Sony to Shut Down Optical Drive Business

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Sony announced it will be shutting down Optiarc, its optical drive division, as part of the company’s restructuring plan. Sony plans to eliminate over 10k jobs worldwide to cut costs and stabilize the company’s financial resources.

Sony Optiarc was founded in 2006 as a joint venture between Sony and NEC, with Sony buying NEC’s 45% share in 2008.
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TechLarry said:
Even BluRay ?
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Probably cheaper to just have them made by a third party. Blu ray drives are a fraction as expensive as they were, so much less profit per drive. DVD drives are so cheap, and theres companies selling $10 drives, so thats unlikely to be a high profit segment.
 
Still a Blu-Ray reader is in the neighborhood if $50-$70. Wouldn't call that cheap.

What is more interesting is that Blu-Ray players never did become very popular.
And even with a boat load of cool features like internet streaming a lot of people said "meh".
The drum beat is "physical media is dying". Yeah, but far from dead. Streaming can give you Good quality but not what I consider true HD comparing apples to apples.
I still think a lot of people don't "see" much of a difference. Personally it is HARD to watch a DVD once you get use to viewing Blu-Ray HD. 1080p is breathtaking always for me. My wife, "meh". Does not seem much of a difference.
 
My optical drive on my desktop crapped out - I have yet to care or replace it.

My optical drive in my laptop was taken out to make room for a 1TB hard drive to run alongside my SSD. The only time I ever needed to burn a CD was if I was going to make an MP3 cd for my car - my new 2012 Kia has a built in USB port that I can dump mp3's on, so quite literally I have no use for optical media anymore.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
What is more interesting is that Blu-Ray players never did become very popular.
And even with a boat load of cool features like internet streaming a lot of people said "meh".
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That's because long before Blu-Ray was released, people said DVD's were bullshit. So when Blu-Ray was released, people said that's bullshit too. They have advertisements, skipping, high prices, and crappy fast forward. Which none of that was removed with Blu-Ray, if anything made worse.

People who knew how to download torrents weren't going to be impressed with Blu-Ray. Unfortunately, movies downloaded doesn't have those problems, and the HD quality video doesn't make up for it.

The drum beat is "physical media is dying". Yeah, but far from dead. Streaming can give you Good quality but not what I consider true HD comparing apples to apples.
I still think a lot of people don't "see" much of a difference. Personally it is HARD to watch a DVD once you get use to viewing Blu-Ray HD. 1080p is breathtaking always for me. My wife, "meh". Does not seem much of a difference.
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The problem is also that there isn't many movies people care to watch "IN" HD. Oh look, a movie that was sorta ok and not terribly bad is in Blu-Ray. *meh* I'll wait for it on cable.
 
Ashbringer said:
That's because long before Blu-Ray was released, people said DVD's were bullshit. So when Blu-Ray was released, people said that's bullshit too. They have advertisements, skipping, high prices, and crappy fast forward. Which none of that was removed with Blu-Ray, if anything made worse.

People who knew how to download torrents weren't going to be impressed with Blu-Ray. Unfortunately, movies downloaded doesn't have those problems, and the HD quality video doesn't make up for it.


The problem is also that there isn't many movies people care to watch "IN" HD. Oh look, a movie that was sorta ok and not terribly bad is in Blu-Ray. *meh* I'll wait for it on cable.
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Yup. I have to stop and think about when I last bought a movie and what it was. I don't have a BD player in my computer or house, nor any inclination to get one...there just aren't that many movies good enough that I'd want to watch period, nevermind the cost of BD media and hardware in the equation. Haven't even bothered to get NetFlix for the same reasons.

I still keep a DVD/CD burner in my boxen for FLAC rips of audio CDs. But that is about it.
 
Perhaps adoption rates would have been higher if they didn't continue to charge the massive premium for Blu-ray devices and media even after winning the battle against HD-DVD. Asking $35 for a no-extras version of a movie back in 2009 was ridiculous.
 
Hm... is Sony the first? If not, its a domino effect from here.
 
Safety said:
Perhaps adoption rates would have been higher if they didn't continue to charge the massive premium for Blu-ray devices and media even after winning the battle against HD-DVD. Asking $35 for a no-extras version of a movie back in 2009 was ridiculous.
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DVD was the same, I think Blu Rays are a little cheaper at this point than DVDs were.
 
I just broke down and bought a BD drive for my PC. Streaming doesn't hold so much charm for me since I'm one that actrually watches a lot of the extras, and AFAIK they're never included in streamed media. I've watched flicks that had better extras than the actual feature. Then there's the losses due to compression.

There still seems to be an imbalance between convenience and getting what you pay for.
Same goes for music. If I'm going to pay ~$1+ per song, it had better be CD quality.
 
Ashbringer said:
That's because long before Blu-Ray was released, people said DVD's were bullshit. So when Blu-Ray was released, people said that's bullshit too. They have advertisements, skipping, high prices, and crappy fast forward. Which none of that was removed with Blu-Ray, if anything made worse.
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Remember back when DVD required an MPEG-2 accelerator add-on card like the Creative Labs Dxr3 DVD Decoder card if you wanted to watch DVD movies on your computer? It took quite a while for DVD to be accepted in the PC world. A lot of people seem to have forgotten how much a nightmare DVDs had being adopted compared to Blu-ray which was a simple drop-in upgrade in comparison.
 
Their quality kind of dropped after they stopped rebadging LiteON drives and started using NEC designs, which wasn't all that great to begin with. Still better than the Optiarc era however. Do Samsung still make drives? They were really the only ones I've used as of late that was decent. But then again that was 3-4 years ago. I don't really use optical media anymore.
 
DeathPrincess said:
DVD was the same, I think Blu Rays are a little cheaper at this point than DVDs were.
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You can thank Apex and other Chinese manufactures for doing that. Apex in particular didn't pay the proper license fees for a lot of their early players until the consortium threatened to sue them over it. Having to come up with that cash probably is why their quality tanked soon after.
 
Says in the headline Sony founded Optiarc with NEC ... in 2006. Wasn't the optical drive business already in the crapper by then? Or at least clearly headed that way?
 
Ashbringer said:
That's because long before Blu-Ray was released, people said DVD's were bullshit. So when Blu-Ray was released, people said that's bullshit too. They have advertisements, skipping, high prices, and crappy fast forward. Which none of that was removed with Blu-Ray, if anything made worse.
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When you talk about "downloading torrents" you are talking about a relatively tiny segment of people. I would say there is still a lot of people don't even understand the concepts of what High Definition video is. Most people will say "that means it's digital right?" They though DVDs were high definition.
I really don't see DVD going away as so many in would like. Streaming is a great thing but only for those people who have access to some sort of high speed (high bandwidth) internet. MOST people do not. Most all of high bandwidth internet service is in urban areas.
The rest of the country is stuck with some form of very poor DSL service from there telephone company.
To this segment of the population a "Movie on demand" is Netflix by mail or the RedBox vending machine.
 
I have only purchased LG optical drives in the last 5+ years, they are always the ones on sale.

Optical is far from dead, but I agree the usage has gone down. I have a ton of bluray movies, so there is that. And not every game is available digitally for every occasion.

I while I do a fair share of Netflix streaming, their selection isn't the best and I still go through quite a few discs in the mail every month.
 
I'd still rather have a physical disc.


I much prefer the higher video quality of DVD and Blu-Ray to the pixelated crap of streaming video. It's why I invested in a home theater system: to get the best possible experience within my budget from the comfort of my own home. I gave the THPC route a try, and I'm back to my big flat screen, my 5.1 receiver and speakers, and my Blu-Ray/DVD player. Dunno, there's just something about having my HT separate from my PC that I really like.

And I like to have a disc for things like Windows, Office, usual install programs (Anti-Virus, WinRAR, CoreTemp, etc) since I still work on a lot of computers that can't/won't boot from a USB flash drive.
 
DejaWiz said:
I'd still rather have a physical disc.
I much prefer the higher video quality of DVD and Blu-Ray to the pixelated crap of streaming video. It's why I invested in a home theater system: to get the best possible experience within my budget from the comfort of my own home. I gave the THPC route a try, and I'm back to my big flat screen, my 5.1 receiver and speakers, and my Blu-Ray/DVD player. Dunno, there's just something about having my HT separate from my PC that I really like.
And I like to have a disc for things like Windows, Office, usual install programs (Anti-Virus, WinRAR, CoreTemp, etc) since I still work on a lot of computers that can't/won't boot from a USB flash drive.
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I'm right with you.

I purchased a 2nd HDTV for downstairs (this one's MINE) and it has built in streaming.
Plugged in my media player with 1TB full of H.264 SD and HD movies. With this relatively simple setup I rarely ever have a hiccup and if anything it is usually the internet streaming. But compared to viewing on a PC; it is vastly superior. Yeah, the streaming video is DVD quality for the most part. But this is BETTER than the quality we get from cable and I can pick and choose what I want to watch.
Because of this we decided to scale back our cable package to bare minimum; the most basic cable and internet. That is it. It will probably save us $100 a month. ;)
 
Safety said:
Perhaps adoption rates would have been higher if they didn't continue to charge the massive premium for Blu-ray devices and media even after winning the battle against HD-DVD. Asking $35 for a no-extras version of a movie back in 2009 was ridiculous.
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QFT

Sony screwed themself over and they deserve their problems. Blu Ray form a consumer standpoint is a disaster. They pretty much entirely killed blu ray on computers. Even today instead of blu ray being standard on every laptop is is typically a $100 upgrade. Apple doesnt even sell blu ray, there is no blu ray based xbox or wii. Sony should have pushed to make those things happen and focused on a little money on each disc. Instead they tried to milk every single angle and the end result was slow adoption of the format.

Really try getting blu ray running on a built PC it will cost you $100 or more. If you pay top dollar for a blu ray they screw you with forced ads. WMC doesnt even work with blu ray. Sony tried to force everyone into a controlled world where everyone owned PS3 or stand alone BR player and completely left out hundreds of millions of computers and that meant hundreds of millions of missed BR sales.
 
rudy said:
Really try getting blu ray running on a built PC it will cost you $100 or more. If you pay top dollar for a blu ray they screw you with forced ads. WMC doesnt even work with blu ray. Sony tried to force everyone into a controlled world where everyone owned PS3 or stand alone BR player and completely left out hundreds of millions of computers and that meant hundreds of millions of missed BR sales.
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http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=598&name=Blu-Ray-Drives

http://digiarty.com/

Not seeing $100 or more here.
 
rudy said:
QFT

Sony screwed themself over and they deserve their problems. Blu Ray form a consumer standpoint is a disaster. They pretty much entirely killed blu ray on computers. Even today instead of blu ray being standard on every laptop is is typically a $100 upgrade. Apple doesnt even sell blu ray, there is no blu ray based xbox or wii. Sony should have pushed to make those things happen and focused on a little money on each disc. Instead they tried to milk every single angle and the end result was slow adoption of the format.

Really try getting blu ray running on a built PC it will cost you $100 or more. If you pay top dollar for a blu ray they screw you with forced ads. WMC doesnt even work with blu ray. Sony tried to force everyone into a controlled world where everyone owned PS3 or stand alone BR player and completely left out hundreds of millions of computers and that meant hundreds of millions of missed BR sales.
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BD not being on anything other than Windows was purely a product of how the codec was designed to work. It was designed almost exclusively to work on Windows machines or PS, Apple doesn't sell it as the codec system was never designed to work in OS X.

BD is the typical Sony format..where their self-imposed/created technological cleverness/limitations killed their product. Just like MiniDisc...just like MemoryStick...and others.
 
I have to for met that the picture quality and sound is not that much better for such a price premium. About the only time I purchase blu ray movies is if they are giving you the blu ray, dvd, and digital download for around 20 dollars or less. Or I am also willing to buy blu ray through Amazon if they are giving you a free copy to stream from amazon. But I refuse to pay over 20 dollars for a movie. I would rather just buy it on dvd.
 
Sony needs successful products more than it needs to fire 10k employee's. I hate this modern day trend of firing mass groups of employee's because Sony can't make a highly successful product. How about they fire the upper management instead?
 
Also can't VLC player play Blu Ray's for free now? No license required by the user?
 
Skripka said:
BD not being on anything other than Windows was purely a product of how the codec was designed to work. It was designed almost exclusively to work on Windows machines or PS, Apple doesn't sell it as the codec system was never designed to work in OS X.

BD is the typical Sony format..where their self-imposed/created technological cleverness/limitations killed their product. Just like MiniDisc...just like MemoryStick...and others.
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That's not true. Windows cannot play Blu-ray disk natively either. You have to install a third party player in order to play back Blu-ray contents. OSX is no different.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20077240-263/blu-ray-playback-comes-to-os-x/

That article was from June of 2011 - a year and 2 months ago.
 
Skripka said:
BD not being on anything other than Windows was purely a product of how the codec was designed to work. It was designed almost exclusively to work on Windows machines or PS, Apple doesn't sell it as the codec system was never designed to work in OS X.

BD is the typical Sony format..where their self-imposed/created technological cleverness/limitations killed their product. Just like MiniDisc...just like MemoryStick...and others.
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I dunno, the 3.5" 1.44MB diskette seemed to enjoy a rather lengthy, popular life. I do agree about those other Sony formats.

Also, the UMD. Fucking fail right there.
 
Hmm interesting. Well we all know that new compression technology can replace Blu Ray in the next 5+ years. Physical media has been and continues to be on its way out.

From a logic stand point it makes sense to leave the optical media part of the business but considering that they still have a few major platforms that require it , perhaps a bit premature.
 
Azhar said:
http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=598&name=Blu-Ray-Drives

http://digiarty.com/

Not seeing $100 or more here.
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Will that play every single blu ray? Funny because my BR player came with cyberlink and it shitted out after a year, then they wanted money to upgrade. I have made posts in this forum and almost all options are half assed, not fully functional hack jobs or pretty expensive.

In fact no one yet has reccommended the product you linked to, maybe its a gem, or maybe it has drawbacks.
 
Godmachine said:
Also can't VLC player play Blu Ray's for free now? No license required by the user?
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Playing video is one thing, decrypting it is another. There's been ways you can play blurays on various players like MPC, Zoom, etc for years if you had the right codecs but none of them actually break aacs or bd-j You have to get rid of that first.

And for those who wondered, Optiarc only handled PC Drives. Sony still will make drives for their Bluray players and other products on their own.
 
Raudulfr said:
Uh... maybe because he's talking about pre-built/OEM computers?
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I missed that part. Thanks for the heads up.

But yeah, laptop users have to pay more even for aftermarket BD drives. Even slim DVD drives have premium price tags compared to their desktop counterparts. I guess OEM doesn't want to foot that bill until slim BD drive manufacturers bring their cost down to slim DVD prices.
 
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