blu ray

Sony announces the end of the production of recordable blu-rays and other physical memory media

Sony (more precisely the division Sony Storage Media Solutions) has announced that it will interrupt the production of physical memory supports starting from February 2025. This means that it will no longer produce the discs Blue-Ray Registration (BD-R and BD-RE)i MinidiscThe MD Data and the Mini DV boxes for registration. The decision will not affect the production of films on Blu-ray and Blu-ray Uhd, which will continue to be printed in large industrial plants. In any case, Sony’s withdrawal from this market marks a turning point in the optical support industry, leaving an uncertain future for this type of technology.

In July 2024, the Japanese media had already anticipated that Sony would reduce the staff employed in the division dedicated to recordable supports by 40%. The official announcement of the retreat, the January 23, 2025confirms that there will be no successors for these products. Below are Sony’s announcement:

Starting from February 2025, we will interrupt the production of all models of Blu-ray disc, minidisc for registration, MD data for registration and mini dv boxes. Please note that there will be no subsequent models.

Sony’s role in the production of Blu-ray records

Sony played a fundamental role in the development and spread of optical supports. The Blu-ray discintroduced as a successor of the DVD, represented a big step forward thanks to the use of a blue laserwhich allows you to store data with one higher density compared to the red laser of the DVDs. With a storage capacity that could reach 200 GB thanks to the use of multiple layers, Blu-ray allowed the distribution of high definition content and ultra HD. The advent of streaming, however, brought the physical support market to an inevitable and progressive decline, generating a physiological decline in DVD sales, Blu-ray and Blu-ray UHD.

The origin of the name “Blu-ray” (literally “blue radius”) is linked to the choice to avoid the word “Blue”, which cannot be recorded as a commercial brand. Technology made its debut with Sony’s console PlayStation 3while the first Blu-Ray reader was the Sony BDZ-S77launched in Japan In the 2003. There competition with the HD DVDthe rival format supported by Toshibaconcluded in 2008 with the Blu-ray victorysupported by the main cinematographic houses and hardware producers.

The future prospects for optical supports are not rosy. Already in 2019, the information site Flatpanelshd In an article he highlighted the improbability of the development of an 8K disk format, spotting the forecast. The growing diffusion of streaming and cloud storage solutions then gave the final “blow” to physical supports, making them less and less relevant for the general public.

With the withdrawal of one of the historical protagonists of this sector-Sony precisely-Blu-ray and other similar formats could start towards a progressive disappearance, marking the end of an era in the distribution of digital content.

The other memory supports abandoned by Sony

As you may have noticed by the introduction of the article, Sony referred to Other memory media that will no longer produce. We list below.

  • Minidisc: It was a magnet-optics digital support launched by Sony in 1992. Designed as Successor of musicsestThe Minidisc It was equipped with a penalty of 7 × 7 cm which protected it from impacts and dust, with a capacity of about 145 MB. Thanks to Sony’s ATRAC compression algorithm, it made it possible to record between 74 and 80 minutes of audio, doubled in mono mode. However, the format has not had great diffusion, penalized by the success of the CD and, subsequently, by the diffusion of the AP3, which offered greater practicality in the management of audio files. His distinctive advantage compared to previous digital media was the possibility of being rewritten several times, making it very versatile until the arrival of the MP3 readers, who exceeded the minidisc in storage and data transfer speed.
  • MD Data: from the minid technology derived theMD Dataa format developed and standardized by Sony in 1993 For the storage of videos, audio, photos and software, with an initial capacity of 140 MB, then extended to 650 MB. In 2004 Sony introduced its evolution, theHi-mdwith greater capacity. MD data support, being removable and rewritable, lent itself to different computer applications.
  • DV and Mini DV: In the 1995the digital video format was developed DValso known in its miniaturized version Minidvintended for digital cameras and regulated by the IEC 61834 specifications. In 2003 an advanced high definition variant was introduced, called High Definition Videowhich represented an appreciable improvement in the digital registration sector.