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Sony will cut around 250 jobs from the recordable media business manufacturing hub and will gradually cease production of optical discs, including Blu-ray discs. (mainichi.jp)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 177 points 2 years ago (5 children)

Welp... There goes physical media...

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  • [–] 45 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It’s just one company, it’s not all the Blu-ray production stopping. I think the last time I bought any Sony recordable media was CD-Rs for my MP3 CD player in the mid 00s.

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  • [–] 33 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Sony owns the blu-ray format. I'm worried.

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  • [+] -7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Why are you worried about Sony owning the blu-ray format?

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  • [+] -2 points 2 years ago (2 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    What? No. If I write data to a Blu-ray it’s not encrypted. This comment makes little sense. Sony does not control “the encryption keys”, whatever that means.

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  • [–] 27 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    🏴‍☠️

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago*

    I always preferred the rips fork Blu rays though. They had the highest quality video and audio and stuff. This sucks so much =(

    EDIT: I just read someone else's comment that although they developed it they don't own it outright so that makes me feel a little better that hopefully other people can still make them.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    How do SSDs and HDDs compare to optical disks in terms of stability in storage? SSD bits can lose charge over time until a lot of 1s read as 0s, right?

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    SSDs are pretty pricey for video. I use HDDs, mirrored. For some uses I put a SSD caching layer on top to speed up frequent R/W. Using only LVM, no fancy RAID hardware or anything.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago*

    I upgraded my datahoarding server to a pair of 18TB hard drives on ZFS with mirroring a little while back. It'll be several years before I need to upgrade again, but I expect that when I do, SSDs will be cheap enough to go that route.

    Already have a 10Gbps fiber connection to that server, so the hard drives are the bottleneck.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Commercially pressed discs don't last forever, but longer than burnable discs. IIRC, they used to say 50 years for CDs, but in practice, it was a lot less. More like 20 or 30 if you store and handle them nicely. Easily less than 10 if you don't.

    Hard drives go bad over time; I don't like trusting spinning platters much over 7 years. They can be OK, but they can suddenly stop working whenever.

    SSDs are about the same as spinning platters.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    I think we are talking about archival storage rather than storage in use. In which case hard drives can last decades.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I wouldn't trust it that way, no. They might last decades. They also might not. It's a gamble on any single drive, or even a few mirrored drives.

    File system also matters. Modern ZFS has error checking that can handle some level of bit rot. Older formats generally don't.

    If it's over 7 years or so, I want to get the data off of there.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Hard drives break down from use, not from sitting around. We aren't talking about SSDs which while they don't break down will experience data corruption over time. It's not really a gamble at all with mirrored drives.

    You're also telling me things I already know. I already use ZFS. I agree that you should be using something with data integrity protection. Though ZFS isn't always what you want for archival purposes.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    Magnetic platters absolutely do break down from sitting around. Bearings and other mechanics can also go bad. For those things, a professional recovery operation could still get the data if you're willing to pay, but the drive itself should be thrown out.

    Edit: keep in mind that with bit rot, the drive may superficially function just fine. Your data may even be 99% correct. That 1%, however, could cause unrecoverable problems, such as videos that glitch in the middle.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    That's why you use multiple drives with bitrot protection. Modern SSDs and HDDs have protections against bitrot built in, including internal checksums.

    If you are running your hard drives once in a while, then bearing failure isn't really a concern. You probably should be doing that anyway to refresh the data and make sure it doesn't degrade. Regardless people have had 10 year old drives of older spin up first time. It's not likely you are going to have a mechanical issue on multiple drives anyway.

    If you refresh an SSD once every couple of years it will last decades.

    You keep doing this thing where you presume I don't know about some issue. Rather I know about these things, but they have fairly easy mitigations or are already solved.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago

    You keep doing this thing where you presume I don’t know about some issue

    Maybe because you way overestimate the reliability of old drives. Yes, 10 year old drives can work. Doesn't mean you should trust them with anything other than getting the data off of it.

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  • [+] -75 points 2 years ago* (4 children)

    I guess hard drives and SSDs don't count as physical somehow?

    Even on a streaming service, the files are stored physically somewhere.

    All media is still, technically, physical media.

    Even when you stream it locally and don't have access to the file itself, it physically lives in your RAM for the duration of the stream.

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  • [–] 71 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    hard drives and SSDs don't count as physical

    When was the last time you walked into any store and bought a feature length film or tv show on hard drive or SSD?

    Even on a streaming service, the files are stored physically somewhere.

    What is your plan when the licence agreement for your favorite series expires on your chosen streaming service and no other streaming service picks up the show?

    All media is still, technically, physical media

    No one is arguing this. You're making the strawman arguement. The not-so-subtle undertone of the article is clear.

    Quoting the article:

    The planned job cuts come amid a decline in demand for traditional storage formats such as Blu-ray discs, with streaming services now the norm.

    ...

    The electronics and entertainment conglomerate will also gradually cease production of optical disc storage media products, including Blu-ray discs, according to the sources.

    You will not be allowed to legally own tv shows or films and you should learn to like it. As I can tell from many of the other comments here, not many of us are fans of that idea.

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  • [+] -13 points 2 years ago

    This isn't a hill I care enough to die on.

    I've never bought a series in any format. It's always been piracy and for at least the last 5 years catch and release.

    What I mean is, I don't want to keep series in any case.

    That said, now I think about it, if I didn't pirate everything then keeping copies of what I'd paid for world feel important

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  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    it physically lives in your RAM for the duration of the stream.

    It physically lives encrypted in your RAM and only temporarily. Remember TPM exists.

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  • [+] -31 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Still there for the duration. Being encrypted just makes it akin to being inside a locked box. Being in RAM is like it being transferred in an escrow service.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I guess. Technically. I don't usually count encrypted without the ability to decrypt as useful, but, I'll give you the up arrow because technically correct is the best kind of correct.

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  • [+] -31 points 2 years ago* (3 children)

    Thanks, my point is simply just that data is still physical, no matter what.

    A document locked inside a box that I personally don't have a key to doesn't make the document inside of it non-existent, just inaccessible to me, personally.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    No, the data is not physical, it is either magnetic or electric.

    Since most people still store their media on hard drives most media is purely magnetic.

    In a solid state drive storage chip the data is stored electronicly.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Thanks, my point is simply just that data is still physical, no matter what.

    Turn off the PC and see how well that no-matter-what applies...

    A document locked inside a box that I personally don’t have a key to doesn’t make the document inside of it non-existent, just inaccessible to me, personally.

    What's the point of having inaccessible data?

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