Digital streaming is displacing the last remnants of physical media.

In a disappointing turn of events, FlatpanelsHD reports that LG has ended production of its Blu-ray player series, which includes the UBK80 and UBK90 models. With limited stock available, prospective buyers should act quickly to secure the last remaining units before they are sold out.

After Samsung and Sony’s departure from physical media, LG was one of the last major manufacturers of Blu-ray players

  • nyan@lemmy.cafe
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    2 hours ago

    I won’t be concerned until the only manufacturers left are Chinese brands no one in the West has ever heard of. We’re not even nearly there yet.

  • viking@infosec.pub
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    10 hours ago

    Never really bought into bluray. DVD was still good enough on early HD TVs, and at the time where the really good ones became affordable, you could buy decently sized HDDs and later SSDs for little money. Ever since my video library has been entirely digital.

    • Dempf@lemmy.zip
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      11 minutes ago

      Right, but if you want a digital video library that hasn’t been compressed to hell by some streaming company then your only option is using Blu-ray as a source.

    • john89@lemmy.ca
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      2 hours ago

      I think the appeal of blu-ray today is for large amounts of long-term storage.

      For you or I who just save the files we’re interested in, it’s not that big of a deal. For the archivists who provide those files, it could be significant.

  • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    8 hours ago

    What brand would you recommend for a blu-ray burner?

    For long term storage of my several TB of “family photos and videos” of course.

    Or any other way to do “cheap” long term storage without maintenance (burn and forget). I heard that hdd are not reliable for long term unmaintained storage like that so I thought some form of optical storage.

    • teuniac_@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      One that is capable of burning M-disks. They are available in sizes up to 100gb and are supposed to last a few hundred years. They can be read by most Blu-ray players made after 2011.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC

      Of course, this is more suitable for genuine family photos and videos. For “family photos and videos” you could use any Blu-ray disk, but I doubt it’s the cheapest way to store them.

    • elucubra@sopuli.xyz
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      6 hours ago

      When CDs were introduced they were touted as essentially eternal and damage proof. Id take M discs xlaim with a pinch of salt

  • leverage@lemdro.id
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    16 hours ago

    Fuck LG, not like they made good BR players. I’ve sworn to avoid buying their shit since they discontinued support for a BR player within a year of release, which back then meant you wouldn’t be able to watch any BR movie released after a certain date due to new DRM or whatever. They just up and decided to not release new firmware for units still under warranty.

  • pmc@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    22 hours ago

    Sony and Panasonic still make Blu-ray players… Sony just stopped making the blank media IIRC

    • john89@lemmy.ca
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      2 hours ago

      I’ve been actively avoiding it forever, but my peers are all-to-eager to give up any control or ownership of anything.

      It’s really a cultural problem, and most of the people receiving the short end of the stick aren’t realizing it.

    • FiveMacs@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      Not owning just means you don’t have to pay anything. Have at it. World’s free now

        • john89@lemmy.ca
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          2 hours ago

          Yeah, I would download a car.

          You’d have to be a special kind of stupid not to download a car and instead pay the thousands of dollars + dealing with scumbag dealerships.

          Or just your average American.

    • Astronauticaldb@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      Xbox can play Blu-ray as well, iirc. Still though, your point does stand. Let’s just hope that All-Digital consoles don’t supercede physical media consoles.

      • samus12345@lemm.ee
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        20 hours ago

        Or they might just make all disc drives extra attachments you have to get separately in the future.

  • just_another_person@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    On one hand I’m happy less plastic shit will be produced and consumed. On the other hand, this is leading more towards dystopian timelines where we can never own anything anymore.

    • EngineerGaming@feddit.nl
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      1 day ago

      You can own DRMless media instead. BluRay was already more restrictive than DVD, from what I understand.

      • ch00f@lemmy.world
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        24 hours ago

        Eh. A few more steps to rip the content, but not bad really.

        Now UHD Blu-ray is a different story. There are a limited number of drives that could do it before their firmware was patched.

        • EngineerGaming@feddit.nl
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          22 hours ago

          I find buying DVDs just to rip the contents impractical anyway. If I were concerned with ethics - I’d likely do like I do with Steam games and buy a DRMed version corresponding to my DRMless download. Because I’d rather not deal with a disk taking up space or needing to be disposed of, not to mention potential scarcity if it is no longer in print.

          Agree on Blu-Ray. Also, weren’t there region restrictions?

          • ch00f@lemmy.world
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            22 hours ago

            Yeah, it is frustrating that the license is tied to the physical disc. Especially when they won’t send you a replacement for a damaged disc.

            I personally buy, rip, and keep the physical discs of my collection which is now well over 1,000 titles. It’s a lot of work, and takes up a lot of space, but it’s also a hobby I enjoy. I’d much prefer if I could just buy a license for the film and watch it or store it however I want.

            You know, this might actually be a decent application for NFTs.

            • EngineerGaming@feddit.nl
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              13 hours ago

              I wouldn’t want that, NFTs are wasteful and also very much public.

              I see the value in disks if you’re into collecting the physical pieces, but if you’re not into that, I don’t find it a good way to own - for me that would be useless pieces of plastic occupying space. Very much not for everyone.

  • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘@infosec.pub
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    22 hours ago

    Floppy drives died decades ago, yet you can still buy the drives and disks, brand new. This end of production will create a void, and it will be filled by someone else. No innovation will occur, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing here.

  • Mandy
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    20 hours ago

    I’m surprised they lasted this long honestly

  • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net
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    1 day ago

    I assume there will still be less prominent brands making them, just as there are still DVD players being made.

    • Prox@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      And MORE prominent brands, as Sony still makes them and Panasonic still makes the best ones.

    • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgOP
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      1 day ago

      Possibly, haven’t considered that. My main concern is that media releases will no longer target physical media, leaving streaming / perpetual renting as the only option. VCRs were still manufactured after the major brands stopped production, but VHS releases largely went away.

      The Alien: Romulus VHS Release notwithstanding lol.

      • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net
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        1 day ago

        Hopefully they’ll still be made for people without access to high speed internet.

        It makes sense that VHS production ceased, since DVD’s are better in every metric, cheaper to produce, and eventually became the bigger market after players got so cheap. I would’ve thought blurays would continue that trend, but if these sales statistics are anything to go by, it’s possible DVD could outlive Bluray as a viable market. I assume DVD’s occupy a sweet spot between good enough quality and affordability.

      • pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online
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        1 day ago

        There are still movies that get a VHS release, so I don’t see them completely abandoning disc media any time soon. Tons of people still use it to watch movies

  • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
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    1 day ago

    And in all that time I never once owned a Blu-ray device.

    At the beginning I was pissed at the DRM. And by the time that was solved streaming was good enough.

    • EngineerGaming@feddit.nl
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      1 day ago

      Streaming will never be a satisfying model for me - I need ownership and lack of DRM.

      That said, I don’t see much of a point in DVD or Blu-Ray either, hard drives are smaller than one DVD’s case while fitting orders of magnitude more.

      • john89@lemmy.ca
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        2 hours ago

        Problem with streaming is you’re effectively renting.

        If the source of the stream wants to change their terms, there’s nothing you can do aside from jump ship to the next business maximizing profit.

        Unless you’re smart enough to use free streaming services, that is ;)

      • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
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        1 day ago

        Been waiting for over ten years now for hdd prices to go down significantly to replace my broken 4 TB drive. Now I don’t have any money or energy to rip the rest of my DVD collection.

    • dindonmasker
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      1 day ago

      There’s still no streaming for 3D movies yet tho :,( i still need to rip the 3D blue rays to my PC if i want to watch them in VR… fandangonow had a quest app to stream 3D movies but it doesn’t work anymore and it was a US only option. Hopefully the apple vision pro stuff makes it happen faster globally!

        • dindonmasker
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          23 hours ago

          I’ll look into it. Not sure what kodi does exactly based on their website.

          • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
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            22 hours ago

            It’s a media center app. To organize and play videos, TV, music and photos. With a nice interface for TVs.

            It has settings for 3D content. I have no idea if works in VR but maybe you’re lucky.

  • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    I guess home users will be without any viable long-term backup media soon. The only ones I can think of are those special blu-ray discs that promise to last for archival. After that we have spinning disks, but those only last a few years and will eventually be phased out, and then all we’ll have is flash memory that degrades rapidly. Oh, and paying through the nose for someone’s cloud service so they can hold our data to ransom while mining it for AI, and delete it as soon as we miss a bill payment.

    • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
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      21 hours ago

      Blurays are too small for backups anymore. It would take hundreds of them to backup all of my stuff. If you want long term backups, you have to spend a couple grand on a tape drive.

    • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgOP
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      1 day ago

      Oh, and paying through the nose for someone’s cloud service so they can hold our data to ransom while mining it for AI.

      That’s what “they” want. lol. Everything seems to be pushing that way for sure.

      Though I am a little less pessimistic about spinners fully going away until all-flash datacenters are the norm. I’ve also had some running for close to 10 years, and they’re going strong (I’ve also got much newer ones as well)

      I forget the article I posted here months ago, but there’s a new optical format which is in the multi-TB range. Not sure if/when it’ll be commercially available, but maybe that will come about?

      https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/23/optical_disc_breakthrough/

      • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        That’s technically promising, but I can’t see it being a mass-market item since most people don’t care about backups, so it will likely be prohibitively expensive for most home users.

    • Kairos@lemmy.today
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      1 day ago

      but those only last a few years.

      Where do people get this information? Hard drives are very stable now (as are SSDs). All of mine are still going strong after 6+ years.

      • mosiacmango@lemm.ee
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        1 day ago

        That was true a while back, but yes drives have gotten way better.

        That’s just failure rate though, not data loss. You need your drives using a sane file system like zfs or using raid 1/10/6 where discs can do error checking as well to prevent silent data loss.

        They also need to be powered on. Offline drives will lose data to bit rot over time.

        • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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          24 hours ago

          The lifetimes have improved, but according to your link, the currently measured average age of a drive at failure is 2 years, 10 months. They expect that to increase as they roll over to newer, more reliable drives. These drives are under heavy use, unlike drives used for offline storage, but still it’s not really the kind of lifespan you’d ideally want in an archival medium.

    • ditty@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      I bought a 5.25" bay LG one for my PC and installed libredrive on it a year ago. So far all I’ve done with it is burned a few CDs for a friend with an old car lol