Sony drops out of disk media, entirely

[Botch]

This sends me into a bit more despair. When Oppo pulled the plug on disk players I bought two more, as insurance (I have a pretty good collection of Blurays, 5.1 SACDs, and a few DVD-A's). I'm now on my second one, and it's starting to skip randomly. They (in my experience) can't be fixed.
That leaves only Panasonic, which don't play DVD-A nor even SACD; there is one more that CheapAudioGuy above mentions, but they're $$$$ and as I stated, unreliable and unrepairable.
I'm about ready for that random bus to jump a curb and take me out; I'm tired of fighting this....

 

[CMonster]

I've had a couple of experiences recently that embolden me to give you this advice: let go of the past and embrace the current state. Stop fighting. Pick a streaming service and go all-in. For me, it's Apple Music. I have a nice little bundle that includes cloud storage and Apple TV (Ted Lasso, Silo, MurderBot, Widow's Bay, and more) and life is good. Don't let the chase for perfection hinder your enjoyment of a ginormous library of content presented in good to great formats.

 

[Botch]

Well Chuck, I have; got a Cambridge audio streamer/DAC about a year ago, think I've only purchased 2 CDs since then. However, to my knowledge I can't stream 5.1 or greater, and I have very few movies; most of my Blurays are concert videos and Apple Music (which I have along with Tidal) has almost no concerts in its library.
And I was in a pretty piss-poor mood yesterday; am VERY happy today, but won't say why. I'll survive.

 

[Haywood]

In the last six months, I replaced my dead living room Blu-Ray player with a Sony UHD Blu-Ray player and bought a regular Sony Blu-Ray player for my bedroom. The UHD Blu-Ray player in my family room (also a Sony, I think) is a few years old, but lightly used. I am hoping I won't have to worry about this for a long time, but it does provide a bit more motivation to rip my concert discs and other content I don't own online to my NAS. Online ownership via Movies Anywhere, Apple, Amazon, Google, and Fandango seems safe for the moment at least. As long as people keep buying, they will keep selling and maintaining. I'm hoping the growing disgust with endless subscriptions will lead more people back toward the ownership model, but that is probably overly optimistic.

Blu-Ray players may be dropping off, but CD players are seeing a surge with the comeback of 2 channel audio and the tidal wave of excellent, affordable Chi-Fi products. I'm thinking it may only be a matter of time before someone like Fosi, S.M.S.L., WiiM, Topping, etc. jumps into the home theater fray. The hobby has gotten too expensive. If they can start making quality, affordable pre-pros to go with their already excellent and affordable amplifiers, they will change the game entirely.

 

[Botch]

… I'm thinking it may only be a matter of time before someone like Fosi, S.M.S.L., WiiM, Topping, etc. jumps into the home theater fray. The hobby has gotten too expensive. If they can start making quality, affordable pre-pros to go with their already excellent and affordable amplifiers, they will change the game entirely.

I certainly hope you’re correct.

 

[Haywood]

Think about this. We were all freaking out when Logitech dropped out of the remote control market when Sofabaton swept in to fill the vacuum. Now their remotes are pretty close to on-par with the ones Logitech made and I think a little less expensive. Look what happened to the two-channel market. You can build a very good system for less money than ever before. CD players had all but disappeared, but there are a bunch of decent affordable options out there now, like the S.M.S.L. I bought. Did you ever think we would see so many new turntables on the market again? Stereo integrated amplifiers? Inexpensive stereo preamps? This is an AMAZING time to be in this hobby.

 

[Hot Monkey]

I do my share of streaming these days and have come to accept the reality of it. But that doesn't mean I am still not buying some select new titles on BluRay until they no longer sell any films on disc. And I have four Oppo's one in use and three in storage. Plus a handful of other back up players. So hopefully they will outlive me and my love for my physical media collection.