Further signs that the Blu-ray tide is going out, never to return, come from Japanese peripherals maker Buffalo. This week, the networking, external storage, and USB hubs specialist has announced that the three Blu-ray drives that it currently markets are going to be withdrawn in July. Moreover, “there will be no successor model,” according to a report published by AV Watch (machine translation), citing a company statement.
You may be familiar with Buffalo networking, external storage, and hub-style peripherals. But, while we are pretty certain you won’t be familiar with the alphabetti spaghetti named "BRXLPT6U3E", "BRXLPTV63B", and "BRXLPTWOU3" drives. Suffice to say, they are all portable USB-attached Blu-ray drives with read/write functionality. As such, they also cover the read/write bases for folks who need an optical rewriter for DVD and CD-ROM media.
Of the three, the BRXLPTWOU3 is probably the most interesting and peculiarly Japanese, as it is headlined as being ‘Electronic Ledger Bookkeeping Act’ compliant. That is something to do with the (in)famous Japanese official form filing bureaucracy, which required floppies or optical disks to accompany filings, until recently. Thus, the product page for the BRXLPTWOU3 heralds its ‘write-proof’ anti-tampering features.
The Blu-ray tide goes out
The Buffalo announcement is another nail in the coffin for Blu-ray. Sony shipped its final Blu-ray recorders last month, again with effects focused on the domestic Japanese market. We’ve also seen Sony cease some Blu-ray media production lines. LG is another heavy hitter that has exited the market in recent months (media players).
Buffalo’s Blu-ray drives that are now on 'death row' are exactly the style of portable USB-attached devices we thought that might stick around for a few more years. They are great little accessories for anyone who still has a computer optical media collection, wants to occasionally access this archive, and has a recent PC without any optical disk drive, with no option for an internal model. That’s why we still look for USB-attached optical drive deals, like this 42% off Blu-ray writer at Newegg.
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