Major releases still coming out, and enthusiasts collecting discs:
20 years ago today, the CES in Las Vegas was buzzing with talk of Blu-ray technology, players, and media. Several years in the making, Blu-rays arrived with considerable industry backing, with "seven out of the eight major movie studios announced movie titles for the launch," reports Blu-ray.com. This successor to the DVD offered improved density and thus capacity vs earlier optical formats, largely thanks to the development of blue‑violet laser diodes – hence the name.
Blu-ray discs boosted single layer media capacity to 25GB, vs 4.7GB for DVDs, using a new 405nm blue‑violet laser combined with more advanced materials. The shorter wavelength enabled a higher numerical aperture for more pits per sq mm. This was complemented by a tighter track pitch and a thinner (but harder) protection layer to boost capacity tenfold (comparing single-layer media).
Moreover, Blu-ray's base speed was significantly boosted, with the older DVD standard offering 11 Mbps, but the new format raising the bar to 36 Mbps. Better quality video was also delivered thanks to Blu-ray's adoption of the AVC (H.264) codec. It retained MPEG-2 compatibility, but AVC facilitated more efficient HD video file playback at manageable bitrates.
Blu-ray's success wasn't inevitable, as a rival faction of electronics companies and movie studios would ignite a high‑profile format war. Much like the VHS vs Betamax videotape format war, there could only be one winner, and Sony was on the winning side this time, being one of the biggest backers of Blu-ray. Console gamers of the late noughties became well aware of this format war, as it would also divide the PlayStation and Xbox camps.
Blu-ray's superior capacity, default console integration, copy protection, and broader studio support would mean that this format war was quite brief, with Toshiba conceding in early 2008.
Since its introduction, Blu-ray has been iterated and improved with 4K Blu-ray packing HEVC, HDR and more features into the format starting about a decade ago.
Its bitrates are still considerably better than the best mainstream streaming quality available, so it remains a cherished format among home cinema enthusiasts. Thus, Blu-ray media still clings onto some relevance in 2026, with collectors and bandwidth‑limited regions keeping the format alive. It is also still available as the physical media distribution format for some modern consoles.
Its days look numbered, though, if we look at various industry trends. Console makers are pulling away from physical media, including Blu-ray distribution, for example. Also, we saw news of Sony ending recordable Blu-ray production in 2025, and LG ending production of Blu-ray players in late 2024. Changes like this put several sturdy nails in this optical disc format's coffin.
It seems like an age since PCs last came with Blu-ray (or any optical) disc apparatus built-in. That excludes Japan, for some reason, where we recently noticed optical drive demand surged (inc Blu-ray compatible) coinciding with the end of support for Windows 10.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 06, @11:21PM (4 children)
I regularly bought spindles of 50 or 100 CD-R and DVD-R disks 15-25 years ago. Almost bought an HD-DVD player around 2007. Still have not bought a Bluray drive, player, or disk. But then again I still hold a grudge against Sony for their rootkit shenanigans.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Unixnut on Wednesday January 07, @12:10AM (2 children)
Yeah, over time the need to record CD/DVDs fell by the wayside for me as well.
Car radios started having USB ports, so I did not have to burn MP3 CDs for music, internet got fast enough that I did not need to bother burning a CD/DVD of files to send to someone, when it was usually faster to send via internet. Not to mention you can get 256+GB USB keys, so even if I have to send files to someone, I can send far more on a 256GB thumb drive than on a DVD.
For back-ups CD/DVDs were far too small nowadays, and even Blu-Ray never reached a capacity level when it was feasible to do a back-up to disc (ignoring the cost of all the disks).
Bootable CD/DVDs are rarely needed now, as USB-key booting (mostly) works. I last bought a 50-piece blank CD/DVD spindle 10+ years ago, and I still have not used the whole thing up. At the current rate of consumption (I burnt maybe one CDs in the last 3 years) I am wondering whether its worth keeping the blank CDRs or I should just bin the lot. The only thing I use my CD-Drives for now is to (re-)rip my CD collection from time to time.
Blu-Ray won a war that was already becoming irrelevant towards the end, as P2P and Bittorrent had already shown the future would involve transfer of media over the internet in some form.
The only reason Blu-Ray is still offering better quality is the insistence on the centralised "streaming server -> Client" design, forcing a central point to have a huge pipe in order to serve all the clients without buffering, rather than a distributed system like bittorrent, however this was a deliberate decision in order to maintain full control over the IP, the recording quality was a lower priority.
From what I've seen the Japanese generally are very conservative with technology, up until recently I discovered they still used Fax machines heavily. They don't replace technology just because its out of fashion, or considered "dated". Technology is a tool, and as long as the tool is doing its job why change it?
That doesn't mean they don't adopt new technology, they have blazed a trail on a lot of the new technology themselves, they just have ( IMHO ) a healthy attitude to technology and change, they don't change for the sake of change and/or fashion.
So if Blu-Ray works for them, why move off it?
For me,I never moved on to it. For one its size was too small for back-ups, and they never became so mainstream that you could burn a blu-ray and be sure it would work in any device that it would fit in (unlike with CDs).
Its quality as a movie medium was in excess of what my displays could play, so I would not see any improvement in picture quality from moving onto blu-ray, ignoring the higher costs of the devices.
Plus the copy-protection was good enough to limit its desirability and mass market appeal (the same thing Sony did with the Minidisc incidentally) , thereby keeping tight control over the IP, at the expense of mass market adoption of the technology despite being better than the competition.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday January 07, @04:22AM
I'm with you. I have just one movie on Blu-Ray, given to me because it was a real stinker, and I have never watched it and don't remember where I stored it. I have never used a Blu-Ray drive.
I don't use CDs or DVDs any more either. Used them fairly often 20+ years ago. My enthusiasm for collecting video DVDs was nipped in the bud by a number of factors, such as improved resolution-- 720p really is significantly better than 480p-- and their highly annoying DRM. The Sony rootkit was more than annoying, it was over the line. If I have to buy a new DVD player just to watch something protected by some new DRM scheme my old player can't handle, I won't watch it.
Another problem I encountered was crap video quality. Bought a recording of an Andre Rieu concert for my mother, and found the video quality unacceptable. Blurry and low res. A Great Courses video that my father purchased had the audio out of sync with the video. Yeah, I could have ripped and edited it to fix that, but that's too much trouble. So my video DVD collection never amounted to more than 20 discs.
And there are much superior ways to enjoy video. Flash drives are okay, but best is just downloading it. Now there too the commercial services have been annoying. For a while, Netflix had every Star Trek episode and all the movies. And then, they pulled Star Trek. So I canceled Netflix.
Anyway, most of the time I'd rather play a computer game. As to using optical media for backups, meh. I just rsync over a LAN (fastest and most reliable), or to a flash drive.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday January 07, @09:08PM
The main advantage of optical is that it only changes if it's corrupted and tolerates a different type of abuse than other media. The big issue I've had is the long time it takes to verify and the other copy of the backups having changed metadata screwing up checksums.
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Thursday January 08, @07:12AM
Me, too. I decided that Blu-Ray was a technology that I would skip, and that I would wait for the next technology iteration, perhaps one that would allow the storage of uncompressed video. Twenty years later, no successor technology has emerged, and the idea of physical media has almost become obsolete. As for uncompressed video, that's not going to happen any time soon, as these days video is mostly transmitted over the network, where compression is still necessary.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sgleysti on Wednesday January 07, @12:48AM (7 children)
Blu-ray is good for storing offline backups, especially in remote locations like a safe deposit box. I wish they'd come out with a next gen optical medium.
(Score: 4, Informative) by aafcac on Wednesday January 07, @03:33AM (2 children)
Yes, but it's tough to keep up with HDD, SSD and even tape.
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Wednesday January 07, @11:07PM (1 child)
This optical tape concept looks cool if they can commercialize it: https://holomem.co.uk/ [holomem.co.uk]
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Thursday January 08, @05:15AM
That somewhat reminds me of the LS-120 SuperDisks that were around for a bit before various recordable CD formats became affordable to normal people. They could read and write regular 1.44mb 3.5" disks, albeit more quickly as they were connected using PATA cables, but they had the additional option of the 120mb format which was pretty reliable and physically the same size. It's a shame that it came out so late as Zip disks were truly terrible. Granted I got mine latter on and the drive was refurbished, but the disks were constantly failing to the point where it wasn't useful for much of anything other than the sneakernet and even then if I wasn't going too far away.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday January 07, @01:06PM (3 children)
I like the idea. Not sure about the financials.
A BD-R is one time use and pretty slow and each blank costs about $1 to $2 for 25 gigs.
Today Amazon is delivering me some generic "Amazonbasics" 128G USB3 flash drives for $15 each. So around five times the storage for around ten times the cost, its twice the cost per bit but its SO convenient to backup at USB3 speeds, no moving parts, takes up less space, etc. I could pay more for name brand or less for fake knockoffs that don't work, this seems a reasonable strategy. What I need to back up will fit on the 128G although the 256G is cheaper per bit.
Its interesting that treating USB sticks as one time use is more or less competitive with optical tech.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Unixnut on Wednesday January 07, @03:17PM (1 child)
Be careful though with using Flash for backups. They are known to lose their state (charge) just sitting in storage, so bit-rot is a serious issue. Optical and magnetic media is not like that, it generally will hold its data for decades. Flash is probably OK for short term backups (e.g. 6-monthly refreshes, but remember each read/write wears out the Flash as well) but I would not trust it for long term backups.
I've actually found some old scratched DVDs and CDs I burned 20+ years ago in a box and have been loading them into my NAS. Each and every one has preserved the data perfectly, from the name-branded "archival" disks to the cheap silver CD-Rs I bought at the local flea-market for disposable use (they have turned kind of rust-yellow with age but can be read fine). I even found things like a CD full of old Winamp2 skins, some of which are not even on archive.org (but its cool Audacious can still load Winamp2 skins, so I get a hit of Nostalgia now when I listen to some music).
Plus these disks were not even carefully stored, in fact I completely forgot I had them. They had been bundled with a pile of old junk and shifted across the continent on 5 different occasions as I relocated over the years, yet the data survived.
I had a similar experience with HDDs, the magnetic storage systems also can persist for decades (after all that is why backup tapes are also magnetic), the issue there is more with stuck bearings or failed arms.
Even the interfacing is not a big issue (despite "how to read from obsolete media" being a long standing concern back in the day) because while no motherboard has IDE ports any more, you can find everything from USB/IDE adaptors to actual IDE PCI-Express cards online to give you the interface you need to get the data off the devices.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday January 07, @08:54PM
Yeah I know. Its good for offsite in case of a catastrophe.
Really we need two words, one for archival where you delete the working copy and the only copy exists on the backup media, and one for copies of the working copy that you could theoretically run a verify against. Flash will work for the latter, less so for the former.
"copy, delete the original to save space, save the offline copy elsewhere" vs "copy, save both copies"
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Wednesday January 07, @11:05PM
Just want a fairly reliable medium to store really essential files offsite in case my house burns down. Mostly financial documents, maybe some design files from personal projects. No videos or anything huge in size.
It works because I don't have a lot of data to store. If I had more, would be tempted to use tape, but the drives are really expensive.
(Score: 4, Informative) by anubi on Wednesday January 07, @05:10AM (2 children)
With all this focus on copy protection, as well as "bit-rot" enforcing end-of-life, I considered Blu-Ray too ephemeral for my use. Even if I bought in to the new tech, I was just putting my head into the noose of those wanting me to invest in non-durable tech for the benefit of the Marketing Boys who want to see me buy another when what I bought breaks.
I saw through their multi-prong plan:
Part A: Lobby Congress to pass Strong Copyright Legislation so they can use Public Dollars to enforce and penalize any that didn't confirm to the letter of their lobbied and paid-for "wish-list", codified into Law.
A1: Law obligates "Lusers" to honor "Terms and Conditions : especially disassembly, modification, and reproduction.
A2: Obligation includes both "hold harmless" and "arbitration" clauses to keep "Lusers" from using the legal system to fight back, while still having the legal system still in effect to enforce the "wish list".
Part B: Claim ownership of other's information processed by their software, with no recourse for the "lusers" to even investigate what the software is actually doing in their machine. No liability is assumed for loss of a "Lusers" data, only the "Holder of Copyright" shall be covered under this Law.
Part C: Reserve rights to change terms and conditions after the contract has been accepted.
Part C1: Including making changes to products already accepted with no guarantee of an accurate description of the change. The "Lusers" agree to remain clueless, and not verify outside authorized channels.
Part C1A: Changes may include rendering product already sold and paid for unusable by said change, no refund or loss-of-use penalties shall apply. Attempts by "Lusers" to maintain what they had shall be considered a violation of this contract.
Part C1B: Changes may include anything either we or our business partners may wish to install or read from your filesystem, at any time, for any reason, with no duty to inform you of this. Whatever happens, you did agree to the changes and hold harmless clauses, and all grievances must be resolved in our arbitration court.
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This is not all, but I am pretty sure this is a condensation of what our leadership signed us up for.
I can't be too mad at the RIAA for pushing this. They knew what they were doing, to make sure the rest of us would be legally gutted ( with what we have to tolerate today: buggy code, lack of responsibility, ability to pass and enforce one-sided wish-lists into law ) without recourse. A am far more pissed at US for our own ignorance and tolerating this. We discussed this, a LOT, on the Green Site. Ignorance and deliberate indifference reigned and now our computational infrastructure is FUBAR.
A mess is sure a lot easier to make than it is to clean up.
And we have one hell of a mess on our hands.
It is easy to give something ( including stuff that isn't yours to take ) away, than it is to get it back.
Here's to all those older guys on the Green Site that saw this coming, tried their best to warn us, we did not pay attention to their warnings, and now we have a terribly broken system, with a few getting filthy rich off our miseries.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 07, @10:55PM (1 child)
People have been whining about mythical "bit rot" since the days of CDs. I have several thousand CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, and 4K UHDs. None have succumbed to "bit rot."
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Thursday January 08, @05:21AM
You've just been lucky I've had a few that are showing signs of it, if you're saying it's 0, it's probably because error correction is picking it up. The main reason that I know that some of my audio CDs are impacted is that I use Exact Audio Copy to do the ripping and it picks up slight issues that wouldn't be normally noticed. And I have a few DVDs that don't really read at all in places. Most of those are WB discs that are probably just defective, but it's not just them.
(Score: 3, Touché) by VLM on Wednesday January 07, @09:02PM (3 children)
I'm surprised they're still doing differential product pricing in 2026.
For the LOLs here are three obsolete forms of media at different new product price for "A Minecraft Movie"
DVD - $12.89
Blu-Ray - $15.89
4K Blu-Ray "ultra HD hardware" - $36.59
And for the LOLs: The original soundtrack on vinyl record - $26.98 (about $5 more than the ridiculously priced audio CD)
I suppose the more formats they release the more formats "collectors" will buy... Perhaps we can get the OST on 8-track or Edison Cylinders. Or sony minidisc.
The irony is the kids just want to see the minecraft movie precisely one time. It was "OK" but I also have no interest in seeing it a 2nd time.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 07, @11:03PM
Sure, because 8-tracks, et. al., are exactly the same as a Blu-ray. Idiot.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Thursday January 08, @05:28AM (1 child)
I personally only bother with DVD except for rare cases where the release was actually done properly. I recently got the Johnny Mnemonic in black and white release and it's rather stunning. I've also got the Prisoner and the Princess Bride where the people did the work in all cases were clearly given the money and had the interest in getting the most they could out of the materials they had to work with. I remember seeing a rerelease of Ghostbusters in the theater on a digital projection and it was quite clear that the camera crew screwed things up a lot as much of it was out of focus. But, the people doing the transfer also screwed up as there was a ton of unnecessary digital noise that shouldn't have been there if they had properly done the transfer. I don't know if it was laziness, incompetence or just a lack of funds to do it right, but there was a ton of noise in addition to the normal film grain.
But, in a lot of cases the bluray and 4k is just a waste of money because the original source material was shot on the assumption that it wouldn't ever be transferred to something that high res to be looked at that closely, so I don't bother, I just get the DVD release knowing that 12TB can carry a ton of DVDs, but far, far fewer Bluray releases.
The only real reason for Bluray to exist at all is that it has a better color gamut and usually better sound options. The extra pixels are typically just padding as few people are buying TVs that have enough pixels to properly display it and aren't sitting close enough to distinguish between the pixels that are on screen anyways.
(Score: 2) by corey on Thursday January 15, @11:15AM
You’d be surprised about how good some old titles look at 4K. But you need to check out the way they upscaled it. They’re some movies where people reckon they just literally digitally upscaled 1080p to 4K - which your TV will do basically - but others which have been remastered from the source analog film direct to 4K and 10bit colour. An example is Predator. I bought the 4K box set because I heard they remastered it properly, and you can really see it. It’s amazingly sharp and has really great colour (dynamic range maybe).
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Thursday January 08, @10:01AM
One local shop tried to sell Blu-Ray for two or three years and then gave up. Apparently, the Blu-Ray movies, along with all the other problems that go with the medium, have unique encryption keys for each title, if I have seen correctly. Myself, I even bought a USB Blu-Ray reader to use with a computer but never got it to work. When I returned a stack of borrowed Blu-Rays to the local library, during small talk with the staff there they let me know that among them it is common knowledge that "Blu-ray does not work". Skimming the relevant media playback forums sure backs up that opinion.
The copyright cartel shot themselves in the foot with this one, but rather than accepting the blame they spin it as as further "evidence" of copyright infringement. Even streaming is bizarrely inconvenient if not downright impossible [theoatmeal.com]. I understand why there can be many who give in to the cartel's pressure and sail the high seas instead. it's not about money, it's about access and they're basically forced to if they want to watch anything these days. especially older titles.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.