There was a time when people spent a considerable amount of money buying film titles on disc. This was, of course, before the streaming era – one that had to contend with a number of issues, including internet connectivity, data caps and recurring billing from certain streaming services for having to watch a film time and again. The solution for diehard movie fans was Blu-ray, a digital optical disc storage format that arrived in 2006 to change the viewing experience. It was a year of Hollywood gems, including Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, the first Daniel Craig Bond film Casino Royale, Night at the Museum and Mission: Impossible III.

By the time the technology appeared, it was already clear that optical media's days were numbered, but Blu-ray tried to change the course of film-watching history regardless. HDTV was set to become as commonplace as old-school television, so there was plenty of interest in developing a disc format with high enough capacity to hold full 1080p films, especially as standard DVDs generally couldn't even hold an hour of HD video.

For a long time, DVDs were the standard for distributing almost everything – albums, films, TV series, video games, software and even documents. But then games grew larger in size, and so did films, as 4K began taking off.

The breakthrough

The solution was to develop a disc that used blue lasers instead of the traditional red ones. Blue light has a shorter wavelength than red, meaning the tiny pits on an optical disc that store information could be made smaller. As a result, far more of these pits could be burned into a Blu-ray than a DVD — standard Blu-ray discs could hold over five times as much data as their DVD counterparts. Blu-ray had to compete against a rival format called HD DVD for a few years, as the two used similar technology, but Blu-ray ultimately won out because major film studios backed it, even though the switch wasn't seamless, since people had to upgrade to a player that supported the format.

The incorporation of Blu-ray drives into the PlayStation 3 helped its cause, and the format also helped resolve the confusion between HD DVD and standard DVD.

What Blu-ray offered that streaming couldn't, at that point, was the ability to function even if the internet connection went down. Blu-ray discs had enough capacity to support lossless audio formats like Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, which offered up to eight discrete channels and remarkably detailed sound, provided your speakers and receiver were up to scratch. At the same time, the format allowed studios to release more extras, such as deleted scenes available exclusively on Blu-ray and not on streaming services.

You may wonder, if Blu-ray discs had 25GB capacity, how they could hold games or films larger than that. The answer lay in adding a layer of data beneath the one already there. The next question, naturally, is how a laser can read data from a lower layer if there's another layer on top of it. The solution lies in how light behaves: by changing the focus of the laser, it can pass through the first, reflective layer and read the data from the layer beneath. This way, manufacturers could stack multiple layers on top of one another to store more and more data – rather like having disc one and disc two, but on a single disc.

This allowed companies to distribute games and films several gigabytes in size on a single disc. But then, as we know, streaming platforms grew — and the rest is history.

Here's a twist in the tale, though. With directors such as Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve placing greater emphasis on picture quality, 4K Blu-ray is, in a sense, enjoying a revival — much like vinyl. According to a report by the Digital Entertainment Group (DEG), shared via FlatpanelsHD, 4K Blu-ray sales in the US rose by 12 per cent in 2025 compared with 2024. Longer-term trends in physical media sales still point to an overall decline, though that decline appears to be slowing. 4K Blu-ray continues to find takers, as it still offers the best picture and sound performance available.

One has to keep in mind what Sony Corporation announced earlier this year: it will stop making Blu-ray Disc recorders as demand has dropped in the last few years. The company said in February that it would "gradually end shipments of all Blu-ray disc recorder models" and that there would be "no successor model". Blu-ray players live on.