Sony has announced it will end its
recordable Blu-ray Disc media production in February, marking the end of its nearly two-decade run. This end-of-production announcement also affects MiniDiscs for recording, MD data for recording, and MiniDV cassettes.
The company
ended the production of recordable consumer Blu-ray and optical disks in mid-2024, indicating it would retain production lines for business and corporate clients until it became unprofitable. However, as the general public prefers streaming services over physical media, commercial sales have quickly become insufficient to sustain Sony’s optical media business.
The first Blu-ray disc prototype was released in 2000, designed as a successor to the DVD, and competed against Toshiba’s HD DVD. Both Blu-ray and HD DVD became publicly available in 2006. Still, the latter lost out to the former in the format wars because of Sony’s partnership with film studios and the inclusion of Blu-ray technology in the PlayStation 3.
While ODD ownership peters out, many users store important files using cloud storage. However, this usually has a monthly cost and could become prohibitive if you store a large amount of data. Putting your data online also raises a lot of
security issues. Some users and organizations prefer storing files on hard drives, which typically come with a lifespan estimated at five years. If you don’t move their contents to a new drive within that time, you risk losing the information within them — something that
the music industry is just discovering now.
If stored properly, optical media could be viable for decades, which makes it an ideal medium for long-term cold storage. While Sony is no longer making recordable Blu-ray media, its competitor, Pioneer, has found a niche in long-term storage and created a
Blu-ray disc designed to last a hundred years. Other researchers are even working on
archival glass storage that should last 5,000 years.
