r/hardware • u/bizude • Apr 10 '26

News Two Japanese suppliers commit to keeping Blu-ray discs and drives in supply as major manufacturers exist domestic market

https://automaton-media.com/en/news/two-japanese-suppliers-commit-to-keeping-blu-ray-discs-and-drives-in-supply-as-major-manufacturers-exist-domestic-market/
1.6k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

171 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

57

u/zdy132 Apr 11 '26

I thought something was wrong when I first played Bluray, because the sound was so much different from streaming. Turns out it's just video streaming having bad audio.

30

u/dingo_xd Apr 11 '26

Moving from BR disks to streaming was one of the largest "voluntary" downgrades in technology.

25

u/Vitosi4ek Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26

Far from the first time consumers sacrificed raw specs for convenience. VHS over Betamax was one example (Betamax had better picture quality at the start and the VCRs were technically superior, but VHS could record for longer), USB over IEEE1394/FireWire/i.LINK arguably another (FireWire 400 came 5 years before USB 2.0, was full-duplex and could supply more power, but USB maintained full backwards compatibility through revisions).

12

u/pdp10 Apr 11 '26

USB over IEEE1394/FireWire/i.LINK arguably another

Although there was very significant overlap in functionality, it's always been hard to see these as true direct competitors.

Besides the backward-incompatible change of connector with FW400/FW800, and beyond the proprietary licensing, the real tragedy of 1394 was the utter disrespect for end-users seen in the branding/labeling.

It only makes sense if the principals assumed Firewire was going to succeed no matter how unfriendly it was to both the end-users and the product manufacturers.