Sony to exit the recordable Blu-ray market this month in another blow to physical media

[midian182]

What just happened? Sony has pulled the curtain down on its recordable Blu-ray business. The company has confirmed it will stop selling all of its current Blu-ray disc recorders globally this month. Its regular Blu-ray players and discs aren't going away, though.

The announcement isn't a surprise. Sony said in a 2024 interview that it would gradually end development and production of recordable Blu-ray discs and other optical disc formats. It said at the time that the decision was made because the cold storage market never really took off in the way it hoped. Sony also slashed 40% of jobs in its media division that same year.

In January 2025, Sony officially confirmed that it was pulling out of the recordable media market, including recordable Blu-ray discs, recording MiniDiscs, MD data, and MiniDV cassettes. It said at the time that there would be no successors to recordable Blu-ray.

The final nail in recordable Blu-ray's coffin has now arrived. Sony's recent announcement explains that after February 2026, it will end shipments of all Blu-ray disc recorder models sequentially. It reiterated that there will be no successor models.

It's important to remember that Sony isn't abandoning Blu-ray altogether; the move only affects Blu-ray recorders with a built-in Blu-ray player. Streaming might be king, but the company has no current plans to end production of its standard Blu-ray and UHD Blu-ray players. However, that could change when TCL takes over Sony's home entertainment division next year.

Sony has now discontinued its BDZ-ZW1900 recorder from 2024 as well as the BDZ-FBT4200, BDZ-FBT2200, and BDZ-FBW2200 recorders that launched in 2023. The rest of the models will disappear after this month.

Several tech giants have already exited (or heavily scaled back) the Blu-ray market. Oppo, which had been one of the most respected high-end Blu-ray brands in the industry, completely discontinued its Blu-ray player business in 2018.

Samsung, meanwhile, stopped making Blu-ray and UHD Blu-ray players around 2019. LG, which at the time was one of the few remaining big-name manufacturers, discontinued production of Blu-ray players in 2024.

Many people are lamenting the apparent slow demise of Blu-ray. The image quality these players offer is much higher than that of streaming, featuring a bitrate that can go up to 128 Mbps in the case of 4K Ultra HD Blu-rays. Most streaming services are somewhere between 15 Mbps and 25 Mbps.

Blu-rays also tend to offer less aggressive compression and better audio than streaming. You're not reliant on the quality and stability of an internet connection, either. There's also the contentious subject of people not actually owning digital media; you are typically buying a license to access the content.

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Sony to exit the recordable Blu-ray market this month in another blow to physical media

 

[smolenkuboom]

In the era of ssds,pendrives and sd cards...these slow cds are not needed anymore...
Im impressed they still make them to this day.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Ignorant people will be ignorant.

Give up your rights to own what you buy for a little convenience that is controlled by forces outside of your control for a constant subscription price.

Why have a movie/show in your possession that you can play when you want and how often you want when instead you can pay to subscribe to a streaming channel and then pay to "own" the movie on said streaming channel. The studio/channel streaming service wins twice - you're paying a sub and paying to rent the movie.

What happens if said streaming service goes kaput? Or if they lose the rights to distribute the IP for the movies/shows you've paid to "own"? You lose. People don't think about this because they're ignorant. It has happened before in digital gaming and digital movie/show ownership where a platform goes bye-bye or loses rights to distribute IP and it'll happen again.

 

[RudyBob]

Sony has tried and is still trying to strangle us all

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I will always buy shows on physical media. I am not paying for streaming. If physical is not available, then it gets pirated.

 

[Xelions]

If I buy it digitally, and they discontinue it through streaming or whatever reason I simply get a rip. Legally or not! I've paid my dues and so they can kiss my sweet a$$ if they think I owe them more, regardless of any BS terms - it's not a rental.

Even now the ads on streaming are starting to piss me off. Might just go back to rips

 

[WDHellS]

CDs are pretty cool, to have a few DVDs stored on the shelf.
unlike pen drives, which is more available on being disposable. its is better as a secondary low end Hard Disk.
as of DVDs its stays available with more control to store data at request and update a non closed disc.

guess that's why the issue, the discs are preserved when having a boxed set of a few blank disks. it lasts.

 

[smolenkuboom]

I will always buy shows on physical media. I am not paying for streaming. If physical is not available, then it gets pirated.

Piracy is never an option mate. Besides,what kind of shows you are watching which are streamed and also are available on dics? I think of none?

 

[GeoffreyA]

In the era of ssds,pendrives and sd cards...these slow cds are not needed anymore...
Im impressed they still make them to this day.

It's more a matter of archiving. Once you've got a disk, it's yours.

 

[GeoffreyA]

If I buy it digitally, and they discontinue it through streaming or whatever reason I simply get a rip. Legally or not! I've paid my dues and so they can kiss my sweet a$$ if they think I owe them more, regardless of any BS terms - it's not a rental.

Even now the ads on streaming are starting to piss me off. Might just go back to rips

In any case, it goes back to the old philosophical question of cloning a car.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

In the era of ssds,pendrives and sd cards...these slow cds are not needed anymore...
Im impressed they still make them to this day.

Im impressed there are still people that refer to disks as "CDs". These are not CDs.

Flash storage is useless for long term cold storage, and its VERY expensive compared to a single disk for holding something like a film.

 

[ET3D]

While I have a collection of movies on discs, mainly DVDs, I stopped considering Blu-Ray. It is extremely DRM-laden, with stupid things like regional protection, not at all easy to play, and I doubt it's a good long term investment. It's the worse kind of "owning" things. I still bought some DVDs recently, because they're rather easy to play and to backup these days.

Still, I have to say that streaming is simply more convenient, and at least for me most of the time it doesn't make much sense to buy media when I already have streaming services for my family.

 

[Melkor Unlimited]

Piracy is never an option ...

Punishing paying users proves you wrong.

 

[Thrackerzod]

So many people didn't bother to read the article. Blu-Ray is not going away, just BD-R.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

While I have a collection of movies on discs, mainly DVDs, I stopped considering Blu-Ray. It is extremely DRM-laden, with stupid things like regional protection, not at all easy to play, and I doubt it's a good long term investment. It's the worse kind of "owning" things. I still bought some DVDs recently, because they're rather easy to play and to backup these days.

Still, I have to say that streaming is simply more convenient, and at least for me most of the time it doesn't make much sense to buy media when I already have streaming services for my family.

I haven't had issues with any blu-ray disc. I've got probably around 300 movies and a handful of tv series on blu-ray. No issues playing them, even on my computer. The other 800+ movies and 40+ TV series I have are on DVDs.

I've ripped all my movies to my plex server using MakeMKV, blu-ray and dvds. Lionsgate makes it a bit more difficult with ripping their movies when they're on blu-ray, they have hundreds of different .mpls files that have different layouts of the order the chapters of the movie are played. If you pick the wrong one then the movie will play out of chronological order. You can get around this problem with a few more steps figuring out what specific .mpls file is being played when you actually run the movie.

Other than that I haven't had issues with DRM or region issues when playing blu-rays on any device (stand alone blu-ray/dvd players, my blu-ray ODDs on my computer or even my PS3).

 

[Neatfeatguy]

So many people didn't bother to read the article. Blu-Ray is not going away, just BD-R.

True, but it still a direction of physical media going away and consumers losing more control over what they can and cannot do.

 

[tonylukac]

I built an htpc. When my brother moved in because he was between short sales, I bought a blu ray burner. Sometimes avast antivirus would flag the DVDs as having viruses on them. I only had the computer 5 years and had to replace the burner. I don't know where you rent blu rays anymore since Redbox went out of business. Looking at store bought DVDs they can cost $40. I thought LG still made burners.

 

[Rumiku]

When I had access to everything, I used nothing.

Everyone's milage will vary, but I found personally that, when I am forced to choose a movie or a show or a game; the act of being engaged physically with it, start to finish, has ended the "what to watch" fatigue when every conceivable movie, show and game is at my fingertips, and never actually engaging with that piece of entertainment. When I go to our media cabinet and engage with a physical object, it becomes tangible and the enjoyment more satisfying.

Convenience is wonderful. Cars vs Buggies, Planes vs Boats, Streaming vs Physical. But, over-convenience strips the interaction component, the connection, of that entertainment, reducing the enjoyment level without realizing it. It won't be everyone's take, though it is enough of a phenomena to at least be of consideration; meme'd heavily with Netflix's exhausting library, for example.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

I built an htpc. When my brother moved in because he was between short sales, I bought a blu ray burner. Sometimes avast antivirus would flag the DVDs as having viruses on them. I only had the computer 5 years and had to replace the burner. I don't know where you rent blu rays anymore since Redbox went out of business. Looking at store bought DVDs they can cost $40. I thought LG still made burners.

I think sometime in the past 12 months LG announced they were out of the optical disc drive aspect of computers, at least internal models - they may still do external.

As for store bought movies, I don't know of any brick and mortar store that carries new DVD/Blu-Ray movies anymore. I know of some places that buys used and sells used movies, but no store selling new.

End of 2024 Best Buy stopped carrying physical media for movies. I don't know if they still sell them on their website, I haven't bothered to look.
When I walk around any of my local Target stores, none of them have DVDs/Blu-Ray anymore, although you can still purchase them through Target's website last I checked a handful of months ago.
Walmart may have physical movies still? I never go in them, they tend to packed with nasty people in my area.....if you watch any news on fraud issues in MN, you could probably guess who I am referring to.

Fact of the matter is, most new movies/shows just don't get put on physical media anymore. Why would a studio with their own streaming platform want to go backwards and distribute physical media where they get a 1 time payment from a customer instead of trying to draw people to constantly give them money on a subscription base access to their IPs?

With Sony stepping away from manufacturing and selling record-able blu-ray discs it's just another black mark on the ever fast shrinking physical media market.

As for me, when it comes to finding physical media, I search second hand stores online and for newer stuff that's come out more recently there are some spots I visit and purchase a physical copy from them over paying subscription costs because I want to have it in my possession and not be reliant on someone else controlling things for me. I'd much rather my money go to the studio for their work, but if they won't put it on physical media then I'll just pay a third-party for a copy. Granted, I could collect a lot of stuff on my own, but I'm busy with other parts of my life to spend my time sailing the high seas.

 

[p51d007]

Ignorant people will be ignorant.

Give up your rights to own what you buy for a little convenience that is controlled by forces outside of your control for a constant subscription price.

Why have a movie/show in your possession that you can play when you want and how often you want when instead you can pay to subscribe to a streaming channel and then pay to "own" the movie on said streaming channel. The studio/channel streaming service wins twice - you're paying a sub and paying to rent the movie.

What happens if said streaming service goes kaput? Or if they lose the rights to distribute the IP for the movies/shows you've paid to "own"? You lose. People don't think about this because they're ignorant. It has happened before in digital gaming and digital movie/show ownership where a platform goes bye-bye or loses rights to distribute IP and it'll happen again.

When "Netflix" was pretty much the go to place to watch a movie online it was one thing, but then the movie studios saw the money being made by streaming and started their own streaming services, thus pulling what Netflix & others could legally stream. Now, if you REALLY want to watch what you want to watch, when you want to watch it, if you don't have the physical media, you need 3,403 different subscriptions! LOL
More of the you will own nothing and LIKE it.

 

[IMABEARLOL]

Imagine if every couple of months someone burst into your house and took some of your BluRays and DVDs away because the company that sold them lost a contract or simply declined to renew their contract with the current rights owners. You wouldn't tolerate that, but it's totally normalized with streaming and digital content. Companies are all too happy to do this rather than come up with any kind of digital ownership solution. After all, you'll probably buy that thing again in some other format.

And remember, it's not piracy unless you sell for a profit. It's violating copyright law. Law is not morality, it's a mechanism for control. It's not morally wrong to clone sequences of 1's and 0's or convert them to whatever format you need. There are laws that say you can't provide water or power to your neighbor if theirs is shut off. Is that moral? Is it moral for a company to take your money to own content on a digital marketplace and then revoke that ownership just because there is no law against it?

If they figure out how to duplicate food at a molecular level they would probably try to criminalize it. But I'd happily take my chances with food distributed for free from questionable sources than deal with price fixing and greedy food price inflation. But if that food is priced fairly, I'd rather buy from the place where I know the food is safe than get it from questionable sources even for free, because the service is the safety and curation of the selection.

 

[Melkor Unlimited]

DRM == Digital Restriction Management

 

[DDG4005]

Those who don't appreciate owning content (games, movies, TV shows, etc.) on physical media, or being able to download said content for backup, won't truly understand what they've lost until they own nothing.

 

[Mark Fuller]

Those who don't appreciate owning content (games, movies, TV shows, etc.) on physical media, or being able to download said content for backup, won't truly understand what they've lost until they own nothing.

Not only that, you don't have to worry about internet traffic, slow buffering times, weak reception, viruses and malware, and I like the fact that I can get many classic movies in a thrift shop to keep for about half as much as it takes to rent one to stream for 30 days.

 

[Melkor Unlimited]

Most of DVD in my collection are from newspaper kiosk ... $2 cheap re-releases of old classics.