End of an era: Sony to cease production of recordable Blu-ray discs
Twenty years ago, a battle raged over which high-definition format would dethrone DVDs: Blu-ray or HD DVD.
As history shows, Blu-ray, developed by Sony, ultimately won the war, leading to the discontinuation of the Toshiba-backed HD DVD format in 2008. The "civilian casualties" of this battle were significant, with consumers having purchased over a million HD DVD players, which subsequently became nearly obsolete.
However, Blu-ray's victory came with a bitter twist. Shortly after its rise, streaming services began to gain traction. The biggest player in this arena, Netflix, expanded rapidly to new markets in early 2010s, making consumers to quickly abandon optical media in favour of streaming.
Another side of this story is Blu-ray's use as a storage medium. DVDs were wildly popular not only as a movie format, but also for data storage. The first recordable Blu-ray discs (BD-R) hit the market in 2007, but they never reached the same heights of popularity as recordable DVDs.
