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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 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.