From FlatPanelsHD:

Their players wasn't all that good IMO. It always had that annoying "Globe" icon popping up and I had to factory reset it and I could not get DV on my Sony OLED.

Yeah, by all accounts their players weren't good, but it's still alarming to have another manufacturer pull out.

What are we down to? Panasonic and Sony?

yes, seems like Sony and Panasonic are the lone survivors. Interesting that both companies who got out of BD players are Korean companies.

I was never really impressed with the specs of LG players.

I actually own 2 Sony players. One is a region free modified BD player and the other is a UHD BD player.

Heh.

Wonder how much longer LG will continue manufacturing bluray-r computer drives.

(LG and Pioneer are the only two remaining computer bluray-r drive manufacturers).

Not a huge loss, but I will say that my LG UHD player did navigate faster than my Panasonic 820.

Bluray-r never really took off, probably because there were better storage options out there, so losing computer blu-ray drives isn't really a big loss.

I do hate to see DVD-R drives go, because I think they're still useful. Not as back-up, but for making boot disks, checking DVDs and CDs for errors, playing music and movies in a pinch, etc.

My current desktop can't even boot from a cdrom/dvdrom drive connected externally. But it can boot from a flash drive.

I don't even use my computer bluray-r drives anymore for watching movie discs. They are only used for checking newly purchased discs for manufacturing defects.

The biggest reason why I never jumped onto the 4Kbluray bandwagon, is that it takes well over an hour to check an entire 4Kbluray movie disc for manufacturing defects on a computer bluray-r drive. (There is only one computer bluray-r drive model I'm aware of where the speed limitation was absent on 4Kbluray discs, where it can check entire 4Kbluray discs in an hour or less. It appears this model is no longer manufactured, and not easy to find nowadays).

Easier and less wasting time to just watch through the actual movie on a standalone 4Kbluray player. Though if it is something that I only ended up watching once or twice, then it is easier to just watch it on a streaming service or eventually on a basic cable channel.

I use mine to burn copies of my films to sell. It’s the only way we can make any money. I bet one disc out of five doesn’t work though so I need to check each one.

I stopped even bothering making DVD boot discs as it's rare to find a computer that has a drive these days. It's USB boot "discs" now.

The last few times I've needed a boot disk, it would only boot off of CD/DVD, not USB.

Are you still running Win XP or something?

The only reason I want an optical drive for PC is to rip discs to a streamer like Zidoo.

I'd be all over this if it weren't $3K.

But, BD-R is still very useful for making "backups" of your film collection, lending copies to neighbors or friends, etc, so that your originals stay in good condition. People don't treat stuff well if it isn't theirs, and the loss of a one-off BD-R copy of a film is no loss, since it's ephemeral and much, much cheaper than either an SSD, hard drive, or a USB memory stick. Or an OOP original physical copy of a favorite film, of course.

So, the death of BD-R and BD / UHD standalone players is truly dire and significant. Not just for this reason, but because these standalone player work with media and actually play content independent of an always-on connection -- and at a much higher quality than any streaming service. It's what the film industry wants, they're promoting the death of everything standalone because they don't want you to have the, GASP! , power and control of actually owning anything. The bastards.