Two manufacturers commit to keep Blu-ray alive after others quit manufacturing — Verbatim and I-O Data extend Blu-ray supply pledge as manufacturers exit the market

(Image credit: Verbatim Blu-ray media on Amazon)

Verbatim Japan and I-O Data have widened their joint commitment to keep recordable Blu-ray products on shelves in Japan, this time covering drive hardware as well as media. In an announcement published by the latter, the two companies stated that they would secure components and adjust production lines to continue developing new products and supplying the domestic market, following a string of exits over the past 14 months by companies including Sony and Buffalo. I-O Data is the sole domestic distributor of Verbatim-branded optical media in Japan.

In February last year, the two companies issued a similar statement that focused on disc media after Sony confirmed it was shutting down its last domestic recordable Blu-ray factory. The renewed commitment goes further by adding drive components and products to the partnership’s scope, thereby addressing what has become the more prominent supply problem now that Panasonic is the only remaining vertically integrated Japanese manufacturer of optical drives.

Before this pledge, the two companies had announced the BD Reco, a Windows-compatible external Blu-ray drive that I-O released in February this year. Per a machine translation of the announcement, the device “has attracted a great deal of interest,” and goes on to say “We have once again recognized that the need to ‘record data I want to keep onto a disc I have on hand [sic]’ continues to genuinely exist.” As a result, the two companies say they’ll continue to “plan and improve” Blu-ray-related products.

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Sony shipped its final domestic Blu-ray recorders in February, putting the final nail in the coffin of a business it had already wound down to skeleton volumes. Meanwhile, Buffalo’s Japanese arm said it wouldn’t produce successors to its current portable USB Blu-ray writers, and Elecom posted termination notices for its external drives last month, with end-of-sale dates running into June this year. LG exited the market way back in 2024, having last released a new Blu-ray product in 2018.

Panasonic, the last surviving domestic manufacturer of Blu-ray TV recorders, apologized in March over its inability to keep up with orders for its DMR-ZR1 4K DIGA recorder and said it'd expand production to meet demand. According to JEITA figures, domestic Blu-ray recorder shipments stood at around 620,000 in 2025, down from a peak of more than 6.3 million in 2011.

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Luke James is a freelance writer and journalist. Although his background is in legal, he has a personal interest in all things tech, especially hardware and microelectronics, and anything regulatory.

16 Comments Comment from the forums

bit_user

Good news, but...

At this point, what I think we really need is higher-density formats. I don't use multi-layer BD-R, both for cost reasons and philosophical concerns about its reliability. So, I'm effectively limited to 25 GB. Higher-density layers would also translate into faster burn speeds, BTW.

For stuff like documents and photos, 25 GB is still plenty. However, phones with 1 TB of storage aren't new (although they might become a bit less common, for the next few years), and people who film a lot of videos on their phones will quickly find BD-R to be inadequate as a backup media.

And if I ever wanted to burn a copy of all my CD rips, I'd definitely want to do it in greater than 25 GB increments.
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mccainm

While I don't use Blu-ray for data storage, I have to admit that I have yet to find a streaming service that can compare to the quality (video and audio) of Blu-Ray...more specifically UHD/4K. I still think there's a market but only Sony (for now) and Panasonic actively manufacture and sell players. I hope there is some future realization that it is superior to streaming and the "market" improves.
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usertests

mccainm said:
While I don't use Blu-ray for data storage, I have to admit that I have yet to find a streaming service that can compare to the quality (video and audio) of Blu-Ray...more specifically UHD/4K. I still think there's a market but only Sony (for now) and Panasonic actively manufacture and sell players. I hope there is some future realization that it is superior to streaming and the "market" improves.
I think there are niche services like Kaleidescape that download high-quality UHD movies to a box: https://www.techradar.com/televisions/home-theater/kaleidescape-strato-e-review
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Daniel15

mccainm said:
I have to admit that I have yet to find a streaming service that can compare to the quality (video and audio) of Blu-Ray
The only services I've seen do this are "questionable" services like Real Debrid and Premiumize that can steam Blu-ray rips. I'm not sure why legit streaming services don't do it. Seems like a missed opportunity.
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Simonhayteruk

Daniel15 said:
The only services I've seen do this are "questionable" services like Real Debrid and Premiumize that can steam Blu-ray rips. I'm not sure why legit streaming services don't do it. Seems like a missed opportunity.
They don't do it because most ISPs can't handle lower compressions. Even through most ISPs are given free servers from the likes of Netflix, Google and Facebook, those servers will be limited by their port speeds, bigger ports, more costs.

But let's throw away the port speeds arguement, and assume it's unlimited, you are faced with a new problem, street speed.

Most FTTP/FTTH with one gig speeds operate with 1:64, meaning it's shared with 64 people at the cabinet. Generally these cabs are 10 Gbit per 64 users, if everyone was to watch uncompressed movies you're looking at 64, it averages out at 4.8 Gbits average and peaks 8.4 Gbits. This means even without the overhead, you have only 1.6 Gbits left.

Take me example, I have 2.5 Gbit intenet, I get those speeds because things are compressed, if they weren't, I wouldn't get those speeds. It only takes 4 heavy users on a 1:64 to max out the 10 Gbit cabinet speed.

In other words, pretty much all broadband oversell their product, wether it be FTTC or FTTP, we are all using shared bandwidth. The only exemption to this is some business connections will often be shared with fewer users, it's leased line with no sharing for you cut off the pie.

We won't see lossy movies for several years to come, until ISPs roll out 100 Gbit between 64. The next upgrades will likely be 25 Gbit, the other issue is, peering, these internet providers simply don't have the enough peering to provide true speed, that's why companies like netflix Facebook, and Google throw hardware at them, because they simply don't have external infrastructure and peering agreements in place to support the speeds they sell you, they're banking on you to use internal traffic, and even encourage speedtests to places like speedtest which often they host on their own internal network 🫢
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Daniel15

Simonhayteruk said:
if everyone was to watch uncompressed movies you're looking at 64, it averages out at 4.8 Gbits average and peaks 8.4 Gbits.
You don't need uncompressed video, just higher quality video. Blu-rays are compressed, but the quality is more than sufficient for most people. 4K Blu-ray is 70-100Mbps, compared to around 15Mbps for Netflix 4K.

Practically all developed countries have a median broadband speed over 100Mbps (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_connection_speeds). In the USA, 9/10 people have internet speeds faster than 100Mbps.

I'm in the USA with 10Gbps for $50/month, and even though bandwidth is shared, I don't have any trouble hitting max speeds even during peak times. Using <2% of the max bandwidth to stream a movie isn't an issue.

Simonhayteruk said:
The next upgrades will likely be 25 Gbit,
Residential 25Gbps already exists - you can get it in Belgium, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Japan, and probably other countries.

Data centers are already using 40Gbps and 100Gbps connections per server.
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derekullo

A 50 gigabyte blu-ray disc can be downloaded in 6 minutes using gigabit speed.

An absolute worst case scenario for streaming a blu-ray would be like this.

A very short 1 hour movie that takes up the entire 50 gigabyte blu-ray disc.
50 gigabytes*1000 = 50,000 megabytes * 8 = 400,000 megabits
1 hour = 60 minutes = 3600 seconds
400,000 megabits / 3600 seconds = 111 megabits per second

A much more realistic number would be a 35 gigabyte image containing a 2 hour movie.
35 gigabytes*1000 = 35,000 megabytes * 8 = 280,000 megabits
2 hours = 120 minutes = 7200 seconds
280,000 megabits / 7200 seconds = 38.8 megabits per second
Most 4k movies that I've seen "get backed up" into a 20-30 gigabyte mkv/mp4.
This is due to compression and not the full 50 gigabytes being used on disc.
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bit_user

usertests said:
I think there are niche services like Kaleidescape that download high-quality UHD movies to a box: https://www.techradar.com/televisions/home-theater/kaleidescape-strato-e-review
For $3k ?? Nope. Not even if it supported 3D.

Honestly, I don't mind the UHD streams I get from Amazon and others. One thing that does bug me about streaming is the lack of "extras". Sometimes, there'll be a version of a movie that does include some extras, but that's a very outside occurrence.
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usertests

bit_user said:
For $3k ?? Nope. Not even if it supported 3D.

Honestly, I don't mind the UHD streams I get from Amazon and others. One thing that does bug me about streaming is the lack of "extras". Sometimes, there'll be a version of a movie that does include some extras, but that's a very outside occurrence.
I guess it's for the rich people who can buy the $15,000 TV, don't want the overly compressed streams on >100 inches, and may care a lot more about "the director's intent" if they happen to work in Hollywood.

I read an article about one of these services years ago, and I think Kaleidascape is it, but I'm not 100% confident. So maybe there is something else out there but the general idea is the same.

One detail I vaguely remember about the service is that they might be downloading copies that exceed the size of any UHD Blu-ray disc, e.g. 170 GB instead of the 50-100 GB discs defined by the standard. Maybe they are using digital cinema package (DCP) containers. But again, I read about this years ago so I don't remember.
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dimar

Honestly, I'm only interested in M-Disc recordable discs for a long term file archives. I only buy movies in 4K I grew up with. Streaming is enough for everything else.
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