Sony no longer produces BD-R, MiniDiscs and MiniDV

February 2025 will see the end of three formats that Sony played a key role in developing. The company will then cease production of recordable Blu-ray discs, MiniDiscs and MiniDV cassettes. It may come as a surprise that these media are still being produced at all, as Sony launched its last MiniDisc system back in 2013.

As was the case with the CMT-M35WM mini system back then, Sony has once again issued an unequivocal statement: all the formats mentioned, including MD-Data, will be discontinued and, of course, there will be no successors. The reference to MD-Data is an indication of where the outdated digital media are still used today, namely in some professional fields of application. The magneto-optical MiniDisc and its computer offshoot MD-Data are of particular importance here, as the media have been proven to last for several decades.

MDs that were recorded in the 1990s can still be read today if stored properly, but this is not the case with many CDs and DVDs that have been recorded themselves. The organic dyes often decompose even without too much UV light and heat. From the very beginning, Sony also offered MD data for archiving medical data. The audio MD also became somewhat of a success in the studio sector thanks to professional equipment, and not just because of its longevity.

MiniDisc for data and professional audio

Even before the CD-R, recordable MiniDiscs were a good data carrier for exchanging and transporting to the home studio. In contrast to home devices, professional MD recorders could make lossless copies over any number of generations and could do so at multiple speeds from the outset. The latter was later also offered by some home devices with one drive each for CD and MD in one housing.

MiniDVs, which were purely magnetic and worked on tape, have always been more susceptible and became quite popular with digital SD video in both the home and professional sectors at the end of the 1990s and beginning of the 2000s. The fact that Sony is now abandoning the smaller format of DV cassettes is probably since MiniDVs can also be used in larger devices with adapters, and not just camcorders.

In the case of recordable Blu-ray discs (BD-R), on the other hand, the move away from HD films on physical data carriers by other manufacturers is obviously playing a role: there is also a decline in the number of suppliers of UHD players. Samsung presented its last 4K player for discs back in 2019, and LG only left this market at the end of 2024.

(nie)