their website and it is the same design since at least the pandemic(when I bought my player). The SKu has changed since then but after looking at the differences, the only design update they have done in those ~6 years is upgraded menu software and removing built-in smart or networking features.
8K hasn't taken off as far as I know but eventually it might and right now there is no transition path to that for physical media.
IMO they should just release BDXL drives with open firmware. Then "security" is not their problem.
And I don't think 8K will ever take off. 4K is already at the point where much (but not all) of the additional resolution is just noise. Meanwhile 4K pixels are already small enough even for 70"+ TVs at fairly close movie viewing distances so where 8K will provide any advantage at all is exceedingly limited.
I can't imagine content owners wanting the physical media to continue any longer than they can get away with. The control they have from digital only must make them feel so powerful. At least as long as everyone continues to buy into their DRM systems.
I've recently looked into purchasing a dedicated 4K Blu-ray player to start building a disc collection again. I'm assuming there's some pretty decent deals in the used bins now. One by one, I keep canceling my streaming subscriptions. At some point, that physical media will be the only thing left. Makes me feel like a prepper of a different sort
I do this. I'll buy used disks and rip them to a personal media server. It works great. A friend actually created an eBay bot which monitors listings of disks he wants and will automatically buys them.
The ripping part is a bit annoying and time-consuming though. Ironically, it would probably be easier to buy a disk then download a file rather than ripping.
> Ironically, it would probably be easier to buy a disk then download a file rather than ripping.
This is basically what mp3.com tried to do: treat the physical (music) disc as a license key that gives you access to a digital copy online. Sadly, the courts did not agree with their interpretation of copyright law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.co....
I've been doing this as well. Occasionally I'll have a disc that fails to rip for some reason (maybe my drive is more sensitive to defects than my player is, or there's some stupid copy protection scheme), and then I'll torrent it. Torrenting is always easier and faster, though it's hard to find special features this way.
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> The control they have from digital only must make them feel so powerful.
I hope they continue to feel this way. WEBDL can come faster.
I'd much rather get releases that are NOT bit-starved crap optimized for streaming company profits.
That's part of what I was thinking. The idea of digital-only must be very attractive for content owners, so I don't think they will put much effort into preventing that outcome.
In NZ 4K Blu-rays are too expensive, at least by my standard (there's about one store chain, JB Hi-Fi). Never seen a single one at a second hand shop. (Though I guess a used bin is a place for 2nd hand goods at an otherwise first-hand shop? Which we don't really have.)
Why not just get everything on the high seas for free, instead of paying for used-bin stuff which is cheap but still costs something? I’m a huge cinephile with a collection on my hard drives of ripped Blu-ray and DVD images, a number running now into the four figures, and I have almost never paid for a physical disc; I own something like 6 that are in a box somewhere.
Because within my job/industry, getting caught pirating would end my career.
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> With this news, I have to wonder how much longer bluray will live.
I hope that physical media sticks around. DVDs and Blu-rays often include something that digital releases don't: director's commentaries, "making of" featurettes, and other extras.
For me, it adds a whole new layer of fun to movies I already like.
The heyday of commentary tracks and extras was long ago, over a decade ago. Except for a few boutique labels like Criterion, distributors found that adding such extra features often wasn’t worth their while in the face of declining physical media sales. So, increasingly one just got the film and little else.
I assume they only did it to explain why the DVD cost more than the VHS you might already have. Even with Redbox you probably didn't have the DVD long enough to get a chance to watch the extra content.
I am very annoyed by this with the recent surprise smash hit of the movie 'Obsession'. This is a new director made popular by his devoted fan base and they just announced the blueray. One director commentary, a tiny 'featurette' and then just the film.
I remember back in the heyday of physical media(2010s) directors like Edgar Wright took curation of physical media extremely seriously: Multiple commentaries by not only the director but with the cast, production crew, sound designers etc. Deleted scenes, multiple featurettes and even picture slideshows.
I wonder how much the design of Blueray menus is hampered by the tech choices used in the format. DVDs were video files that repeated with tiny overlays that the player would just draw. Bluray seem to be entire Java applications of which most studios develop one generic version and reuse for every release.
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Personally I'd rather see those bits spent on a better encode of the main feature.
I wish companies would release these for promotional purposes on e.g. youtube or equivalent.
Apple includes these in digital purchases from the iTunes Store. It’s part of “iTunes Extra”.
But I never see them anywhere else. Especially streaming. A real loss.
Even then they don't include everything on the disc. If you buy anime on Blu-ray or DVD it's really common to get both the original Japanese audio and the English dub. Even on iTunes they are often separate releases (although it looks like that's finally changing.
Collecting is going strong, though. My husband collects physical media, and media books, including a booklet and a nice cover, sell very well. As are special editions of more mainstream movies. Give people something extra and they will gladly buy it. I'd have expected them to go down that path, sell nice steelbooks, media books with an included art book and so on. Add a blu ray with interviews about the development process and so on. I'd pay good money for that and others would as well. Even if they sell the console only with an external disk drive.
I saw my first Dolby Vision Blu-ray and immediately started a Blu-Ray collection. The Blu-ray player on the PS5 is fine, but a nice dedicated player from Sony blows it away.
I would pay for my favorite albums on Blu-ray too. I wish more artists released their entire discography on a really well produced Blu-ray. NIN would be perfect for this. So many Halos, so many videos, all in release order. A real release of Purest Feeling?
>dedicated player from Sony blows it away
If I might give you a heads up here, they are not the best. For a reference player look at Magnetar.
My dream setup is a Magnetar UDP 900 MK II and a Leica Cine 1...
I know. The Sony UBP-X700U is $330 and the Magnetar UDP 900 MK II is $3,300. So I got the Sony.
> Leica Cine 1
Didn't even know there was such a thing... Knowing Leica cameras, I'm afraid to ask about the price. Well, like they say: if you have to ask... :)
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You can still buy CDs. They don't come with music videos usually but they sound greatr
Still have my 2014 Corolla which was the last year they included a CD player. My son is begging me to have it instead of trading it in when we get a new car this Fall. He's super into physical media which is crazy to see since he's a zoomer. I'm seeing a lot of kids in the zoomer generation coming back to physical media which is really cool. I play with two guys who are millennials and they're completely hooked on their Sony Minidisc players.
It gives me hope the future is not completely lost.
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What's better about the dedicated player out of curiosity?
(Not op)
it typically offers better video processing and upscaling, more accurate color reproduction, cleaner gradients, and superior HDR handling (including dynamic tone mapping on some models). Many also support Dolby Vision from UHD Blu rays, which the PS5 does not.
It won't show on a bad screen that much, but a dedicated player will squeeze out more of the disc.
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There's a bit of misinformation here. At the end of the day, a blu-ray player is reading information from the disc and passing it onto the TV digitally - one player or another are going to do that identically. One can't have 'better color' or anything like that.
HOWEVER, there is an exception: Feature support. For example, not all blu-ray players support 4K blu rays. Not all players support Dolby Vision.
If you try to play a 4K blu ray disc in a non-4K blu ray player, it won't function at all (won't read). If you try to play a disc using Dolby Vision in a player that doesn't support it, it will fall back to HDR10.
But assuming 2 players both support the features a disc uses, the end output will be identical.
There's also upscaling, which some players can do differently.
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I just pre-ordered the 4K UHD remaster of The Sopranos, and while on the Gruv site I saw another UHD remaster of a movie I enjoy and ordered it. I am excited to experience this (haven't watched physical media in forever), but I was planning on using my PS5. My research also confirms that standalone players are legit, but they are more expnsive than I figured! I guess I'll give one a try and hope this isn't another addiction...
Huh, I bought a ps5 specifically so i could have a up to date playstation console with a 4k blu ray player. Planet earth / blue planet are achingly beautiful on a 4k oled. Sadly the market for 4k blu ray seems to be pretty thin, but I do hunt for good docs in the format.
I think blu-ray will live for quite a while, but will be a bit like vinyl; there will be a consistent, niche market.
Hilariously, DVD production could potentially outlive Blu-Ray discs, since DVDs are still popular enough 30 years later, and surpass the sales of Blu-Ray movies.
unfortunately mpeg2 is still standard for them so i guess people have to stick to 480i on double layer i guess, unless stars align and someone decide to make av1/opus standard for them lol
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That will last only as long as boomers are still around watching movies.
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Why is that? Vinyl has some unique characteristics. But as far as I’m aware, blu-ray is just a storage format for bits, so other than the box art, what is compelling about a blu-ray pressing?
The movie itself is generally encoded at a higher bitrate than what you can find in streaming or torrents.
The media includes bonus features that generally aren't available in streaming or torrents.
The media will not suddenly stop existing if some server breaks down, some company goes under or some contract expires.
The movie will not suddenly get "patched" with an AI-upscale or censored scene one day while watching it.
You can lend the media to someone else to watch without having to ask for permission to anyone else.
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Ever compare a Blu-ray to the same content over streaming? It's not even close. Unlike vinyl records, Blu-ray is vastly superior in quality to alternatives.
In case you're asking "why", it's because your "4K" stream is compressed to hell and back. Your home internet connection doesn't even have the bandwidth to stream the quality of a BR.
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Many of vinyl's unique characteristics are severe drawbacks compared to digital disks. I see a lot of kids collecting CDs instead—cheaper, lighter, easier to maintain, you can find cars that play them pretty easily, you can rip them losslessly, more hardware to play them, etc. Plus you can a lot of the same benefits of album art, lyrics, etc.
Blu-Rays also have special features, which most streaming platforms don't offer (I think largely except for iTunes).
Having it, physically. It’s harder for companies to play silly games like put the media into a vault, take it off their streaming platforms for tax reasons, etc… I started collected physical blu rays when HBO randomly took a million things off its platform so that it could do accounting tricks.
I want to support artists who make content I like, but I also want control over my media library. Physical media is the best way to do this.
Even if Sony keeps a token factory or two open to produce blu-rays, I'd imagine we'll see fewer and fewer new releases. Maybe we'll only see them as part of collector's sets that have enough margin to afford a cut of the more limited supply.
This feels like the beginning of the death spiral for blu-ray. Sales aren't going to go up enough for it to be worth it keep factories going, much less spin up new ones.
Years ago I did a podcast[0] on physical media and hypothesized UHD would be the last physical movie format (and was shocked that it was even a thing).
The next two years are probably going to be a mess as collectors snatch everything up annd inventory gets cleared out.
0 - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cherry-bombs-the-under...
UHD bluray isn't really a new physical format. It's the exact same physical format as regular bluray. They didn't change a thing except move some previously optional parts of the bluray spec (like three layer discs, and 33GB per layer) to being compulsory.
I don't think we have ever seen something like it before. A new media format that breaks backwards compatibility, yet uses the exact same physical medium as the previous version. Some people did attempt it with HD movies on DVD, but the attempt failed so badly I don't think it even counts.
Its very existence was a very strong signal Bluray would be the last optical disc format. And the launch of the PS5 without a new optical confirmed it.
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I honestly doubt they'll stop. Sony is a Japanese company, and they seem to still enjoy buying blurays
But is there enough of a market for blu-rays of newer western releases in Japan to keep the entire production and distribution chain alive around the rest of the world?
Yeah this is the thing. Everyone seems to be forgetting about economies of scale.
Yeah I wouldn't give it more than 20 years. Obviously they won't suddenly stop; it will just be rarer and rarer for things to be released on bluray until it's only super popular stuff and collectors editions and things like that.
They won't be releasing new Blu Rays for decades. Outside of collectors, why would they? Unless there is a hidden market for the discs elsewhere it's not worth it
Libraries :(
My local library never made the jump to Blu-Ray and still only has DVDs. They have physical copies of video games too though.
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Can't end soon enough. I hate the CD/DVD format. Very prone to damage. One scratch and the entire disk can be unreadable.
I stopped buying them about 20 years ago when this became apparent to me. Never bought a Blueray player or disk, that was a scam from day one: buy all your content again.
Paying every month for streaming is a nuisance, but not as much as sitting down to watch a movie and the disk won't play. Then trying to clean it, praying it was just a fingerprint.
I hardly ever watch a movie more than once anyway. Once I've seen it, I've seen it. I come out way ahead at $5 for a streaming view than buying for $30+ (or whatever they cost today, I don't even know).
You need to stop eating fried chicken and then immediately rubbing your greasy fingers all over your disks. I have ripped over a thousand optical disks, including a lot of second-hand ones with only a handful of read errors coming from demo discs that were over 30 years old.
I have been collecting many used CDs and DVDs for some ten years - some of them 15+ years old, some of them are covered in scratches and they still work pretty well. Clearly, you are:
a. Spreading lies
b. Exaggerating your experience
Now, Will they last forever? Of course not, but they are mine!
I thought after the DVD era surely we'd get something more akin to SD cards or flash drives instead of more discs, really disappointed we ended up with Blu Ray.
This is because blurays, like vinyl records, are efficiently stamped into plastic from metallic masters with negligible faults. You can't do this for electronic storage.