With OEMs LG and Pioneer No Longer Manufacturing Drives

[Chris Kelly]

How are we supposed to use our computers and VLC for disc playback once the drive we own dies? Are there ways for PCs to read discs with Blu-ray players, such as the Magnetar UDP-800 or UDP-900, Oppo UDP-203 or UDP-205, Panasonic DP-UB150, DP-UB420, DP-UB450, DP-UB820, or DP-UB9000, Pioneer UDP-LX500 or UDP-LX800, or Sony UBP-X700, UBP-X700U, UBP-X800, UBP-X800M2, UBP-X1000ES, or UBP-X1100ES, such as removing its drive and somehow connecting it via SATA or USB, or a less destructive way such as USB or network connection?

[Billycar11]

when we get desperate we will find out for now we wait and hope someone starts up again

[boguslecina]

Pioneer Digital Design and Manufacturing (PDDM) has been sold to Chinese company Shanxi Lightchain Technology Industrial Development. We must waiting for news...

[BDR_UD03]

Where Hitashi-LG and Pioneer the only OEMs making PC Bluray Drives capable of reading and writing discs? Are the only remaining OEMs creating Bluray drive for consumer electronics Sony and Panasonic?

I might be wrong but given the current market it seems the main thing keeping Blurays alive are the PS5 and Xbox Series X. PC market looks not very promising since Even if the Shanxi Lightchain Technology Industrial Development gets a deal from Sony or Xbox to make drives for their consoles, it doesn't mean they will make PC drives.

Hopefully the next gen consoles get a variant with optical drives keeping Bluray alive for a little bit more. Right now Bluray's are about the only source of getting some decent 4K content without being heavily compressed like with the streaming services, really hoping it stays around for a few more years.

[boguslecina]

I think PlayStation 6 will get the option of an attachable Blu-ray XL drive. Unfortunately, there is a bigger problem with PC drives since Intel abandoned SGX technology. Officially, Ultra HD Blu-ray requires support for DRM, which is not officially available. This raises legal issues. A potential manufacturer of Blu-ray drives would have to create software that would allow such discs to be played without breaking AACS 1.x and 2.x security. The market for recordable optical discs is practically dead, with Verbatim being the only major manufacturer still producing them, and their prices are very high. Sometimes it is much cheaper to buy a USB flash drive than a 50 GB Blu-ray disc.

[MartyMcNuts]

I think PlayStation 6 will get the option of an attachable Blu-ray XL drive. Unfortunately, there is a bigger problem with PC drives since Intel abandoned SGX technology. Officially, Ultra HD Blu-ray requires support for DRM, which is not officially available. This raises legal issues. A potential manufacturer of Blu-ray drives would have to create software that would allow such discs to be played without breaking AACS 1.x and 2.x security. The market for recordable optical discs is practically dead, with Verbatim being the only major manufacturer still producing them, and their prices are very high. Sometimes it is much cheaper to buy a USB flash drive than a 50 GB Blu-ray disc.

If anyone does start manufacturing optical drives again, it won't be UHD capable models as there is no official way to support it. It would only be standard blu-ray/DVD drives and if that time ever comes, we would not know if said drive could be made UHD compatible until we could get our hands on one. If this ever happens, hopefully it is a "friendly" model, as in able to be made UHD friendly.

[boguslecina]

They can create their own player based on open source code, along with their own implementation of bus encryption and AACS encryption, which will only work with their drives. Of course, these are just assumptions.

[Coopervid]

Most likeely the company who is still producing compact cassette tape decks will also start producing optical drives. Guys - dream on! Optical drives are dead.

[boguslecina]

If you wanted to be funny, I have bad news. Cassette players are still being manufactured; I myself have a "Walkman" that supports not only a standard jack, but also Bluetooth headphones and speakers, all modernized. They are available in classic shops. Many albums are also released in cassette format. As for Blu-ray, I would wait before saying that optical drives are dead...

Vinyl records were also doomed to death.

[DennisOlof]

Hmm. I have watched some YT videos about this issue and trying to keep up with what is going on in the market. Here is my take.

The worst part of the optical drive business is optical drives (CD-R, DVD-R, BD-R and so on). Once manufacturers like HP, Dell, Lenovo etc dumped the optical drives in the desktop computers and laptops is was only a matter of time before the marked started to shrink. The optical drive manage to hang on with the console gaming but the latest Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo are doing away with this. I think adding a external optical reader might remain optional because there is a market for games in regions that do not have good access to Internet etc. but that optical drive will become expensive.

This change in the marked and the consumer moving over to streaming (rent, lease) will impact movies, TV-shows, computer games, applications etc. So many things are moving to some form of cloud service (storgage). From what the 4k collectors are saying on YT they think a "niche" market will remain when it comes to movies and TV-shows, collectible items. Thanks to advances in technology over time for optical media, the Internet and global markets it is not expensive to produce a limited amount of media (disc, case, boxart etc) for movies, TV-shows etc. BluRay players are not going away but they will be expensive because of limited demand. The sad part for the collectors is that a lot of stuff might never get released in the future, this is something we are seeing now. This in turn might give BluRay and burners somewhat of a comeback when this "niche" demand picks up because some people want to save some stuff for personal use even if it is recorded from TV etc.

Verbatim (CMC Magnetics) is probably the largest player left in the business for optical media as far as I can tell and they have said they will continue. Demand for optical media is not going away and I thing this is because it is a roven technology, has good longevity for backup and is relative cheap. Some say LTO technology is better but they are wrong. For the general public optical discs have been around for decades and is not going away anytime soon however the marked will shrink until it becomes stable. Thanks to the Internet and globalization there will be a globalized stable marked and demand for optical media. There are to many business, government etc that have a need for long term backup solutions and optical media is not as bad as people think, but for the average person optical media will probably become similar to how people use or view the marked for "vinly records".

BluRay players, burners, optical media will become substantially more expensive but the market is not going away. It will depend on what happens in the next decades but one thing is certain the market for streaming, play services, renting, leasing is here to stay.