My movie collection has been through many iterations.It started life on VHS, then moved to DVD, before I ripped all those DVDs so that I could stream them using Jellyfin.I always planned to get a Blu-ray player one day so that I could keep a physical collection in higher quality.
I hoped that eventually Blu-ray players would come down in price, but it looks like that's just never going to happen.I assumed Blu-ray players would follow the same path as DVD DVD players started expensive but ended up cheap Close When DVD players first appeared on the scene in the late 90s, they were seriously expensive.Some of the first mainstream models would set you back $600 or more.
Those prices didn't last, however.As DVD became the standard way to watch movies at home, mass production and competition drove down prices to the point where DVD players became easily affordable.By the early 2000s, you could buy a DVD player for as little as $40, and by the end of the decade, you could find budget models for $30 or less.
I always assumed that Blu-ray players would follow the same pattern.The first Blu-ray players sold in the US could set you back $1000 or more, but DVD had shown that these prices were sure to tumble.All I had to do was wait for the prices to keep dropping.
Unfortunately, it just never happened.A decent 4K Blu-ray player can still set you back more than $300, with high-end models costing much more.Related Why HD-DVD should've beat Blu-Ray The format war that could have changed home entertainment forever.
Posts 30 By Sydney Butler Blu-ray never filled the shoes of DVDs Streaming changed everything There was one major flaw in my plan: streaming.Before streaming, DVD was the main way that people consumed movies at home; even Netflix started out as a DVD-by-mail rental service.This popularity helped drive down the price of DVD players.
Blu-ray hit the scene just a year before Netflix started offering a streaming service.While streaming took a while to take off, Blu-ray was trying to become the main physical format at a time when a brand-new way to watch movies and shows was growing in popularity.Unlike DVD, Blu-ray never got a free run at becoming the number one way to consume movies.
Blu-ray didn't completely fail and still remains a valuable resource for collectors and home-theater enthusiasts, but it never became the universal household format that DVD had once been.Manufacturers are abandoning Blu-ray Sony is dropping Blu-ray in a big way The upshot of the rise of streaming is that manufacturers have started to scale back investment in Blu-ray, as the market just isn't as big as it once was.Perhaps the most obvious example is Sony, one of the companies that helped develop the Blu-ray format.
As far back as 2024, Sony made major cuts to its optical media workforce in Japan.In February 2025, Sony stopped making recordable Blu-ray discs, and a year later, Sony dropped out of the Blu-ray recorder market, too.In July 2026, Sony announced that it would end physical game discs for new PlayStation releases from January 2028.
From then on, new games released for PlayStation consoles will be digital only, with no Blu-ray release.It's clear that Blu-ray players are no longer a development priority for Sony.With other major companies such as Samsung and LG leaving the Blu-ray player market, the same economies of scale that brought down the price of DVD players just aren't there.
My dream of a cheap Blu-ray player will never come true It's time to give up and live with what I've got It's not all bad news.Sony Pictures is still releasing movies on Blu-ray, so the death of Blu-ray isn't here yet.The problem is that the availability of Blu-ray discs doesn't make current Blu-ray players any more affordable.
I hoped that I could get a cheap Blu-ray player and then build up my collection again with low-cost used discs as more and more people switch to streaming only.The problem is that the choice of 4K UHD Blu-ray players is narrow and still relatively expensive.I'd still have to pay several hundred dollars for a decent model.
I'm not expecting these prices to drop significantly.As Blu-ray players become scarcer, there are plenty of collectors and enthusiasts who will be happy to snap them up, so I'm pretty sure that my dreams of buying a cheap Blu-ray player are over forever.I could get a used model or a PS5 with a disc drive, but even a PS5 doesn't support Dolby Vision for 4K Blu-ray playback, so a dedicated player would offer better HDR support.
I'm not wholly convinced that studios won't stop physical releases altogether at some point, so it's probably time to cut my losses.Blu-ray became old technology without ever becoming cheap technology If I learned anything, it's that you can't always predict the future based on the past.DVD technology started out expensive but got very cheap.
Blu-ray didn't follow the same pattern, so it looks like I waited in vain.
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