Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

Thanks, AI! "Sony Shuts Down Nearly Its Entire Memory Card Business Due to Flash Shortage"

2026-03-30T16:59:59Z

The subject says it all. Due to the on-going shortage of RAM, Sony is shutting down production of CFexpress and SD memory cards effective last Friday.

The only cards remaining in production are: "960GB CFexpress Type B card and the lowest-end SF-UZ series SD cards remain in production. However, those UHS-I SD cards are discontinued in the United States outside of a scant few retailers and resellers." So if you are truly devoted to Sony memory cards, buy them NOW!

In other Sony news, they've had TWO price increases on the Play Station 5 this year already!

https://petapixel.com/2026/03/27/sony-shuts-down-nearly-its-entire-memory-card-business-due-to-ssd-shortage/

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/03/30/0345230/sony-shuts-down-nearly-its-entire-memory-card-business-due-to-ssd-shortage

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Sony is slowly halting production of recordable Bluray discs

2024-07-13T16:22:22Z

From the article: "In an interview Sony gave to AV Watch recently, the company admitted it's going to "gradually end development and production" of recordable Blu-rays and other optical disc formats at its Tagajo City plants in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. Essentially, 25GB BD-REs, 50GB BD-RE DLs, 100GB BD-RE XLs, or 128GB BD-R XLs will soon not be available to consumers. Professional discs for video production and optical archives for data storage are also being discontinued.

Sony says it's pulling the plug because the cold storage market never really took off like they hoped, and the overall storage media business has been operating in the red for years. As the company put it bluntly, "We need to review our business structure in order to improve profitability.""

This will not affect production of discs for things like home video and computer games, just consumer recordable discs.

No doubt a lot of people are going to get stung by this. And I'm sure they're useful. But let's look at the computer that I'm on right now. It has 550 gig in use on the main drive. That's five discs to archive it. Five discs that have to be swapped out. OR one 4 terabyte external hard drive that I can do multiple generations of backups to and I don't have to swap discs out during the backup process: plug in the drive, start the backup, walk away.

Now, an external HD is not an archival backup, that hard drive will not last decades, which presumably the writeable discs will - if you keep track of them, AND they remain undamaged, AND your external drive keeps working or you can get another. Those are a lot of ifs and ands.

Backups have always sucked. And archiving materials suck even worse, speaking as a computer guy of several decades and a librarian.

https://www.techspot.com/news/103709-sony-killing-off-recordable-blu-ray-bidding-farewell.html

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Interesting happening: Sony to take over Disney's DVD/BR distribution!

2024-02-21T15:37:12Z

Disney will manage its streaming side, Sony will do the physical side. Except for this one weird little line in the article: "According to Disney, the licensing model allows the studio to continue to offer films and TV shows through physical retailers...".

So sometimes Disney will still sell physical media? That doesn't make sense. If they're not continuing to churn out physical product, their cost per unit to do limited runs is going to by sky-high. Even media manufacturers who relabel product for them are going to charge them more for doing off-runs since they're not doing on-going runs for them. This is really weird.

Also mentioned is the continue softening of home media sales, which distresses me. I don't want to be forced into "buying" digital-only releases as we've seen how trustworthy these idiots are with making sure that you "own" these things for your lifetime. Give me a physical copy, or a way to download a file that I can make a copy from! Yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt!

The one thing that the article doesn't mention is Disney's vaults, so I imagine that those are going to continue to be clamped shut and things will go on disappearing, to reemerge every 10-15 years or slower to try to gin up consumer demand for infrequent releases.

https://variety.com/2024/film/news/disney-sony-pysical-media-dvd-blu-ray-disc-business-1235917294/

https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/24/02/21/0143244/disney-strikes-deal-for-sony-to-take-over-its-dvd-blu-ray-disc-business

https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/24/02/21/0143244/disney-strikes-deal-for-sony-to-take-over-its-dvd-blu-ray-disc-business

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Sony to once again be purging digital content from PlayStation account digital libraries

2024-02-13T20:13:12Z

Sony owns a digital anime streaming service called Funimation. Funimation acquired a similar service called Crunchyroll. And Sony/Funimation are not acknowledging any media keys that people may have plugged in to Crunchyroll and said media may be removed after April 2.

https://arstechnica.com/culture/2024/02/funimation-dvds-included-forever-available-digital-copies-forever-ends-april-2/

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Sony strikes deal with Discovery, will not delete purchased programming from Play Stations

2023-12-22T16:24:07Z

In an eleventh hour deal, an agreement was made and people's purchases of shows like Myth Busters will not be remotely purged from their gaming consoles in the deep of the night. Over 1,300 Discovery shows were slated to be wiped on New Year's Eve, sans agreement, this is good news to those who bought digital copies rather than physical media.

Sadly, in August of last year, purchasers of Studio Canal content did not receive such a reprieve and lost their content due to a collapsed licensing agreement.

PHYSICAL MEDIA, PEOPLE! THEY CAN'T LICENSE THAT AWAY FROM YOU IF YOU HAVE IT IN YOUR HAND!

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/playstation-will-not-delete-discovery-tv-shows-after-all

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Do you own a PlayStation? Did you "buy" content from Discovery? Sucks to be you!

2023-12-01T20:54:15Z

Sony is about to remove programs that people 'bought' via their PS from the Discovery Channel, including Myth Busters and Naked and Afraid. All gone, bye bye. And I would say the odds of getting any money back would be similar to playing an XBox game disc in your PS, i.e. zero.

The issue is the merger between Discovery and Warner, apparently Sony got sliced out of the deal and now no longer has license to carry or resell their programming, which means all that Discovery content that people thought they purchased is going away. They bought a license to view it, and not in perpetuity.

This is why you buy physical media, peeps! I will on rare occasion rent a movie off my Apple TV, but I never buy programming through it for just this reason. You can get a standard Bluray player for less than a hundred bucks, no reason not to have one.

https://kotaku.com/sony-ps4-ps5-discovery-mythbusters-tv-1851066164

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RIP: MCU Spider-Man.... for now

2019-08-21T16:04:39Z

Disney and Sony can't come to terms over profit-sharing over Spider-Man movies, which means no more Tom Holland Spidey within the MCU realm. Which is sad. Sony made five Spidey movies which, for me, sucked. I saw a couple, was not impressed, and stopped watching them - but I freely admit I was never a big Spider-Man fan. I loved the latest Sony: Into The Multiverse, and Sony made a lot of bucks with it. I also loved Tom's appearances in the MCU. And Tom is under contract for two more Spidey films, but they won't be able to use any of the MCU characters in it, which will be interesting.

It's all about the Benjamins: Disney wanted a 50/50 split, which is patently ridiculous. They were getting 5% of first day dollars, which is absolutely huge, plus lots of the merchandising, and probably the streaming rights. And they want 50/50? Ridiculous. Now Ars has an update to their story about Feige not being available due to his increased corporate duties. While that may be true, sounds a little like providing cover.

I expect there will be a reconciliation. After all, Spider-Man drifted in and out of the Avengers over the years. And there's just too much money for both Sony and The Giant Rat for them not to reach a mutually satisfying agreement.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/08/spider-man-is-out-of-the-mcu-thanks-to-sonydisney-standoff/

https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/20/20825580/marvel-studios-future-spider-man-films-disney-sony-fight-kevin-feige-mcu

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