No, Sony’s Blu-ray exit doesn’t spell the end for physical media

Fans of physical media—myself included—tend to be a morbid bunch, dwelling on the rise of streaming while bemoaning the steady decline of Blu-ray, the home-media format of choice for cinephiles. 

So when word came down that Sony will exit the recordable Blu-ray market next month, it naturally triggered a firestorm in the physical media community, not to mention dozens of scary headlines about—once again—the imminent death of Blu-ray discs. 

The last time funeral bells tolled this loudly for Blu-ray, it was because Best Buy had announced it was pulling the discs from its stores, leaving physical media fans to scrounge the shelves at Barnes & Noble…or, you know, simply order our discs online at Amazon or plenty of other outlets. 

Well, Blu-ray (both standard and the UHD variety) survived the Best Buy debacle–albeit in a niche capacity, somewhat akin to vinyl–and from what some industry experts are saying, it will live through this latest Sony brouhaha, too. 

The editors at Highdefdiscnews.com reached out to David Mackenzie, CEO of Fidelity in Motion, a Blu-ray authoring facility that does work for such boutique Blu-ray labels as Arrow Video, Carlotta Films, Flicker Alley, Warner Archive, Second Sight, and Vinegar Syndrome. 

According to Mackenzie, Sony’s decision to quit the recordable Blu-ray business (as well as MiniDiscs, MD data, and MiniDV cassettes) has little to do with the overall market of “packaged” movies and TV shows available on Blu-ray. 

As Mackenzie explains, the types of Blu-ray discs that Sony won’t make any more are “home-recordable” discs, like the blank DVD-Rs and CD-Rs that many of us used for burning photos, MP3s, and other media to disc. That’s very different from the BD-ROM discs pressed in factories for the big movie studios and the smaller, boutique Blu-ray labels.

Thus, the Sony news isn’t about how streaming is muscling out Blu-ray, Mackenize argues. Instead, it’s about how cloud and flash storage has decimated the market for blank Blu-ray media. 

“This story has been inaccurately–and, I would argue, irresponsibly–reported by some media outlets apparently unaware of the key distinction between home-recordable media (BD-R and BD-RE discs) and the professionally replicated Blu-ray movies you buy in a store (BD-ROM),” Mackenzie said, as quoted by Highdefdiscnews.com. “The latter is unaffected by Sony’s Storage Media division deciding to phase out home-recordable discs.” 

Now, to be clear, the standard and 4K Blu-ray market still represents only the tiniest sliver of the share DVDs commanded 20 years ago, and that’s not going to change. The vast majority of those watching movies and TV shows at home are going to stream them, not spin them up on Blu-ray. 

But while the audience for Blu-ray discs—particularly 4K Blu-rays—is small, it’s also quite passionate, and there have even been green shoots of growth for UHD Blu-rays in recent years. 

So, is Sony’s withdrawal from the recordable Blu-ray market a great thing for physical media? No. But it’s not exactly a death knell, either.