Blu-ray Players Will Soon Be Almost Gone: Here’s What to Do

Summary

• The end of Blu-ray players is imminent, but production will continue for a few more years.
• Consider buying an extra player to store as a backup for when your current one fails.
• Premium Blu-ray players will be phased out first, so invest wisely to enjoy media longer.

As streaming and downloadable media increase their dominance, Blu-ray players are being discontinued across the industry, which means that sooner or later you won’t find any players on the shelf should your current one give up the ghost. So what now?

LG Joins the Club, Ditching Blu-ray Players

In December 2024, LG announced that it would be ceasing production of Blu-ray players, joining Samsung and Oppo who both left the market about half a decade earlier.

LG was one of the last great holdouts making players, but now only Sony and Panasonic are left, and while having fewer players to share the market makes it more viable for them to stay in for a while, I suspect it’s only a matter of time before the remaining big brands pull the plug.

Don’t Panic!

While we can see the end of Blu-ray player production coming over the hill, it’s not here yet. It will still take a good few years before no one makes players anymore. The premium brands will get out, then smaller lesser-known brands will move into the shrinking Blu-ray market just as they did for CD players. While this will mean the quality of players is likely to decline, at least there will be options.

So there’s no reason to rush out and do something financially inadvisable. Instead, take this as a medium-term warning that those of us who like collecting media are on notice. If you want your disc library to remain playable for as long as possible, you’ll have to do something about it soon.

Blu-ray players aren’t known for having short lifespans. Especially if you don’t make heavy use of them, but they will eventually fail in some way. Most likely the moving parts of the drive mechanism will go first, but anything can burn out or wear down. So, a good plan is to buy at least one extra player and leave it sealed in the box.

Just put it away somewhere, and forget you have it. Then, ten years hence, when your beloved player finally does spin its last, you can crack open your backup and hopefully have another long chunk of time to enjoy your library. One, of course, being the minimum amount. How many backup players you buy I’ll leave to your personal level of budget and paranoia.

Consoles With Blu-ray Drives Will Still Be Around for Years

While standalone Blu-ray players are undoubtedly going the way of the Dodo, something that’s not going away for quite some time is the video game console. Current and last-gen consoles have Blu-ray drives, and although discless consoles are starting to become an option, I’d be very surprised if the next generation of consoles didn’t at least offer a Blu-ray drive as an option.

Now, consoles are not the best Blu-ray players around, but they get the job done adequately, and honestly, I have no complaints about how 4K UHD discs look playing on my PS5. I even bought the cute little PS5 media remote.

Don’t Fall for Temporary Price Hikes

When news like this breaks, there’s often a run on devices like Blu-ray players, and in this case, specifically, probably LG’s outgoing players. An increase in demand and drop in supply logically leads to increased prices. This could even affect the used player market. However, keep in mind that there are still companies producing players, and they will for a while.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t buy a player or two, but be aware of the price history of that player and avoid ones that have undergone a recent price hike for no apparent reason.

Make Your Last Blu-ray Player a Good One

There are lots of $50-$70 Blu-ray players in stores or online, and these are perfectly fine. You might just pick one or two up to store in a closet as I mentioned earlier, but now we are heading toward the end of the window to own a truly high-end Blu-ray player.

It doesn’t have to be some thousand-dollar cinephile player either. In our best Blu-ray player roundup we singled out the Panasonic Streaming 4K Blu-Ray Player DP-UB420-K which usually goes for $200-$250.

That’s not cheap, but it’s definitely reachable if you have a few months or years to plan for it. This is the type of player that will do your discs justice when coupled with a good TV, and this is the level of hardware that will be phased out first as the market shrinks.