As streaming and downloadable media increase their dominance, Blu-ray players are being discontinued across the industry, which means that sooner or later you won’t find any players on the shelf should your current one give up the ghost. So what now?
In December 2024, LG announced that it would be ceasing production of Blu-ray players, joining Samsung and Oppo who both left the market about half a decade earlier.
LG was one of the last great holdouts making players, but now only Sony and Panasonic are left, and while having fewer players to share the market makes it more viable for them to stay in for a while, I suspect it’s only a matter of time before the remaining big brands pull the plug.
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So there’s no reason to rush out and do something financially inadvisable. Instead, take this as a medium-term warning that those of us who like collecting media are on notice. If you want your disc library to remain playable for as long as possible, you’ll have to do something about it soon.
This article fails to provide numbers that would distinguish between declining demand vs. these players failing to compete with consoles. When I was shopping for uhd capable bluray players, the cheapest ones were around $400 and the ps5 was $500. With how much more capability a gaming console has, you would have to be completely indifferent to gaming to buy a player over a console.
I’m currently mulling this. The “gold standard” sensibly priced UHD disc player is £250+ (Panasonic UB-820).
While it’s getting close to just getting a console, where it does cinch it is adjustability and handling of WCG and HDR content.
I strongly agree that for DVD/HD/, it’s a solved problem: They can all output the correct ranges, at the right framerate, at the right resolution.
But WCG and HDR are a bit of a minefield even years on.
And it’s stupid that’s it’s necessary, but being able to specify “my TV goes up to 300 nits, compress anything above that” is useful.
Which none of the consoles (to my knowledge) have managed to implement yet.