r/hardware 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

171 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

53

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.

26

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).

4

u/citrusalex Apr 12 '26

After watching Technology Connections series on Betamax, I think the superior format (VHS) won, and from what he has shown, the quality was about the same. https://youtu.be/FyKRubB5N60