Sony will stop making physical PlayStation games starting in 2028
The end of an era is upon us
Optical media articles
Your Blu-ray drive can now rip GameCube, Wii, and Xbox games – legally
OmniDrive firmware unlocks proprietary game disc formats on standard PC optical drives
Blu-ray lives on as Verbatim and I-O Data pledge support with new drives and discs
Japan's market sustains Blu-ray as major manufacturers exit worldwide
A microscope reveals the ghost of analog video hidden inside a LaserDisc
A YouTuber's optical experiment turns forgotten media into a lesson in photonic engineering
The big picture: When retro tech obsessive Shelby Jueden pointed a low-cost digital microscope at a decades-old LaserDisc, he didn't just see reflections of light – he uncovered the physical trace of analog video itself. His experiment shows how the LaserDisc's 1970s-era analog encoding can still reveal faint traces of recorded video, illustrating how optical media once stored motion pictures before digital formats arrived.
Sony to exit the recordable Blu-ray market this month in another blow to physical media
Sony confirms there will be no successor models
Blu-ray turns 20 years old: The optical disc that refuses to fade away
Blu-ray was the future of home video, once
Fujitsu is still putting Blu-ray drives in laptops – and people in Japan still want them
You thought internal disc drives were dead? Fujitsu disagrees
While Microsoft retires Windows 10, optical drives are selling like hot cakes in Japan for some reason
Japanese PC users still have a thing for optical media and offline storage
Battlefield 6 physical edition contains the complete game, no downloads required
"Plug and play" has become a rarity in the gaming industry
Obscure Pioneer LaserDisc console, once impossible to emulate, now runs on PC
Now you too can play cheesy early '90s Mega LD titles
Doom: The Dark Ages discs contain almost no data, require full game downloads
All console copies require downloading nearly 100 GB
Hundreds of Warner Bros. DVDs from the 2000s are rotting away
Virtually all copies of around 200 titles are likely damaged, some aren't available anywhere else
What happens if a CD spins too fast?
Kids these days don't even know what a CD is...
Sony to cease Blu-ray production, leaving physical media fans concerned
The big picture: Sony, LG, Panasonic, and retailers in general have been gradually withdrawing from the Blu-ray business for years as consumers increasingly favor streaming and other forms of digital distribution. However, some market indicators suggest that demand for physical media hasn't completely evaporated, with many consumers harboring concerns over quality and ownership.
New optical storage breakthrough could make CDs relevant again
Breakthrough could usher in "ultra-high-density" optical media, but more research is needed
DVD-like optical disc could store 1.6 petabits (or 200 terabytes) on 100 layers
Researchers showcase 1-petabit optical disc for more efficient mass storage
Swapping PS5 Slim disc drives is easy, partially addressing online DRM concerns
However, systems shipping with the disc drive also require online activation
5 Ways to Connect Your Old Storage Devices to a New PC
If you're upgrading to a new computer, laptop or desktop, a modern PC may not support your old storage devices. This guide will give you options to connect your old storage drives to a new computer.
Researchers develop '5D' technique to store 500TB of data on a CD-sized glass disc
A potentially viable long-term data storage solution
Anatomy of a Storage Drive: Optical Drives
You don't have to use magnetism or electrical charge to store data. It can be done using light, or more rather, the reflection of it. Okay, if you want to be really specific, it's done using the interference of infrared and visible electromagnetic waves, but let's not worry too much about that!
