Elecom, a major electronics manufacturer and supplier in Japan, recently announced that it will be discontinuing sales of external Blu-ray disc drives as of June 30, 2026. According to the notice, the company will be halting production of all nine external players in its lineup, with no official announcement/plans for a successor at the time of writing. The company apologized for the inconvenience and advised despairing Blu-ray connoisseurs on X to stock up on spares while there’s still leftover stock.
This comes only a month after another domestic manufacturer, Buffalo, similarly announced that it would stop manufacturing all three of its external Blu-ray disc drives as of July this year. Since standard modern PCs cannot, by default, playback Blu-Rays, this attachable hardware is essential for fans and collectors of physical media.
Companies withdrawing from the Blu-ray market has been an ongoing trend for the past few years, and external players are the next thing to be impacted following recordable Blu-ray discs. As of February, Sony is making its final shipments of Blu-rays, following suit after manufacturer TVS REGZA ceased production at the beginning of the year (as reported by Otaku Soken). These discs have allowed anime fans in Japan to create private, physical anime collections by recording TV broadcasts among other uses, so many are unhappy about them being phased out.
For now, Panasonic and Sharp remain the only major domestic manufacturers still actively manufacturing Blu-ray disc recorders, but playback devices potentially becoming scarce has become a new concern.
