Sony’s Blu-ray Exit Doesn’t Matter — Here’s Why

Over the last couple of years, fans of the Blu-ray format have had plenty of cause for concern. The widespread adoption of streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+ has dramatically reduced the number of consumers interested in physical media, and we’ve seen this sea change reflected in the marketplace. Best Buy stopped selling physical media, and Netflix ended the disc-mailing service that was both the foundation of the company and the final nail in the coffin for the Blockbuster Video era. In 2024, LG stopped manufacturing Blu-ray players, following in the footsteps of several other major electronics manufacturers. None of this was good news for the many AV enthusiasts who like to watch and collect movies on Blu-ray disc. But Sony’s recent announcement that the Japanese brand would be ending Blu-ray production has been either misunderstood by some media outlets, or else taken out of context on purpose to be used as clickbait.

The announcement in question was issued on January 23rd, 2025, and was intended for Sony’s business customers. It came not from Sony proper, nor from Sony Pictures Entertainment, but from Sony Storage Media Solutions Inc., the company’s division that produces blank Blu-ray Disc media, MiniDiscs for recording, MD data for recording, and MiniDV cassettes. The statement said that the company would be discontinuing production of these recordable media, including BD-R (write once) and BD-RE (write multiple times) Blu-ray discs. Previously, Sony had manufactured a range of recordable Blu-ray discs, ranging from 25GB to 128GB in storage. In July of 2024, Sony stopped manufacturing recordable Blu-ray discs for the consumer market, but stated that it would continue producing blank discs for its business customers (who use the discs as hard-copy backup for data storage) until it became unprofitable to do so. Apparently, that time has come. Several other companies still manufacture these discs, but the important thing to know is that Sony's decision to stop producing blank BD-R and BD-RE media has nothing to do with the Blu-ray movies that AV enthusiasts buy.

The major studios do not use recordable discs. They use BD-ROMs (Blu-ray Disc Read-Only Memory), which are professionally manufactured at authoring facilities like Fidelity in Motion, Germany’s Sonopress, and Sony’s own Sony Digital Audio Disc Corporation (Sony DADC), which is still very much a going concern. These facilities are not affected by Sony’s withdrawal from the recordable media market. In a statement to HighDefDiscNews.com, Fidelity in Motion CEO David Mackenzie took it upon himself to clarify the situation for the site’s fanbase of physical media fans.

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). The latter is unaffected by Sony’s Storage Media division deciding to phase out home-recordable discs. While the decline in recordable optical discs for computer data storage isn’t a positive sign for optical disc as a whole, it has no impact on what 99% of people associate with “Blu-ray,” which is packaged movies on disc with near-master image and sound quality.

To clarify, professionally mass-produced movies (whether on BD, DVD, or CD for that matter) are stamped in replication facilities rather than burned onto blank media. This efficient, high-speed manufacturing process is carried out in factories using machinery worth millions of dollars, and remains entirely unaffected by Sony’s consumer division phasing out home-recordable discs. To use an analogy, it’s akin to the difference between a home-printed letter and a professionally printed and bound book. If an office supply company decided to stop selling blank paper to consumers, it wouldn’t signal the end of traditional book publishing. Even from our perspective as a company that specializes in mastering movies for physical formats and outputs hundreds of titles a year, this decision has almost no impact. …I’ve noticed some reports linking Sony’s decision to the “rise in streaming services,” which is misleading. A more accurate explanation would attribute it to the increasing adoption of cloud storage and flash memory as modern computer data storage solutions.

 -- David Mackenzie, CEO - Fidelity in Motion

So there you have it. The story is really a non-story. Of course, there are real reasons for fans of Blu-ray movies to be concerned. Just consider the massive demand for DVDs in the late 1990s and 2000s, which led to the development of the Blu-ray in the first place. Compared to the consumers of that era, today’s movie-watching public has almost completely lost interest in physical media. But those of us who still enjoy Blu-ray movies needn’t worry about Sony’s exit from recordable media.