In another blow to the physical media industry, the legendary Japanese brand Pioneer has announced it’s stepping back from the optical disc market.
The company said it has sold all of the remaining shares of its Pioneer Digital Design and Manufacturing subsidiary to a Chinese company called Shanxi Lightchain Technology Industrial Development Co., Ltd., which is owned and operated by Shanxi Group.
That business was responsible for manufacturing Pioneer-branded optical disc drives, which are used in Blu-ray, DVD and CD players. As a result of the sale, the company plans to stop selling products related to that business, including Blu-ray drives.
The Blu-ray player market has changed significantly in recent years, with big names like Oppo and Samsung, which were once leaders in the segment, all exiting the business. In response, newer brands like Magnetar, Pannde and Reavon have stepped up to fill the void, offering hardware for the dwindling number of home entertainment enthusiasts who still appreciate the higher quality associated with physical media.
Sales of Blu-ray discs and DVDs have been in decline for years, due to the rise of streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, which offer a more convenient, albeit lower-quality way to get access to video content.
Other brands to pull back from the market include LG Electronics, which said in December it will stop manufacturing Blu-ray players such as the LG UBK80 and UBK90. The company continued to sell those models, which launched back in 2019, without making any new ones in the intervening years. But due to low demand, it has pulled the plug completely, though there may still be a few products sitting in stock somewhere.
Panasonic has also exited the Blu-ray player business, while in the U.S., major retailers like BestBuy and Target have reduced their stocks of Blu-ray disc movies and box sets.
It’s not all one way traffic, though. Sony sprang a surprise in March when it announced its first new 4K Blu-ray disc player in six years, though the device was not entirely novel. Rather, it’s a refreshed and streamlined version of the UBP-X700 Blu-ray player that debuted back in 2018, the second-to-last model it ever released.
That said, it’s not certain what future Sony really sees for physical media. In January, it revealed it’s no longer going to sell any Blu-ray disc media, recording mini discs, recording MD data, mini DV cassettes. That decision related specifically to home recordable Blu-ray discs, rather than the production of Blu-Ray and 4K Blu-ray movies, which it still manufactures.
The decline of the Blu-ray physical media market has been a huge blow for home entertainment enthusiasts who value high-quality content. One of Blu-rays’ major advantages over streaming content is its higher bit-rate, which allows for a richer colour palette and superior detail, meaning more realistic visuals. Blu-rays also provide more consistency compared to streamed content, where the quality of playback can suffer due to bandwidth limitations.
One possible solution for movie lovers is Kaleidescape, an emerging company that claims to offer the only platform for reference-quality video with lossless audio, at even higher quality than Blu-ray media. But it’s quite expensive, with users required to buy a hardware player such as the Strato C, Strato V or the 2K Strato M, and additionally pay to download movies from the Kaleidescape movie store.
The advantage is that, unlike Netflix et al, it downloads the entire movie in the best possible quality, before the user watches it, eliminating any bandwidth-related issues. According to Kaleidescape, it offers up to ten-times higher video and audio bit-rates, and it's a particularly promising option for the future of 8K resolution content.
It will be interesting to see if Kaleidescape’s unique model catches on, and whether or not any rivals emerge to provide it with some much-needed competition, reducing costs for consumers. In the meantime, Blu-ray physical media is still a viable option for now, it’s just not clear how long that will continue.
