Japanese firm stops production of Blu-ray disc drives — Buffalo says there will be no successors to its current trio of portable USB-attached drives [Updated]

Buffalo ending USB Blu-ray drive production — (Image credit: Buffalo Japan)

Update 03/01/26: Buffalo Americas has reached out to state that the reported adjustments to Buffalo Japan's product line will have no bearing on U.S. product stocks and commitments. "Buffalo Americas' U.S. operations remain fully committed to supplying optical drives to the American market, and our DVD/Blu-ray drive products are anticipated to remain available for the near future," said the firm's U.S. COO, in an email to Tom's Hardware.

Moreover, Buffalo Americas would like to highlight that its TAA-compliant North American optical disk writer product offerings include: the MediaStation 16x Desktop Blu-ray Writer (BRXL-16U3), MediaStation 6x Portable Blu-ray Writer (BRXL-PUS6U3B-TAA), and MediaStation 8x Portable DVD Writer (DVSM-PUV8U3B-TAA).
Original story follows.

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storage, and USB hubs specialist has announced that the three Blu-ray drives that it currently markets are going to be withdrawn in July.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.

Article continues below

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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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

16 Comments Comment from the forums

King_V

Guess it's time to really rip all my discs (CDs are done, DVDs and Blu-Rays are not).

I suppose I somewhat resent the "We don't care if you already own the physical medium, you're not gonna be able to play it, so start paying for streaming."
Reply
yout

You can use drives from other manufacturers.
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King_V

yout said:
You can use drives from other manufacturers.
This isn't the first manufacturer to do this. It's unlikely to be the last.
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Roland Of Gilead

King_V said:
Guess it's time to really rip all my discs (CDs are done, DVDs and Blu-Rays are not).
I've spent a huge amount of time doing mine. 950 movies across dvd, BR, and UHD BR's. What a pain. Good luck!
Reply
Ogotai

Roland Of Gilead said:
I've spent a huge amount of time doing mine. 950 movies across dvd, BR, and UHD BR's. What a pain. Good luck!
so did i. to make it faster, i used 2 comps, and then my 2nd comp to do all the transcending of the movies as i used my main comp for other things....
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bigdragon

I'm really uncomfortable with the slow death of physical media. It's getting harder to get UHD Blurays of recent movies. A lot of studios only want to make overpriced collector editions now. Streaming isn't a replacement for physical media. Maybe you can't see and hear the compression on that 65" Walmart TV, but those of us with 120"+ 4k projectors and audiophile equipment absolutely can tell.

If manufacturers were to switch from Bluray to another physical medium, like microSD, then I'd be fine with it. Forcing everyone to streaming is not the answer.
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Paul Revere

For the streaming drones who one day will be screaming they changed my movie or decided for me I can no longer be able to see my favorite movie We told you so. Physical media is owned by you when you buy it able to be seen whenever you want without being told what to view. Those of you that don't care don't worry but the day is coming not because companies care about us they only care about profit so streamers will be greatly disappointed in the upcoming years. There is a difference in picture and sound and I'm willing to pay for it.
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King_V

Roland Of Gilead said:
I've spent a huge amount of time doing mine. 950 movies across dvd, BR, and UHD BR's. What a pain. Good luck!
Fortunately, the bulk of mine are DVD, and only a small number of Blu-Rays, so far.

That said, is there some kind of DVD/Blu-Ray equivalent of what Exact Audio Copy does for CDs? I've tried doing one or two with MakeMKV, but having to figure out what all the files are, moving them to directories, etc., is definitely on the annoying side.

Plus, I think I'd like the menus and such - I'll likely want to keep the data exactly as it is on the discs. I've got space on my NAS for my relatively modest collection.
Reply
theflyingmunky

King_V said:
Guess it's time to really rip all my discs (CDs are done, DVDs and Blu-Rays are not).

I suppose I somewhat resent the "We don't care if you already own the physical medium, you're not gonna be able to play it, so start paying for streaming."
You don't have to stream. Just keep it on a drive. The physical medium is an ssd.
Reply
Spuwho

The trend is just starting to swing back to physical media. Vinyl album sales have started to increase on an annual basis, and music CD sales have stopped declining and have flattened out. The loss of access to streaming media that was "purchased" but lost when the studio didn't renew their contract with the content provider (Amazon) caused a pretty big tidal wave.

When Microsoft stopped supporting music licensing for their Zune devices by turning off the servers a few years ago, was the first strike against digital and cloud.

Problem is, will studios restart media creation? Sony Media just shut down their BluRay and CD plant in Terre Haute Indiana last year. If people start demanding more physical media again, will the studios try another attempt to "lock it in" again.
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