News After 18 years, Blu-ray media production draws to a close — Sony shuts its last factory in Feb

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This is sad. Every time I'm streaming a movie and see all of the banding lines and compression artifacts I can't help but lament the demise of physical media. Why did we settle for this? I know there are workarounds, like storing massive media files on a home server, but that comes with its own challenges, and you still have to start with a decent quality source, like a disc.
 
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The major issue with any streaming service is, despite you keep paying them a hefty sub fee every single month, at the end of the day you NEVER own any of it. As soon as you end your sub, you lose access to the movies.

I know there's option to buy digital releases too, but as we have seen in the past due to various reasons like Rights agreements or the service simply shutting down, you lose even that digital release you PAID for.
 
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TheOtherOne said:
The major issue with any streaming service is, despite you keep paying them a hefty sub fee every single month, at the end of the day you NEVER own any of it. As soon as you end your sub, you lose access to the movies.

I know there's option to buy digital releases too, but as we have seen in the past due to various reasons like Rights agreements or the service simply shutting down, you lose even that digital release you PAID for.
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As long as there is still DRM on a digital purchase you didn't really "buy" rather you entered into a long-term "lease" which the selling party can revoke at any time for any reason.

Only old school MP3s can be truly "bought" since Napster/Limewire managed to break the record industry. DRM is gone for music. Streaming managed to stave off the same fate for movies though. Though with the cableTVification of streaming services it seems like pirating is on the rise again.
 
5 years is significant for modern helium disks. It gradually leaks through the metal of the case.

It is very sad that I have practically no means of reliable backup of growing volumes of private data and video recordings in 4k/8k for ordinary citizens. HDDs are extremely unreliable, especially modern models with high plate density and very thin recording mechanisms.

BD is too small in a single-layer version, and as the experience of people writing personal backups on a multi-layer version has shown - the probability of their failure within even 10 years is definitely several times higher. Despite the fact that I still reliably read CD-R disks from TY recorded in the mid-90s on a Teac drive with glass lenses. Many DVD-RWs from Verbatim failed after 6-8 years. And a small part of DVD-R.

People urgently need a mass backup medium (and an affordable storage device for them) from 1TB+ with a storage time of at least 50 years to transfer data from generation to generation in full volume of records, not dependent on vibrations and electromagnetic influences, like HDD and capable of storing data for so many years at an ambient temperature of up to 60C. With a price for 1TB in the region of $ 100 for no more than 1 medium.

So many long-term storage technologies (the latest "miracle" with ceramics last year) have been announced over the past decades, and things are still the same... Approximately the same as with "miracle" batteries, promises about which we have heard dozens over the past 20 years, but instead of a revolution we have received an extremely slow evolution that does not meet real needs.
 
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This is a sad day. I have a 4K projector and custom 5.1 sound system. Streaming media offers me visual artifacts and compression banding along with grainy audio. Physical media provides a much clearer and better-sounding experience. The idea of movies and shows not being available on physical media much longer is depressing.
 
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bigdragon said:
This is a sad day. I have a 4K projector and custom 5.1 sound system. Streaming media offers me visual artifacts and compression banding along with grainy audio. Physical media provides a much clearer and better-sounding experience. The idea of movies and shows not being available on physical media much longer is depressing
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This is not a problem, because it is easy to download even 1TB in a DCP package, which is transferred to cinemas for rental copies. The problem is the safety of personal data, the volume of which is growing exponentially, and reliable media for at least 15-20 years, at least, simply do not exist in retail. BDs were the last frontier after HDD and flash, available to the masses. Tapes are inaccessible to ordinary citizens due to the huge price of storage devices.

It feels like we are being systematically squeezed into the clouds, where we have no rights and own nothing...
 
What does this mean? Will movies and TV shows no longer be available on Blac Ray and Blu Ray discs? I've never "bought" a digital movie and I don't imagine I ever will, seeing as it's licensed nothing like buying a Blu Ray. So my movie library as big as it will ever be? For my whole life everyone has had a movie library, VHS, DVD, Blu Ray, or Blac Ray. Will people have to start pirating movie theater recordings to keep this up?
 
OldAnalogWorld said:
This is not a problem, because it is easy to download even 1TB in a DCP package, which is transferred to cinemas for rental copies. The problem is the safety of personal data, the volume of which is growing exponentially, and reliable media for at least 15-20 years, at least, simply do not exist in retail. BDs were the last frontier after HDD and flash, available to the masses. Tapes are inaccessible to ordinary citizens due to the huge price of storage devices.

It feels like we are being systematically squeezed into the clouds, where we have no rights and own nothing...
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I agree with you about being pushed into the cloud and forced to own nothing. There are too many streaming services with IP arrangements that shift too often and costs that constantly increase. You don't have to think about any of this with physical media.

However, I'm not aware of any streaming service that offers cinema-quality downloads of movies or shows. I've seen 4K streams offered, but I've seldom come across audio better than Dolby Digital +. I also have a feeling my ISP would throw a fit if I started regularly downloading 1TB files. These things would be nice to have. I don't think the industry is ready to left normies have access to that kind of content though.
 
With the exception of Apple nobody in the streaming space offers UHD BR quality, but even then the audio is still an AC3 derivative. This is the future wrought by people going "oh it's so easy to stream" not contemplating any possible bad side effects. We saw the same thing happen on the music side where the vast majority of digital music consumed is worse quality than CD.

I don't believe Sony was the biggest in the commercial disc space, but it's still not a good sign when a company abandons its own product.

Archival quality BR has already been under attack as I've seen multiple reports in different places indicating current MDISCs aren't real MDISCs anymore and general disc quality has been waning. Realistically this was the only hands off way for a home user to archive data. Even using archival regular discs would be a decent alternative as those could be cycled like LTO with lower up front cost.

The alternatives for on site are LTO and software RAID. LTO drives cost a lot of money, have slow transfer rates and the tapes need to be cycled on a regular basis even if properly stored. Software RAID is very good, but you're beholden to hardware failures which requires some form of monitoring. This also isn't a cheap choice though over time it may pay for itself.

All of these barriers are why much of the time tech inclined people will point non at cloud storage for backups. It's a very unfortunate place to be, but it goes hand in hand with every industry shifting away from local control as much as possible.
 
why_wolf said:
Do we know how many other blu-ray disc factories are still operational?
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partially answering my own question. However the wiki is obviously not up-to-date since Sony is still listed on it. It also makes the assumption that all the listed have their own factories and aren't just renting production time at someone else's facility.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_optical_disc_manufacturers

I think it would be worth it for some journalist to reach out to some of the big players in the disc space, like Criterion, and ask what, if any, impact Sony closing up shop has on their ability to actually get discs made.
 
Wow...what timing. Here I am making plans to sell my entire 1000+ title blu ray collection. Reason being I just don't care anymore... and I've ripped a digital copy of every movie (7+TB total) that I have on my own storage server that I can stream.

The desire to buy physical media isn't there anymore. I can just buy a digital copy. I know you don't "own" the rights... but meh... whatever... everything is going to streaming nowadays.
 
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