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Today i found out that Pioneer and LG - apparently everyone - stopped building new external bluray burners.
(At least when it comes to the high quality, fullsize NON slim ones)

I'm still using Optical Discs to Backup really important data and i plan to continue in doing so.

After finding out i wanted to buy another external bluray burner (preferably pioneer) but found out that they are sold out everywhere with very few "new old stock" offerings on ebay for atronomical prices.

Am i right that there currently aren't any high quality drives for archival purposes available anymore?

Is there anything announced as far as new drives go or do you have to buy new old stock or used drives? (Which seem to be expensive and rare already...)

Michael_ wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 07, 2025 3:48 pm

Today i found out that Pioneer and LG - apparently everyone - stopped building new external bluray burners.
(At least when it comes to the high quality, fullsize NON slim ones)

I'm still using Optical Discs to Backup really important data and i plan to continue in doing so.

After finding out i wanted to buy another external bluray burner (preferably pioneer) but found out that they are sold out everywhere with very few "new old stock" offerings on ebay for atronomical prices.

Am i right that there currently aren't any high quality drives for archival purposes available anymore?

Is there anything announced as far as new drives go or do you have to buy new old stock or used drives? (Which seem to be expensive and rare already...)

You are a bit behind! Pioneer stopped manufacturing ages ago, probably last year sometime and closed up shop back in April.

Yeah, there are no quality drives for archiving. There is fake news spreading that all manufacturers have stopped but LG are still making drives, they just aren't very good quality. Their best offering is the BU40N.

ASUS haven't made drives in years. They just rebadge others, mostly LG drives.

For now you will have to get a "second hand" one or "new" old stock that is not sold out. Seems there is some old stock left and they sell them on e-bay. You can probably get them else, don't ask me because I don't know.

Looking back at things I believe that the only product left going forward will be slimline bluray burners with USB3. It is similar to desktop PCs, there is only office desktop PCs from HP, Dell etc. Regular desktop PCs are only kept afloat because of gaming otherwise that would also become a niche market. Same thing with mechanical harddrives, they are going away eventually. It might become a product only for larger corporations etc and not for the end consumer. Perhaps even 2.5 inch SSDs will go away and replaced ny M2 drives even though I think that will take some time.

No consumer, no market, no product. More or less the way things work sadly.

I am holding out hope that once there is a monopoly on bluray burners and media that we will at least have one manufacturer that keeps going. I think the price of hardware and media will become crazy expensive but this is a niche market now, more or less.

Thanks for the replies. Well that sucks.

DennisOlof wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 08, 2025 6:11 pm

Seems there is some old stock left and they sell them on e-bay.

I see high end external pioneer drives go for over 1000$ on ebay.

Given the situation is this justified or a massive rip off? Thinking of getting one but man those prices are really steep.

Michael_ wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 10, 2025 2:55 pm

Thanks for the replies. Well that sucks.

DennisOlof wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 08, 2025 6:11 pm

Seems there is some old stock left and they sell them on e-bay.

I see high end external pioneer drives go for over 1000$ on ebay.

Given the situation is this justified or a massive rip off? Thinking of getting one but man those prices are really steep.

Well, since they are no longer manufactured, whatever little remaining stock is left in the world is it. They can charge whatever they want. I'm not suprised at all that as supplies dwindle, prices increase. Pioneer drives are quite rare now!

Actually, I found that local shops can sometimes still stock old models.
I managed to get a new Pioneer 212 last year, with an old firmware from 2019.

But shopping from Amazon or other big online marketplaces can be exhausting.