Sony Will Stop Producing Blank Blu-Ray Discs After 18 Years
Sony says it will stop manufacturing blank Blu-ray discs for the Japanese market along with MiniDiscs and MiniDV cassettes that could be used to save media in a physical format. “We would like to express our sincere gratitude to our many customers for their patronage,” a short press release concludes. It has been 18 years since the Blu-ray was first introduced coinciding with the launch of the PlayStation 3.
Blu-ray is popular for its high bitrate and ability to store hours of high definition footage. Many still appreciate the format over streaming services, which generally encode video at much lower quality—and of course physical media like Blu-rays cannot be taken away when an internet service goes offline or loses its license to host a show or movie. It is also a good idea to store important family mementos, like home movies, on DVDs a backup in case a digital format becomes corrupted.
The good news is Blu-ray is not going away just yet. Sony simply will not be manufacturing recordable disks for its home market anymore. A quick visit to Amazon shows a plethora of other manufacturers from which blank Blu-rays can be purchased. And film studios are still producing physical copies of new releases, though for how long is anyone’s guess.
