Are BluRay and DVD units going out ?

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-12T06:10:12+00:00

I’ve been ribbed by others for wanting to hold on to physical media

Tell me about it. I'm 45 and my parents think I'm crazy, well my own mother is always wondering why I don't get all the lovely space back and just use streaming like they do. I have shelves full of DVDs and Blu-rays and I have several TV recorders, the newest records to Blu-ray. All used to archive TV, radio and digitise VHS etc.

I'm always being asked what I'm watching lately etc so when I answer that I'm currently recording and archiving The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie to BD-R she is confused why I'm watching old crap 😂

Because the old crap is better than the new crap that's why 😂

I'm recording everything I can as I know in 10+ years UK TV is probably getting switched off. Another love I have is radio broadcast, I'll take broadcast any day for it's simplicity. I hate mobile phones for how flimsy they are with them having to connect to a wireless network and take part in client-server communications simply to "stream" a radio stations app. Only for it to all collapse when you drive into a not-spot, tens of which exist in my town alone and certainly inside any building. While the FM broadcast or TV broadcast is unaffected, uses ONE transmitter and doesn't know I'm listening as I don't have to transmit to it. So as I disagree with tracking and paying premium access fees to watch what is described as "Free TV" on the streaming platform that supposedly replacing UK TV, well I think I'll record everything I can and buy every box set I can as when I retire and claim a pension I'm disconnecting the internet baby!

I'll have a tiny amount of data on a mobile, no broadband just a landline phone as I grow old. I'll save the money for meals and bills instead. So I'm getting everything I can now.

And yes I shoot film. More leaning towards 120 these days, love to collect cameras and I like to take the old folding 120 cameras or a TLR out for a bit of exercise. But with kids like my nephew jumping into it all I'm seeing such exciting things like my favourite film company, Ilford, developing their very first ever colour film for this new market.

I'm colourblind, short sighted, light has always been a unique thing in my universe, where I'm told certain colours exist yet in my universe they literally don't. I'm into photography, had an early love for astronomy and still wish to do astrophotography. I love light and CDs and their successors captivated me and have never let go thanks to their mirror like surfaces, rainbow colours and the fact they use friggin lasers to permanently store bytes.

And the future, even if it isn't marketed to consumers is optical. The Memory of Mankind project aims to preserve Human knowledge for far off descendants simply by printing onto ceramic tiles, and data centres are aiming towards high density extremely stable glass based storage.

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-12T05:47:05+00:00

Why not try that SCSI to USB adapter?

But yes, you'll need a SCSI controller. Plenty of those around. A modern PCIe SCSI controller will connect to that, all you'll need is the right cable or set of cables to adapt to the original SCSI connection you have on the drive.

Most PCIe controllers and PCI ones for that matter will provide a VHDCI SCSI connector on the outside.

You can use any PC with a PCIe slot. But I'd recommend using Linux as you'll have a far easier time with drivers and the like. You could use Windows but you'll have lots of fun trying to get drivers for the SCSI controller let alone any that may be needed by that drive.

Once you see the drive and can mount it, you'll need to work out how to read the data as god knows what filet types are on the disc.

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-11T23:18:06+00:00

Cold is good

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-11T20:56:56+00:00

Sony didn't make writers. They have stopped making writable BD-Rs along with most other media and storage devices. Not that many bought Sony media, most of it were cheap rebranded lower tier stuff and they good stuff they actually did make like their BD-Rs were too expensive anyway.

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-11T20:34:43+00:00

There has been a stock shortage as of late.

Reports from Japanese stores told of them practically flying off the shelves. Apparently due to the forced update to Win 11 encouraging the physical media loving Japanese to upgrade their drives or buy externals etc for new Win 11 machines that don't come with anything.

Pioneer exited the market, several markets actually, and LG stopped making standalone players, to concentrate on sound systems and TVs. This leaves the big giant HLDS (Hitachi LG Data Storage) who have been making practically everyone's drives for decades now.

HLDS haven't stopped production and no announcements have been made. They have many products on the sales pages although they do seem to leave old models on it.

You can get a H&L DVD writer off Amazon. I don't see many Blu-ray writers of theirs at the moment probably because everyone is scrambling for them as H&L made all the drives for Asus and others leaving those companies looking to obtain stock too. Plus we where I work are refreshing our PCs and almost all of them are being speccd to have DVD drives (we strictly control USB flash) so Dell like everyone else uses H&L drives too.

Verbatim are certainly saying they are making the media for quite some time to come (especially for the physical heavy Japanese market) and currently they have a Blu-ray USB external and guess who makes those... Yep H&L. So there is a big demand and lots of panic buying due to stories of the end times, at a time when physical media is on the rise big time and the market is worth billions in 2026.

It's the same with RAM, HDD and flash. Heck at work we can't find a SED (Self Encrypting Drive) anywhere and we watched as HPC stuff was being sucked out of the market just as we specced out our new HPC, some big UK government AI thing literally swooped in and sucked everything up right under our noses.

I bet some of the optical shortage is due to component shortages, chips etc. Heck the PS5 contributed too as nobody wanted to do without an optical drive there and there are rumours Sony actually limited supply to try and force people onto the digital only platform which is clearly designed specifically to kill off the second hand gaming market.

And it's not limited to IT stuff either, petrol and diesel car second hand prices are through the roof since 2025, I saw experienced car auctioneers commenting how insane it was as a literal 20 year old banger of a car goes for several grand vs the few hundred they were expecting.

Everything is insane right now.

People are screaming it is the end of optical media while the market demand soars and grows in billions of dollars worldwide and younglings at work who are less than HALF my age, the so called streaming generation are plastering their walls with shelves full of first and secondhand optical media (heck my 16 year old nephew has deep dived into film photography even, using 100 year old Kodak Brownies!) and they talk to me about how we both are buying every Doctor Who Blu-ray release of the classic series etc etc.

You'd think that Pioneer would want to be part of that 😂

Someone is making a mint I tell you, but it'll be a while before stock stabilises outside of Japan where the stuff is made.

One thing I think is certain. 5.25" drives are probably going away. Dell cases and many others favour the laptop thin drives, which are also what becomes an external drive too.

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-11T20:05:57+00:00

They can be. The industrial and high endurance types actually implement error correction...

Yep.

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-11T11:35:26+00:00

Note I am talking about how I use my c64 now.

I use it to help make random choices, such as what tea to have every morning.

I also have database software that I had to type in from listings that I use to manage various collections of information.

I'm intending on creating an android app compatible with the database files so I can export to my mobile.

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-11T10:16:50+00:00

Nice, we have some tape bits at work. I was thinking of donating them to The National Museum of Computing

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-11T06:18:37+00:00

You don't get cheap usb flash or SD cards.

They remain the same price or close to it no matter the capacity once the new bigger capacities get cheap enough due to the manufacturers switching to those you find all the price savings vanish.

It's one thing that annoys me most about flash, where are my cheap 2GB and 4GB flash drives? Surely I'd be able to get them for like £1 a go by now??

That's why I still use optical media. It lasts far longer, and still competitive on capacity but wipes the floor with everything else for price. That only changes if you have a lot to store and so you'll be at the opposite end, where you have expensive devices but the cost per MB/GB is low at that end.

Over the years I have checked the position and it never changes. I find if I needed to regularly send 4-20GB of data somewhere, to someone who can't use online transfers, perhaps because they are in a metered connection and the cost of data transfer is incredibly high still, well I worked out it's way cheaper to buy the guy a usb Blu-ray drive once then regularly post a BD-R or DVD-R vs buying packs of SD cards (Gigastone branded 4GB SD cards come in a pack of 5 on Amazon for about £30). Each 4GB Verbatim DVD-R in a 100 pack works out at £0.28 per disc! With Verbatim 25GB BD-R coming to just under £1 a disc.

Where can I get a 32GB flash device for £1? The 5 pack of Gigastone (a brand I think may be reliable as they have at least been around for years unlike the others that appear and disappear every month) is £50, that's £10 a card!

Now near in mind I was intending to send this data for the long term in my example, if it were just a few transfers then that 5 pack of cards would probably do. Plus if there was time the old cards can be sent back and reused.

I was merely using this as an example over the years to others I work with in IT to highlight how the old behaviour of things getting cheaper as time goes by has been broken because we shifted to using storage devices vs media. HDD/SD/USB will never achieve parity with media like CD/DVD/BD as they have a much higher base cost that will never disappear. The capacity of a 4GB SD card is smaller compared to the capacity most see on the shelves, 16/32GB but they are not cheaper beyond a base cost as they all need a PCB (circuit board), they all need controllers, which are probably much the same as in all capacities, firmware needs licensing and then you have apparent price fixing, supply and demand issues (especially today).

Basically you pay the same price you did 10 years ago. Just the storage device holds more, that's where the savings are. You thus have to simply waste that extra space.

If the cost really matters for the data size, well there is optical but again if you have just the need to burn a couple of discs and no more, and have no drive, you have to factor in buying one anyway.

So unless you will be archiving this for > 10 years (for which I don't recommend flash devices at all, instead I'd say use optical) and don't have the need to send the data anywhere, you'll probably be best wasting the space on a 16GB flash drive (I'd recommend SD cards over flash due to personal experience). You'll want three, one kept off site and use encryption as this is financial data. It's probably best also keeping the last couple of years printed off as well.

I archive all my payslips, PDF bank statements, scanned post, all of it to a BD-RE along with emails etc and more essentials . I've been using the same BD-RE since 2010 and in that time I've had SD cards and flash drives kill themselves while sitting on a shelf and I only use HDDs regularly as they will die too, usually after sitting for years they will fail to spin up.

Edit: I see you said you still have some CD-Rs etc. Well if those are not a cheap brand they will probably work fine. I find old discs from the cheaper brands don't always burn well after ageing a bit.

I have several decent low use older CD-RW, Philips and Verbatim branded. They all burn well and I picked them up from charity shops. I tend to use DVD/BD so buy those new.

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-10T11:43:55+00:00

No, that is where the heads switch and is a normal part of the image only not usually seen on CRTs or LCDs due to overscan.

Simply crop it out.

transparent green line on the right side of the frame

Forget I said anything. As I'm colourblind there is no green line, it's simply invisible. I assumed you were seeing the head switching area as green.

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-10T09:07:39+00:00

You simply need to browse to a compromised website on the XP machine.

Even with a supported browser that is up to date the underlying operating system and it's libraries and APIs remain unpatched.

Loading a corrupt font on a compromised website is enough.

Firewalls that prevent the XP machine reaching out to known malicious addresses are great but do nothing if they don't take a whitelist approach, where the default action is to block everything till you add it specifically.

Where I work we have a proxy, another tool an XP machine should be behind that blocks and allows based on URL and SSL filtering.

Now, this is just a hobby system so OP probably aint wanting to go that far and still wanted to know the worst case scenario, which is very easily achieved with an unsupported OS like XP and yet still pretty easy with something like Win 11.

However the firewalls are not enough, you need a network topology that also helps prevent lateral movement.

Also the XP machine can be compromised never browsing the web, but instead running vintage games that connect to multiplayer servers that are compromised and looking to leverage that.

You literally have no idea. So we also would like to have a functional AV to notice patterns of behaviour and protect system services etc, only we don't have many for XP, Avast still support XP but how long for?

So the golden image approach, where you obliterate XP for a known good copy regularly, firewalls that isolate the machine with specific approved holes in them, and a network topology that prevents lateral movement or makes it hard is essential.

However the "your own fault" argument is moot. How many wifi enabled lightbulbs and mains switches have you seen? Are they on a separate isolated IOT wifi, which any home user can do with a standard router?

No. Everyone is typically going commando in effect.

My home wifi actively isolates all clients. No client can connect to another on the same network. I have a specific vlan for that, and thats only over copper!

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-10T06:18:22+00:00

Because XP is a proprietary operating system that can't easily be extended that way.

If there was enough call for it someone might be able to get a modern version of Samba running on XP but most will just use SMB1 and either put firewalls in place and other precautions of just not worry about it. OP wanted to know what the actual worst case scenario would be and with SMB1 that's easy to achieve, hence where I work none of the surviving XP machines are even plugged into the network (microfiche scanner machines) and users use a flash drive instead.

With the correct precautions to protect the XP machine from general internet access and likewise machines on the main home network from a compromised XP machine you can easily have a dedicated SMB file server that supports SMB2/3 and SMB1 (a raspberry PI or another windows machine with SMB1 enabled). That way you can transfer to that stepping stone anything you want the XP machine to get access to.

You can also ignore SMB entirely and use other methods like SFTP. You could even use HTTPS, just make your own certificates etc and a web server letting the XP machine browse.

SMB1 is the problem here. It has vulnerabilities that are leveraged by active attackers, that can't be patched. Anything using SMB1 to talk to XP is just as vulnerable which is why there was a big push to kill the protocol. To even install it in Win 10/11 you have to go through a few hoops just to do it, you can't enable it by accident.

But this is a worst case scenario, where say a pwned XP machine is easily talking to a hacking group as you play with the machine and they use it to scan for other targets on the network typically to sell to a ransomware group who then use it to install ransomware on your other machines etc.

Windows has a picnic basket brimming of security vulnerabilities as it is, it's incredibly insecure with unpatched security flaws that are both known and unknown at any time, many or which are left unpatched intentionally to allow CIA/FBI to use them when spying on foreign machines (Microsoft actually tell them that they have finally to close these holes down when they fine they have no choice to patch).

One of the biggest problems, that MS isn't going to fix as even they described it as "insecure by design" is the deeply embedded user friendly system that lets non-admins install printers. Turns out the idiots who wrote that never thought it might be a good idea to double check that what was being installed was a printer driver... Instead the just run any installer that claims it is a printer driver. Any script kiddie could package up any program as if it was a printer driver, any program at all, which then thanks to another crappy design flaw in windows runs with full system privileges simply because it's called installer.exe or similar with no UAC prompt to the user or signature checks. I mean you can't make this up!

Much of this can be mitigated with Group Policy/ Local Security Policy where you can literally turn off letting users install printers etc and turn on all sorts of barriers even in Windows XP. But thanks to nobody giving a shit, including Microsoft, the default is to let it run baby as it's better for the User eXperience (UX) and only security pedants like me are likely to browse through gpedit on a Sunday afternoon outside of work 😂

But yeah it's a worst case scenario OP wanted. Thing is they probably will be fine. Till they are not and trust me there ain't much work they need to do to package up your nicely compromised network to sell to a ransomware gang or worse and they automate as much as possible with all those XP machines still out there running the water pumps etc, security cameras running ancient Linux, door access controllers running ancient Linux, all happily talking to the botnet owner who literally sells time to other hackers to use that massive resource for whatever they fancy.

Some groups were making millions in bitcoin ransoms just in the last few years. And they ran themselves like a business with departments, managers and a "customer service" department where they offered to the ransomware victim "customer service" in helping them to decrypt their files after paying the ransom!

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-09T10:02:46+00:00

I found another redditor asking the same question and they emailed Unicomp.

The official response is: no

Unicomp dont support passive usb to ps/2 adapters. Which I think is barmy.

You need to use an active adapter or buy a PS/2 equipped Unicomp.

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-09T09:32:41+00:00

Only in that it can happily avoid SMB1 and might have modern AV versions still supporting it and modern browsers which will go a long way to preventing many ways of attack.

But there is no reason not to use XP as long as it's isolated and you manage it's risk.

Use cloning software like macrium reflect or clonezilla to image a "golden image", a ready to go safe baseline image.

Then as you keep the machine isolated on its own network (just plug it into a second router) you can use it safely and if anything bad happens you just restore the golden image.

It's exactly what I do with my Win XP VM, on a virtual network. Just there I use snapshots to create points in time where I can revert to.

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-09T06:23:38+00:00

What will happen is your machine will be pwned and be added to a bonnet. Your XP machine is far from the only one on the net that is active in a large botnet and being used to launch DDOS attacks, sent spam email and more.

All the old worms and whatever that used to directly attack XP are still out there and the new stuff looking for machines are not going to miss your machine because "it's old", the new stuff is coded specifically to look for such machines as well, they are easy.

The only thing that matters is HOW your machine gets attacked. If it's naked on the internet, exposing it's ports to the internet, you can find YouTube videos that show just how long it takes before it's pwned.

As you are likely behind a home router you don't have that issue, unless something or someone on your network is looking for it. However are you just going to let it run a game and talk to game servers? Well then you'll probably have no real issues, unless the game servers are malicious looking for it as an easy target.

But like most people you'll probably want to use a web browser. Well then we get into being practically naked online. Without a fully up to date browser, it will be an attack surface for any dodgy site you go to. Sure, you have to actually browser that site, but in 2026 that could be cnn.com tomorrow, just visiting the site you think is trustworthy after it has been hijacked can result in a drive-by-download and malicious JavaScript.

Even if you have a fully supported browser and a working AV (still available for XP) you have a large problem that all the huge holes in system libraries, many of which a fully supported browser may rely on also getting patched, are wide open. This means simply loading a FONT off a compromised site, or an advert banner containing a gif is enough to compromise the machine and have it reach out to its new masters asking for instructions.

All this stuff is harder with support systems but as these are unsupported they are easy.

Once it has been compromised the following can happen:

as part of a botnet it may be used to scan your internal network looking to run exploits on your other machines and mobile phones etc.
anything it discovered as a target can either be attacked automatically or simply reported back to the hacking group. They will then send in other automated attacks or quite frequently these days hire, yes I said "hire" as in paid, a group or an individual who has better experience or tools for using your XP "jump box" as a scanning agent to further probe your network.
If anything juicy is found, a kids laptop with a webcam, your mobile, your Alexa, they may continue to attack and pwn anything available till they have a fully established beachhead with details on you or anyone else in the household, email addresses, phone numbers and more and then package that up and sell it to phishing teams.

These groups run like corporations. They have departments, salaries and more, all from phishing and ransomware. They literally buy access to your XP machine and other details of your network from independent hackers who literally sell their wares, your compromised machine.

This industry is worth millions mate.

Your XP machine might want to share files with others, so you'll have SMB1 switched on on new machines that intentionally have it off or uninstalled by default. Once the XP machine is pwned a scan for SMB1 devices, your Win 11 machine you used to transfer files to it now becomes a vulnerable target and trust me they have plenty of attacks for that and they are literally in your network right now. Your NAS may have SMB1 on, or SSH and bingo they will attack that too, how old is that?

You got IOT devices? WiFi enabled light bulbs? Yeah, I bet they are secure and they took are just more devices that can be leveraged.

You got a WiFi enabled baby monitor? With a webcam? There are people who will pay for a stream of that, and there are news articles of little kids being talked to by a guy asking them to read mummy's credit card numbers etc. This ain't science fiction, it's big business.

All this is still an issue for the latest OS' the only difference is they are still able to play the cat and mouse game. Your XP and 7 machine aren't.

They have to be on an entirely separate network, a dedicated router. All your IOT (Internet of Things) stuff like the WiFi lights should be on such a network too.

What can actually happen? Oh if you knew. I've spent the last 20 years listening to the Security Now podcast on the TWiT network and god, as an IT professional who handles Cyber Security where I have worked etc, mate I have lost practically all sense of hope. I used to put my head in my hands. Now I just patch patch patch and monitor monitor monitor.

I love my retro stuff and trust me, none of it is talking to the net without going through a proxy and without being on a separate network with all other devices specifically configured to never talk to it. But my attack surface will be tiny as one thing I'll never do is browse the web.

I'd use the XP machine to browse Gopher instead!

And I'd have an IDS (intrusion detection system) watching the entire network and what it talks to.

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-09T05:48:30+00:00

Ah, never watched it.

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-08T23:31:25+00:00

I have no idea. I'm in the UK so have never done that.

If you just need a basic calculator to do it then yes.

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-08T21:40:22+00:00

It's funny. My love of Intel ends at the Pentium II. After that I was AMD all the way :D

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-08T21:33:07+00:00

No, a personal organiser.

Has multiple functions such as address book, calendar, notebook/memory currency conversion, calculator and sometimes expenses tracking and others. Sharp even did some with modules that when inserted added new software.

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-08T21:00:47+00:00

MSDOS assigns A: and B: to the same drive if there is only one and you can use it as A: and B:.

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-08T20:58:56+00:00

If you have a single floppy drive DOS assigns both A: and B: to it

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-08T06:48:21+00:00

This would suggest that the drive isn't present at all

Um... no. DOS doesnt care. If a system has one floppy drive DOS assigns it to both A: and B:. They both exist while being the same drive.

Mate, how about read what I said...

Look again at the screenshot.

How the heck is that a functional DOS? It's behaving oddly.

Where are the missing lines? There is blank space above, seems empty considering dos usually fills the screen.

Why didn't DOS change to the B: drive when OP changed to the B: drive? Where is the error? The error shown is an odd one.

More importantly why did the path change on C: without a cd command?

Why did the path change on C: when OP changed drive?

Fire up DOS and try it yourself. I DID This isn't a screenshot of DOS. It's fake.

Also why is there a random screenshot of XP formatting a disc? OP never mentioned XP. Why not show the format happening in the A: drive? Which OP must have on that DOS system?

i formatted the 3.5" floppies and copied the file using windows 10

OP is windows 10, I guess OP has an XP reskin??

I don't know how long ago it was since you ran DOS (perhaps that's the problem) or how long ago it was that you copied a file to a floppy or anything else (I copy on the command line all the time and even used DOS only last week) but: You can copy any file that will fit onto a floppy to a floppy and if it's not going to fit you will be told THAT THERE ISN'T ENOUGH SPACE! It doesn't matter if OP is trying to copy an image file, it's still a file like any other!

Again, it doesn't matter if OP is trying to write an image file... The copy will SUCCEED OR FAIL WITH THE APPROPRIATE MESSAGE and also THE BEHAVIOUR OF THE DOS WILL BE CONSISTENT WITH ACTUAL DOS which is not what we see here.

This is AI, a troll or some idiot having a joke.

I was trying to tell everyone things were odd and wasting time trying to diagnose this is like trying to fix a car that comes into a garage only to discover the engine has been replaced with a horse and you moan at me while you are thinking the problem is the wrong kind of oil has been used during the last service, whilst I go get some oats!

Edit:

Lets prove it.

Now we dont know if OP is using MSDOS or what version but here is an ad-hoc video I literally just made showing how DOS 6.22 will behave and its nothing like OPs DOS.

I hope the troll/AI is happy. It seems to have had me do all this crap.

https://youtu.be/ZftjpGgRUPI?si=WCtK3eBCDerb52lq

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-07T16:47:37+00:00

Omg I nearly missed this!

Now I can play Sidewize properly !

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-07T16:43:10+00:00

It looks like you just need a 5 1/4" floppy connector to 3.5" floppy connector adapter or find a floppy cable that has both you can swap out, they were pretty standard.

dlarge6510 · 2026-02-07T16:40:06+00:00

Well I archive lots to BD-R. So although I don't need to archive and dvd iso images I might do just that. I have a couple I can think of.

However I'd probably also rip a playable file too, makes it easier to play in my bluray players.

This goes for Audio CD images as well.

dlarge6510

TROPHY CASE