In an interview Sony gave to AV Watch recently, the company admitted it's going to "gradually end development and production" of recordable Blu-rays and other optical disc...
This is not as big a deal as you think. Blu-Ray production itself isn’t ending, they just aren’t making any more rewritable Blu-Rays. Most people aren’t going to be burning stuff to Blu-Rays. You’ll still be able to buy Blu-Rays if you want a physical copy of a film.
Different divisions. This is more akin to when Sony decided to stop making floppy disks. The market is there for now, but it’s just not worth it from a financial perspective.
The amount of people burning their own blu rays is minimal. Even the type of people who emphasize owning their own content just use a NAS system.
This is more akin to when Sony decided to stop making floppy disks. The market is there for now, but it’s just not worth it from a financial perspective.
Eh, I doubt many people are burning their own Blu-ray discs - this does not apply to discs you buy that already have films on, those are manufactured differently, and are still being made.
But even if you do archive your personal data onto Blu-ray discs, there are still other manufacturers besides Sony.
Really though, who burns Blu rays. Yes I’m sure there’s a handful of people out there doing it but I don’t know anyone who’s still burning discs in 2024. Storage space is large and cheap now and way less hassle than discs. Companies as big as Sony can’t keep producing products for a tiny market it just doesn’t make sense.
Something tells me the market for media servers is very different than the market for BD-R. The only benefit to having a collection of burned discs over a NAS is that you can let people borrow them. It’s otherwise mostly downsides
Are we back to trusting Seagate again? Last I knew their spinning rust was t trust worthy. I’ve had 6 drives fail me in the last 2 decades, and all but one or two were Seagate, so I just assume their bad anymore and go with other suppliers.
Seagate does seem to have a higher failure rate, but they are also cheaper. From this article:
The oldest (average age of 92.5 months) hard drive Backblaze tested was a 6TB Seagate (ST6000DX000). Its AFR was 0.11 percent in 2021 and 0.68 percent in 2022. Backblaze said this was “a very respectable number any time, but especially after nearly eight years.”
…
“In general, Seagate drives are less expensive and their failure rates are typically higher in our environment,” Backblaze said. “But, their failure rates are typically not high enough to make them less cost-effective over their lifetime. You could make a good case that for us, many Seagate drive models are just as cost-effective as more expensive drives.”
Their oldest drives are Seagate as well, so that’s saying something.
Whether a drive will be reliable for you is less related to the manufacturer and more related to capacity and luck.
I’ve had numerous hard drive failures over the years – nothing atypical, I just use lots of drives, and like almost everything else, they have stochastic failures. But between Seagate and WD, the Seagate drives all at least let me know they were going to fail soon, via SMART monitoring, and gave me (just) ample time to get all of my data off of them before completely dying. My WD drives that failed did so instantaneously, without any prior indication of problems.
But this could also be luck, idk. My takeaway is:
Seagate has a little higher failure rate, which explains why they’re often cheaper
Seagate may do a good job detecting errors with SMART
all drives fail and whether one will fail before another is more likely up to luck than any systemic issue by a manufacturer
We must cut all options for the end user to own anything, let’em pay subscriptions instead.
In a SONY board meeting, probably.
Nah, probably just didn’t sell enough, with USB sticks around and all.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone use the format. CDR saw a lot of use, but who needs bluray nowadays?
This is not as big a deal as you think. Blu-Ray production itself isn’t ending, they just aren’t making any more rewritable Blu-Rays. Most people aren’t going to be burning stuff to Blu-Rays. You’ll still be able to buy Blu-Rays if you want a physical copy of a film.
Different divisions. This is more akin to when Sony decided to stop making floppy disks. The market is there for now, but it’s just not worth it from a financial perspective.
The amount of people burning their own blu rays is minimal. Even the type of people who emphasize owning their own content just use a NAS system.
Ironically those who own their own NAS and hoarding data are amongst the more likely to be burning their own Blu-rays
Ironically Japan is just now phasing out floppies, so there’ll still be a market for a while.
A NAS is mostly geared for online media storage, whereas disks are for offline.
That’s just the government though, similar to how a lot of the systems in the US still run on COBOL (including the IRS).
Eh, I doubt many people are burning their own Blu-ray discs - this does not apply to discs you buy that already have films on, those are manufactured differently, and are still being made.
But even if you do archive your personal data onto Blu-ray discs, there are still other manufacturers besides Sony.
This really isn’t a big deal.
Sure. One tiny bit at a time…
Who still burns discs (outside of retro gamers) in 2024, let alone Blu-Rays? They aren’t killing the whole format.
Really though, who burns Blu rays. Yes I’m sure there’s a handful of people out there doing it but I don’t know anyone who’s still burning discs in 2024. Storage space is large and cheap now and way less hassle than discs. Companies as big as Sony can’t keep producing products for a tiny market it just doesn’t make sense.
Yup. I use a NAS to not have to deal with disks. I’d rather buy a couple more drives than have to store even more stuff at home.
I believe they’ve said that this doesn’t change their production of non-rewritable Blu-rays.
Do you have a source for this? That was my worry tbh.
Just did a quick search and found this headline on a site that I’ve never heard of before. Unfortunately, I forgot where I initially read it, lol
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/99072/sony-wont-phase-out-blu-ray-movie-and-game-discs-only-ceasing-production-on-consumer-bd/index.html
Why are we suddenly selling more NAS grade HDDs?
Something tells me the market for media servers is very different than the market for BD-R. The only benefit to having a collection of burned discs over a NAS is that you can let people borrow them. It’s otherwise mostly downsides
If they were cheaper I’d use them for archival purposes. They work well as cold storage.
If you have a Nas… install plex or jellyfin and you can still let them “borrow” it all the same…
Far from a “downside”.
If you have a NAS you might know you should have a backup on different media.
I got mine in November
Recommendations?
I’ve put together a RAID 1 of these and some 860 Evo QLC Hard to say if they’ll last as long as BD but you can’t beat the capacity
https://visiontek.com/products/visiontek-tlc-7mm-2-5-ssd-sata-enterprise
https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/memory-storage/solid-state-drives/ssd-860-evo-2-5--sata-iii-500gb-mz-76e500b-am/
Are we back to trusting Seagate again? Last I knew their spinning rust was t trust worthy. I’ve had 6 drives fail me in the last 2 decades, and all but one or two were Seagate, so I just assume their bad anymore and go with other suppliers.
Seagate does seem to have a higher failure rate, but they are also cheaper. From this article:
Their oldest drives are Seagate as well, so that’s saying something.
Whether a drive will be reliable for you is less related to the manufacturer and more related to capacity and luck.
Here’s an anecdote from Reddit:
But this could also be luck, idk. My takeaway is:
Every drive I’ve had fail, personally or professionally, has been a Seagate drive.
Every drive I’ve had failed was WD. My Seagates have been mostly fine
I’ve had both Seagate and WD drives fail. I just think drives fail rather commonly.
I mean sure, but Jellyfin and HDDs exist, and are much more convenient than burning a Blu-ray that you have to put in a drive to watch.