Sony definitively stops selling Blu-ray recorders

Sony is drawing a line and stopping the sale of its Blu-ray disc recorders. The delivery of all models still being produced will end this month. New BD recorders have not been available for over a year. The BDZ-ZW1900 was the last new model released in 2024. Sony is also clearly rejecting any speculation about possible successors.

“There will be no successor models,” Sony writes in a statement on its Japanese website. In addition to the BDZ-ZW1900, the company had previously produced and sold the BD recorders BDZ-FBT4200/FBT2200/FBW2200 from 2023. This has now come to an end, as Sony states literally: “From February 2026, we will stop delivering all Blu-ray disc recorders.”

Farewell to BD recorders no surprise

This step should not surprise market observers, as around a year ago Sony announced the end for BD-R, MiniDiscs and MiniDV. Sony's own recordable Blu-ray media have therefore been unavailable for quite some time. The end of the corresponding Blu-ray disc recording devices was therefore to be expected. However, Sony continues to offer Blu-ray players. A competitor has already withdrawn from this market, as LG discontinued its players for UHD Blu-ray at the end of 2024.

Fundamentally, this also fits Sony's current corporate strategy, namely to cease hardware production. It was only announced in January that Sony's TVs will be produced under the Chinese flag in the future. The Japanese company is selling its TV business and plans a joint venture with the Chinese company TCL for this purpose. In the future, TCL will manufacture TVs and home entertainment devices, but sell them under the well-known brand names Sony and Bravia.

BD recorder business has collapsed

Sony does not state a reason for abandoning BD recorders, but the business with these devices has declined sharply in recent years. This is likely due to the increasing prevalence of streaming services such as Netflix. In 2011, Sony sold 6.39 million BD recorders in Japan alone, but in 2025, it was only 620,000 units, reports the Japanese news agency Kyōdō Tsūshinsha.

According to this, the Japanese company is shifting its focus to entertainment industry businesses such as anime and films. This is intended to accelerate the expansion strategy, as Sony apparently expects more growth in these areas than in the business with electronic products.

(fds)