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We must cut all options for the end user to own anything, let'em pay subscriptions instead.
In a SONY board meeting, probably.
Why are we suddenly selling more NAS grade HDDs?
- Seagate executives
Something tells me the market for media servers is very different than the market for BD-R. The only benefit to having a collection of burned discs over a NAS is that you can let people borrow them. It's otherwise mostly downsides
If you have a Nas... install plex or jellyfin and you can still let them "borrow" it all the same...
Far from a "downside".
Eh, I doubt many people are burning their own Blu-ray discs - this does not apply to discs you buy that already have films on, they are manufactured differently, and are still being made.
But even if you do archive your personal data onto Blu-ray discs, there are still other manufacturers besides Sony.
This really isn't a big deal.
I believe they've said that this doesn't change their production of non-rewritable Blu-rays.
I mean sure, but Jellyfin and HDDs exist, and are much more convenient than burning a Blu-ray that you have to put in a drive to watch.
Different divisions. This is more akin to when Sony decided to stop making floppy disks. The market is there for now, but it's just not worth it from a financial perspective.
The amount of people burning their own blu rays is minimal. Even the type of people who emphasize owning their own content just use a NAS system.
I find it kinda funny Sony tried so hard to own the standard so many times thought they eventually got it but then the Internet made it irrelavent almost instantly.
I don't like Sony.
Am with you. Their midrange phones still have headphone jacks, though. I like that.
Yeah their phones do generally still do things like microsds etc which is very nice I also like the psp but I've bought so many Sony products that develop weird faults straight after the warranty and the fact they alway push propriety cards etc.
Its a weird company where divisions seem to actively sabotage each other I just don't trust them at all.
Sony phones are pretty great for stuff like this tbh
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MicroSD
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dual SIM
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headphone jacks (this is despite Sony being one of the biggest names in Bluetooth audio and therefore more likely to benefit from getting rid of 3.5mm)
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they stuck to notification LEDs longer than anybody (sadly stopped on their newest gen IIRC?
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dedicated 2-stage camera shutter buttons
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no notch, no hole punch
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stereo, front-facing speakers
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first to embrace water resistance on smartphones
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an OS that doesn't treat you like a complete baby. It shows some relatively advanced options in the settings app and actually explains what they mean and why you'd want to use them. I appreciate that.
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shockingly FOSS friendly, even going as far as providing bootable AOSP builds on their GitHub, as well as contributing more to AOSP code than anybody other than Google themselves, despite being a niche OEM. A lot of the battery optimisations in Android are actually a Sony contribution, for example.
There's a few things that suck. They need to extend their software support, their naming is dreadful (yes I know it follows the camera division naming, it's still dumb), and they try to charge Apple/Samsung prices despite not being in the same dominant market position. But overall their Xperia division actually puts out some good stuff IMO.
Can you recommend any specific model of Sony phone? I'm thinking it'll be my next one. I have an older Sony Vaio that I loved, and it ran Linux like a charm. Need a new phone and will only buy one with a microSD slot so...
Depends how high end you want to go tbh. Of their current lineup I only have experience with the Xperia 5 series, and it was great. I believe the current gen is the Xperia 5 V (still the dumbest naming scheme I've ever heard...)
I'm not really treating it as a proper recommendation, though, because I've not seen any reviews or anything. This is based on a slightly older model I had as a work phone.
I've never had a need to burn a blu-ray. When bd-r's hit the scene with their obscenely priced recording drives, it was only maybe a year or two before flash memory had already become cheap and fast enough that any volume of data large enough to justify a BD was better served on a 16/32gb thumbdrive unless it needed to be distributed in volume, and I've never needed to make enough identical copies of something to justify the $200-$300 that the first drives cost.
It sucks losing an option but I actually doubt most anyone will notice. 3rd party manufacturers will keep making disc's for a while anyway, Sony is far from the only company doing this technology.
I use archival blurays for cheap, deep storage for decade plus usage, not something I'd trust to flash memory or even a hard drive. Tape is an option of course but that's pricey.
Don't fret, Verbatim will still be making recordable BD-Rs. However, this will mean that there will be no more 128GB BD-Rs, we'll be stuck with only 100GB BD-Rs (Sony is the only company that makes 128GB Blu-rays).
I recently ordered a pack of 128GBs from Japan. I'd recommend you do the same, because the prices are gonna skyrocket.
May I ask what uses you have for them?
Backing up personal data, mostly stuff from my childhood that is irreplacable. Sure, I could just put them on a HDD, but then I'd have to replace it every 5-10 years. Data stored on Blu-ray can last a long time.
It's okay, in 75 years Japan's government will still be keeping them alive. That's why you can still buy floppy discs on Amazon.
Japan just gave up the floppy (officially), but there will still be other legacy users.
Until VERY recently the US nuclear arsenal required 8" floppies. Disks that went out of favor in the early 70s because they can only spin for a few hours before they start to corrupt.
The one that most blew my mind was that my local Walmart only stopped selling blank BetaMax tapes in the mid 00’s. By the time the store was built they weren’t even selling movies on VHS anymore, but the blanks were still worthy of limited shelf space.
I have a BluRay drive capable of burning but I've never needed it for that. I've been mostly using it for my ancient cd collection.
This is just blank writable discs, movies and TV shows on bluray will continue to be produced... for now.
I really wish there was a viable alternative for physical backups. Blu-ray just doesn't have enough storage space, tape is expensive, and hard drives need to be periodically read.
I've read about holographic WORM media, but I just don't think there's enough consumer demand for the hardware and media to ever be as affordable as blu-ray.
Once upon a time, I could back up all my important data to a stack of DVD-Rs. How am I supposed to back up a 100TB NAS, though? The "best" alternative is to build a second NAS for backup, but that's approaching tape drive levels of cost.
How am I supposed to back up a 100TB NAS, though?
By spending money. 100T is a quite a lot of data and big data sets cost money to properly maintain.
Is this just Sony's own production of consumer writable Blu-ray discs, or is it like, Sony preventing other manufactures from producing them as well?
Just their own. Other manufacturers are fine.