Sony to exit the recordable Blu-ray market this month in another blow to physical media

Sony confirms there will be no successor models

by · TechSpot

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years.
TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust.

What just happened? Sony has pulled the curtain down on its recordable Blu-ray business. The company has confirmed it will stop selling all of its current Blu-ray disc recorders globally this month. Its regular Blu-ray players and discs aren't going away, though.

The announcement isn't a surprise. Sony said in a 2024 interview that it would gradually end development and production of recordable Blu-ray discs and other optical disc formats. It said at the time that the decision was made because the cold storage market never really took off in the way it hoped. Sony also slashed 40% of jobs in its media division that same year.

In January 2025, Sony officially confirmed that it was pulling out of the recordable media market, including recordable Blu-ray discs, recording MiniDiscs, MD data, and MiniDV cassettes. It said at the time that there would be no successors to recordable Blu-ray.

The final nail in recordable Blu-ray's coffin has now arrived. Sony's recent announcement explains that after February 2026, it will end shipments of all Blu-ray disc recorder models sequentially. It reiterated that there will be no successor models.

It's important to remember that Sony isn't abandoning Blu-ray altogether; the move only affects Blu-ray recorders with a built-in Blu-ray player. Streaming might be king, but the company has no current plans to end production of its standard Blu-ray and UHD Blu-ray players. However, that could change when TCL takes over Sony's home entertainment division next year.

Sony has now discontinued its BDZ-ZW1900 recorder from 2024 as well as the BDZ-FBT4200, BDZ-FBT2200, and BDZ-FBW2200 recorders that launched in 2023. The rest of the models will disappear after this month.

// Related Stories

Several tech giants have already exited (or heavily scaled back) the Blu-ray market. Oppo, which had been one of the most respected high-end Blu-ray brands in the industry, completely discontinued its Blu-ray player business in 2018.

Samsung, meanwhile, stopped making Blu-ray and UHD Blu-ray players around 2019. LG, which at the time was one of the few remaining big-name manufacturers, discontinued production of Blu-ray players in 2024.

Many people are lamenting the apparent slow demise of Blu-ray. The image quality these players offer is much higher than that of streaming, featuring a bitrate that can go up to 128 Mbps in the case of 4K Ultra HD Blu-rays. Most streaming services are somewhere between 15 Mbps and 25 Mbps.

Blu-rays also tend to offer less aggressive compression and better audio than streaming. You're not reliant on the quality and stability of an internet connection, either. There's also the contentious subject of people not actually owning digital media; you are typically buying a license to access the content.

Would you rather stream or watch on Blu-ray?
Streaming as it's quicker, easier, and there's more content Blu-ray for the better quality and actually owning what you buy