Computer

As of February, Blu-ray discs will no longer be produced

The consoles, in their day, were the great promoters of Blu-ray technology, which now seems to have its days numbered. These solutions, which came to replace DVD, encountered a paradigm shift that has made them obsolete. Panasonic has announced that in February it will end forever the Blu-ray production.

Currently, the consoles maintain Blu-ray readers in a residual way, since currently most of the games are downloaded. The streaming of content, such as Netflix or HBO, have also caused these optical drives to not interest the user. And it is that optical discs have been in a constant recession for some time

Panasonic will stop producing them in a few days

The Blu-ray format, for those who don’t know, was introduced to the market in 2005 by Sony, TDK, Philips and Microsoft. This format had the great support of Sony, who would use it on their PlayStation 4 in a remarkable way. The truth is that over time its importance has been diluted due to content streaming.

It was in 2006 whenor Panasonic startedor to market their own Blu-ray optical drives and the players for this format. Now the company has said that it will carry out a discontinuation of products from February of this year. No workarounds will be released and when the stock is gone, it’s gone.

They point out that the demand for recordable Blu-ray discs has fallen significantly and their profitability is difficult to maintain. It should be noted that they have sold, since 2006, a total of 330 million records. Normally people used them to store data, but nowadays Blu-ray recorders and players are very expensive compared to pen drives or external hard drives.

pansonic blu ray

Currently, external USB Blu-ray recorders start at 100 euros and then we must buy the discs. The good thing is that each Blu-ray disc costs about 0.8-1 euro, which is not a bad price. But they have problems, you need a Blu-ray player to access the information, something that rarely has anyone.

The simplest, most comfortable and cheapest is a 128 GB pen drive that can cost between 10-20 euros. Any computer has a USB port and you can save and delete information quickly and easily.

Sony remains the sole manufacturer

This means that, after the cessation of activity of Panasonic, Sony is the only (prominent) manufacturer of Blu-ray optical drives. Something that is not strange, since Sony has great strength in the console market and also in the audiovisual. It seems difficult for Sony to leave this market today, considering that the PS5 and Xbox Series X support this format.

Everything indicates that the existence of Blu-ray is temporary. When Sony and Microsoft make the leap to their next generation of consoles, the most logical thing is that they abandon the optical drive reader. This format makes little sense, taking into account that more and more people are going digital.

Increasingly, in Spain, it is common to find high-speed internet connections. In addition, the games receive regular updates that add improvements or fix bugs. Everything outside of the “basic” format of the game that can be found on an optical disc.

In this article, Hardzone includes affiliate links for which a commission is received that does not affect the user at all. These purchase recommendations are independent, without an agreement with the brands.

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