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End is Near for DVD/BD Drives?

tyner

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I choose to post this here rather than in the hardware or optical drive subsection because all AnyDVD HD AND all JRiver player users should be aware of this serious threat, if they aren't already.

With Sony's closing of their DADC plant in Terre Haute, IN and Sony BD/DVD distribution chains closing in several European cities, I wasn't too surprised when someone here said that Pioneer and LG are the only brands left who are actually making these drives, says poster # 32 here.
https://www.hometheaterforum.com/com....379410/page-2

Will multiple SSD NAS or servers be the only personal storage device left to us? The one I'd have to build would have to be enormous just to store not even 1/3 of my TV and movie collection. And how much of my time and how many drives would die on me before I even ripped that much to my servers?

No wonder the club.myce.com forum died; there's next to no BD drives to review anymore.

This planned catastrophe will render home video libraries, which millions of collectors have spent thousands of dollars and countless hours amassing, absolutely useless.
 
I understand your concerns about the future of optical drives and large-scale personal media storage. However, I think there are a few points that might help you see the situation in a different light:

On the decline of optical drives: While it's true that some major brands have reduced their optical drive production, this doesn't mean optical drives will become extinct. Existing drives will continue to function until they reach the end of their lifespan. Moreover, there are still manufacturers producing these drives, and many vendors offer parts and repair services that can extend the life of your current devices.

Concerning personal storage capacity: Storing a large media collection digitally can indeed require significant space. Yet, technological advancements are continually improving the capacity and affordability of storage solutions. Devices like Solid State Drives (SSDs) and Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems provide large-scale personal storage that's more accessible than ever.

About home video libraries: I see why the shift away from physical media could seem threatening to your collection. But even if the original physical format becomes obsolete, it doesn't render your collection "absolutely useless". You can still enjoy your physical media as long as you have working players. For long-term preservation, consider digitizing your collection and storing it.

The change you're seeing isn't so much a catastrophe as it is a natural progression in technology. While it can be disruptive, it also presents opportunities for more durable, accessible, and potentially higher-quality media storage and playback.
 
As long as my LG or Pioneer BD drive remains "repairable" I will have no complaints. But while I've seen BD drives sold as "refurbished", I've never heard of any repair service being offered to consumers for their own drives. Moreover, just as Oppo is winding down parts availability for countless collectors' treasured BD players like my BDP-95 (and likewise Pioneer for my superb Elite LX500), parts availability on any particular make/model BD drive is usually limited to around 7 years, if that long. But currently at least, BD drives are cheap and virtually interchangeable, so repairability is not a critical issue-IF supplies of drives continues, but that seems less and less likely since now even BD vintage movie labels like Criterion, Kino and VCI are pushing streaming services.

And I canNOT see myself ever paying monthly fees for vintage movie streaming, current movie streaming, music video movie streaming. No way.

Long term preservation of my collection to home servers is something I'd have absolutely no time for. My collection is too vast AND there's almost nothing of which I haven't viewed multiple times over the years, and will continue doing so.
I have considered hiring a service to do this but I's imagine that the cost is huge.

Last but hardly least, the long overdue 5.3 surround sound system that I plan to build next year absolutely depends on my HTPC having a BD drive. Using JRiver player, BDs (and DVDs) will be decrypted by AnyDVD HD. JRiver decodes the BD's DTS MA sound and my pc outputs the PCM audio via USB to my 8 channel DAC to feed my speaker amps and powered subs. None of this could be done with a standalone BD player. And only the most expensive multichannel processors have DIRAC Live or other on-chip room correction, and with DAC chips approaching the quality of those in my standalone DACs https://www.oktoresearch.com/dac8pro.htm https://benchmarkmedia.com/collecti...rk-dac3-hgc-digital-to-analog-audio-converter Plus, with those processors I'd be paying for lots of analog and video connectivity I've no use for. Also, my Pioneer LX500 remains the only standalone BD player with both fully functional zoom and slow motion features which I find very useful and enjoyable-and which are standard features in JRiver, VLC and/or Power DVD players.

But even among brands who specialize in devices for the corporate document storage market BD drives don't seem to be their best selling format. https://www.kanguru.com/

So I'm still very concerned that, thanks to hardware and content giants like Sony and the other big and insatiably greedy movie studios-and the streaming industry which I don't wish to patronize-the future of BD drives which my video collection and home theater depend on is increasingly jeopardized.
 
Well, Sony won the Blu-ray/HD-DVD format battle, but lost the war.

When they spent all that money to make Blu-ray the High Definition disc standard around 2008/09, Sony had no crystal ball knowing that within a decade, making a digital copy of a movie, tv show, cartoon, etc. would become extremely efficient and cost effective, and don't take up nowhere near the space of Blu-ray discs, to say nothing of DVDs or CDs.

Even now, you can buy a Sony Playstation or a Microsoft XBox without a Blu-ray drive inside of it. That was unconceivable a few years back, but it's now commonplace.

Even though I own a 'friendly Blu-ray drive,' with my purchase of AS+, I've been using the app more than I've been ripping any Blu-ray discs or DVDs with AnyDVD HD more and more as time goes by.

This is a case of chickens coming home to roost.
 
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I am strongly considering buying another player to extend the inevitable. For all we know this could still be 15 years or more on the current 4K and BD formats. I wouldn't doubt if they still release some DVDs out then (UGH). Imagine DVD quality on a holoscreen or something.
 
Not even close, there are more people that use BRDVD drives than you might imagine, even though streaming has had an effect, UHD Bluray discs are the picture you can possible get. You cannot duplicate it with a stream.
I certainly hope you are right on all counts. But if LG and/or Pioneer are the only brands actually making BD drives anyone then that's a very bad sign. I wish that they would make a model so well built that it would cost ~ $1K each. I'd buy one for each of my two desktop pc and another to use externally with my laptop. I'd use them to selectively begin backing up BD and DVD movies and TV shows on a multiple SSD mirrored server.
 
I certainly hope you are right on all counts. But if LG and/or Pioneer are the only brands actually making BD drives anyone then that's a very bad sign. I wish that they would make a model so well built that it would cost ~ $1K each. I'd buy one for each of my two desktop pc and another to use externally with my laptop. I'd use them to selectively begin backing up BD and DVD movies and TV shows on a multiple SSD mirrored server.

I have to wonder if the Pioneer BDR-S13U-X is really any better than BDR-S13UBK for the additional $120 or if it is just cosmetic.
 
Share my fantasy: With probably only two brands-if not then just only LG-now making BD drives, a new industry will be created that makes and installs generic replacement parts for the drives when they fail. And they would continue doing so even when LG eventually ceases making drives anymore.
 
I'd use them to selectively begin backing up BD and DVD movies and TV shows on a multiple SSD mirrored server.
Nothing is stopping you from doing this now except for willingness to part with $$$.

I have 2300 CDs and 250 DVD/BD discs backed up to mirrored multi-TB SATA discs. Another 250 physical discs to go. Another 500+ movies/TV shows downloaded from streaming services. All sitting on a Windows server with 90K of photos and 3 decades of personal data.

Storing and accessing everything in one's life from remote locations is an approach consumers prefer. I don't, but to maintain my previous control over purchased media, it costs time and money. I don't think relying on hardware manufacturers is a smart strategy for the long term.
 
DVD and BD drives are currently manufactured by ASUS LG and Lite-On. I just bought 8 DVD drives of the LG brand in my country. I already have ASUS LG and Lite-On drives in stock from the past. and they are not of such high quality, but SAMSUNG has stopped producing drives, I am also a supporter of physical media and I am worried about their future no less, I think that UHD BD could keep these drives for some time, but yes, there are very few manufacturers and drives are a very rare commodity, albeit relatively cheap if these are DVD drives, you can get them for 10-15 euros, BLURAY drives for about 100 euros, which for me is rather expensive, but I still use DVD drives in terms of streaming services, despite the fact that I have AS, I hardly use it because I am annoyed by the constant monthly fees fees for streaming services like NETFLIX and other AS I bought purely for the purpose of supporting the REDFOX AS team I use AS, at least practically at all I am still planning to buy a few drives in the coming months probably in July or August specifically a couple of BD drives even though they are longer
 
the governments of this world do not want people to own anything, houses, cars and any physical property, the head of the world economic forum in Davos, Klaus Schwab, says, I quote: you will own nothing and you will be happy, but what he says means that we elites will own everything and you slaves will borrow and you will listen to us at our word and I have an unpleasant feeling that HARDWARE manufacturers are also involved in this philosophy, more precisely they will be forced to stop producing hardware to enable ownership
 
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the governments of this world do not want people to own anything, houses, cars and any physical property, the head of the world economic forum in Davos, Klaus Schwab, says, I quote: you will own nothing and you will be happy, but what he says means that we elites will own everything and you slaves will borrow and you will listen to us at our word and I have an unpleasant feeling that HARDWARE manufacturers are also involved in this philosophy, more precisely they will be forced to stop producing hardware to enable ownership
Your perspectives on the agenda of the ultra rich and their elite managerial apparatus are as accurate as all of these changes are horrifyingly totalitarian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilateral_Commission

In most if not all societies, isn't even possible for those most impacted by these corporate decreed changes to effectively voice any criticism and those same corporations own and control most media and broadcast outlets.
 
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Your perspectives on the agenda of the ultra rich and their elite managerial apparatus is are as accurate as all of these changes are horrifyingly totalitarian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilateral_Commission

In most if not all societies, isn't even possible for those most impacted by these corporate decreed changes to effectively voice any criticism and those same corporations own and control most media and broadcast outlets.
this whole agenda is one big bad nightmare for all of us who want to build and own something nice be it for our hobbies or anything else my big hobby is movies and computer games ever since the days of steam owning computer games is just an eye for actually owning games they are only rented, the only thing that can still be physically owned in this digital industry are movies because they are not online if the customer buys them on a physical medium, but I am afraid that this will end soon if the drivers and the production of mechanics are stopped, when a person buys a game on a physical medium, it has been for a long time through an online client, so that if clients fail, you lose your money and purchased items
 
I'm looking to soon get one of these to use with my HP Xeon laptop (with ECC memory) and Benchmark DAC to play BD movies via JRiver player. https://www.cdw.com/product/asus-bw-16d1x-u-bdxl-drive-superspeed-usb-3.0-external/4634377

But ever since I've heard how few brands still actually make BD drives-and that was less than a few weeks ago-I wondered what if somehow the total reverse of what's most expected happens: Instead of what's left of standalone BD player production being killed off by streaming, the internal and external BD drives got the axe first?

But if so how difficult would it be to add a USB output to a Sony, Panasonic or Reavon BD player to use it to play BD movies via JRiver? And also use it to back up BD movies to a multiple SSD server?
 
I'm looking to soon get one of these to use with my HP Xeon laptop (with ECC memory) and Benchmark DAC to play BD movies via JRiver player. https://www.cdw.com/product/asus-bw-16d1x-u-bdxl-drive-superspeed-usb-3.0-external/4634377

But ever since I've heard how few brands still actually make BD drives-and that was less than a few weeks ago-I wondered what if somehow the total reverse of what's most expected happens: Instead of what's left of standalone BD player production being killed off by streaming, the internal and external BD drives got the axe first?

But if so how difficult would it be to add a USB output to a Sony, Panasonic or Reavon BD player to use it to play BD movies via JRiver? And also use it to back up BD movies to a multiple SSD server?
it is difficult to say whether SSDs are reliable storage solutions, I think that from a general point of view we have no experience with them even in the years they have been here with us, I have heard that they are also sensitive to power cuts, but I have not tested it
 
But if so how difficult would it be to add a USB output to a Sony, Panasonic or Reavon BD player to use it to play BD movies via JRiver? And also use it to back up BD movies to a multiple SSD server?
It wouldn't be difficult at all, but Big Media companies long ago agreed not to provide digital interfaces on their standalone home players.
 
It wouldn't be difficult at all, but Big Media companies long ago agreed not to provide digital interfaces on their standalone home players.
But what's to stop a smaller high end brand like Reavon from adding a USB output-and doing so if enough of us tell them that we'll buy their players if they add that output?
 
But what's to stop a smaller high end brand like Reavon from adding a USB output-and doing so if enough of us tell them that we'll buy their players if they add that output?
You don't understand. All players need a Bluray / UHD licence and this requires that they obey their rules. The most important rule is that no decrypted video is accessible in any way. The video stream via HDMI requires HDCP which is then the last encryption in the chain disc - player - TV/AVR. Violation results in revocation of their blu ray licence.
 
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