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.
I don’t own a Blu-ray player, but I do own a Blu-ray drive with flashed firmware for ripping Blu-rays
You had to flash the drive firmware to rip blue-rays?
The firmware allows you to completely bypass the DRM scheme. You can definitely rip HD Blu-rays without it, but 4K UHD Blu-rays have an updated DRM scheme and you can’t (or couldn’t at the time I bought the drive) rip those without modified firmware.
Additionally, the ripping process is quicker with the modified firmware.