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posted by martyb on Saturday February 16 2019, @10:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the Blu-ray-blues dept.

Samsung stops releasing Blu-ray players in the US

Did you notice that Samsung hasn't made a peep about Blu-ray players at CES or other recent trade shows? There's a good reason for it: the company is exiting the category in the US. Samsung told Forbes and CNET that it's no longer introducing Blu-ray players for the country. It didn't provide reasoning for the move, but Forbes sources reportedly said that Samsung had scrapped a high-end model that was supposed to arrive later in 2019.

Related: Ultra HD Blu-Ray Specification Completed
Sony Launches Quad-Layer 128 GB Blu-Ray Discs


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  • (Score: 2) by Apparition on Sunday February 17 2019, @01:30AM (11 children)

    by Apparition (6835) on Sunday February 17 2019, @01:30AM (#802279) Journal

    Optical media is dead. It's all about the streaming now. Best Buy stopped stelling CDs [billboard.com] in their stores last year. Kmart in Australia stopped selling DVDs and CDs [news.com.au] last year. Oppo Digital stopped making [cnet.com] Blu-Ray players last year. Physical disc sales and rentals plummeted in 2017 [variety.com], falling 14% in 2017, after falling 10% in 2016. Meanwhile, video streaming subscription services finally eclipsed DVD and Blu-Ray sales for the first time in 2016, and expanded by an additional 30% in 2017. In addition, purchasing digital videos on Amazon Prime Video, Vudu, Google Play Movies & TV, etc., totaled over $2 billion in 2017.

    In my not-so-popular opinion, this doesn't matter to me. I live in a condominium, so I rarely buy physical media as I simply don't have the room for it. I've been all digital now for books, comic books, graphic novels, movies, music, and television for years. I buy books on Amazon Kindle and Kobo, comic books and graphic novels on Comixology and Google Play Books, movies and television on Amazon Prime Video and Vudu, and music on 7digital, Bandcamp, and Apple iTunes.

    Buy those DVDs and Blu-Rays while you can, they won't be here much longer.

    Starting Score:    1  point
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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday February 17 2019, @02:00AM (3 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday February 17 2019, @02:00AM (#802292) Journal

    I would love to purchase optical media again. But it should be blank holographic media with a capacity around 1 petabyte (1,000 terabytes) or preferably 1 exabyte (1 million terabytes).

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    • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday February 17 2019, @03:32AM (2 children)

      by darkfeline (1030) on Sunday February 17 2019, @03:32AM (#802344) Homepage

      Is there any particular reason you want optical media? I want reliable large capacity storage, but I don't care for optical media and as the optical aspect (and the necessary mechanical reader) gets in the way of reliability.

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      • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Sunday February 17 2019, @04:42AM

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday February 17 2019, @04:42AM (#802365) Journal

        It would be interesting to see the 12 cm format preserved yet again, and possibly see drives that read everything from CD, DVD, Blu-ray/XL, to new-fangled disc. I'm not saying that a holographic storage medium would necessarily be engineered that way, or even spin at all. But it is, by definition, "optical" storage.

        Define "reliability". M-DISC is supposedly much more reliable than normal DVDs and Blu-rays. A new technology could be inherently more reliable. Or it might be worth it to construct the disc out of better materials depending on the $/TB.

        If the medium was rewritable and had an absurd capacity, it could be packaged as a hard drive replacement instead of a tray-loaded disc.

        Here are some candidates [soylentnews.org]. If we do end up with a spinning optical disc with petabytes or exabytes of storage, we might be able to forgive some inconveniences.

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      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 17 2019, @07:19AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 17 2019, @07:19AM (#802404)

        Is there any particular reason you want optical media? I want reliable large capacity storage, but I don't care for optical media and as the optical aspect (and the necessary mechanical reader) gets in the way of reliability.

        Where are the holographic data cubes? Conceivably, if the media doesn't move it should be more stable & reliable than the spinning discs we're currently stuck with. Is somebody in big data, or worse, big media blocking the technology the way big oil did electric motors for so long?

  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 17 2019, @07:13AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 17 2019, @07:13AM (#802402)

    Optical media is dead. It's all about the streaming now.

    Easy for you to say, but not all of us live in a magical fairyland with uncapped high-speed data connections to the internet.

    • (Score: 2) by Apparition on Sunday February 17 2019, @07:40AM (1 child)

      by Apparition (6835) on Sunday February 17 2019, @07:40AM (#802407) Journal

      It's easy for me to say, but I also backed it up with facts. I realize that not everyone has uncapped high speed Internet, but the fact is optical media is being phased out. That's just undisputed. Stores have begun to stop stocking and selling optical media. Optical media player manufacturers like Samsung and Oppo have ceased manufacturing optical media players. The sales of optical media have plummeted over the past few years while video streaming subscriptions rise and the sale of digital media have substantially risen. The writing is on the wall, whether or not you want to see it.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Apparition on Sunday February 17 2019, @07:47AM

        by Apparition (6835) on Sunday February 17 2019, @07:47AM (#802409) Journal

        I should also mention that Hollywood has recently begun doubting the 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray format, and several 4K Ultra HD movie restorations are only being released digitally, like It's a Wonderful Life, Lawrence of Arabia, and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

        Also, rumor is that both the next Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox (scheduled for release in 2020 or 2021), will forego any kind of optical media drive. They will both be digital media only, according to the rumor. Now whether that's true or not, we'll see, but it wouldn't surprise me. Half of all Sony's and Microsoft's video game sales in 2018 were digital.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 17 2019, @02:10PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 17 2019, @02:10PM (#802495)

      NBN plans in Australia can be $60/month for unlimited data on the NBN or DSL2.
      Join us.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 17 2019, @12:16PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 17 2019, @12:16PM (#802471)

    A few years back, I got the hankerin' to rewatch Babylon 5. Fortunately it was on the streaming platform I was subscribed to at the time, so I began watching from the beginning, an episode every couple of days or so. Then I had to stop, because it wasn't on that streaming platform anymore -- all the seasons were gone. Their license had run out.

    I suppose I could have run around, trying to find out where it was licensed to next, if anywhere. Instead, I bought the DVDs, and now I can watch it as many times as I want, whenever I want. I don't have to worry about who has the license today, or if it's on a platform I have access to (physical or legal). I can (and do) rip the video from the DVDs (and my BluRays) and convert them to any video codec I wish, for playing wherever I desire.

    When the internet's down, and here in the hinterland that happens a fair bit, I have plenty of content I can still watch. Or I can read on my Kindle -- hey, I'm not a complete luddite.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 17 2019, @02:13PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 17 2019, @02:13PM (#802496)

      I watched the first couple of seasons of an old anime on Netflix. Strangely they old have that. And not the rest.
      So, we're not there yet.
      But.
      From the looks of moves being made by others big media are looking to kill the market if they can't control it.

  • (Score: 1) by nwf on Monday February 18 2019, @07:59PM

    by nwf (1469) on Monday February 18 2019, @07:59PM (#803140)

    That's premature. I still buy Blu-rays because they are often cheaper than buying the digital download version, and come with the digital download version. Plus a 4K blu-ray looks much better for the same movie when streamed. There just isn't enough bandwidth to most houses. A 4K movie is 50-75 GB.

    Plus Netflix and other streaming companies never have new movies or any popular movies that they didn't make. Amazon, iTunes, etc. let you buy movies, but again, getting the disc is often cheaper, especially if you wait a little. It's trivial to rip a standard blu-ray anyway.