Verbatim is doing more than just keeping the formats on life support – it also unveiled new hardware at CES 2025. Its Slimline Blu-ray Writer lets you back up 4K video to Ultra HD Blu-ray and even comes bundled with antiquated Nero disc burning software.

This is the important part imo, given that LG and Sony both pulled out of the USB Blu-ray reader-writer market

https://www.verbatim-europe.com/en/blu-ray-writers/products/external-slimline-blu-ray-writer-43890

Means we’ll be able to rip Blu-ray’s into the future. At least, that’s what I hope. Need to check there are cracks for these writers.

EDIT: Won’t link to it here, but many Verbatim writers, UHD and otherwise, use Pioneer hardware internally and are therefore crackable.

I first heard about stuff like.this last year when I heard about Pig Butchering scams. Apparently this is sadly very common.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=pLPpl2ISKTg

Janet Petro—the first woman to hold the position since its founding 67 years ago—wrote that diversity programs “divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination,”

In 2021, when she was the director of Kennedy Space Center, she spoke at length in an interview about the value of diversity, saying “our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility has been paramount to mission success.”

The turnaround is giving me whiplash.

There’s no begrudging following of the rules, it’s wholeheartedly embracing the new regime.

Here’s a more recent post that seems to contradict this:

https://infosec.pub/post/22823022

Thanks for the update (OP and publisher). It wasn’t clear from the previous posts given the ambiguous language.

Are you sure about that?

I’ve read both articles and they both seem to say they are stopping production of Blu-rays, plus three other formats.

We will end production of all models of Blu-ray Disc media, MiniDiscs for recording, MD data for recording, and MiniDV cassettes as of February 2025

It mentions that consumer recordable Blu-rays were already dropped last year.

Mid-last year, the Japanese multinational conglomerate revealed that it would stop production of consumer-grade recordable Blu-ray discs (BD-RE and BD-R)

Still, this might just mean that Sony will no longer make games distributed via disc. Sony does not have a Monopoly on making Blu-ray discs, and I do not believe they can unilaterally decide that no more will be made by others

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_optical_disc_manufacturers

Regardless, it is a sign of the times, with Blu-ray reader production being recently stopped by LG. It’s likely all downhill from here, as much as I am sad to say.

I will resist this as much as possible, as I like owning my media. If you give me no means to own my movies, then I will find other ways to acquire them.

And for posterity by focus mode I meant that there’s a mode where you can manually control the focus of the camera, at least on my phone

Ah yes! It’s pretty cool that you have focus peaking too so you can see exactly where the focus is while you are dialing it in. Helpful for macro shots etc.

Sorry, I don’t actually know what you mean by “Focus mode”.

I doubt it’s technically FOSS given that it’s a mod of a proprietary camera app usually limited to the Pixel phone line. It is free though.

Yes and when viewing them, you can pan around with your phone or a VR headset like you were there!

If you’ve ever used Google Street View, it’s basically that.

Also, welcome to modded stuff. It’s sadly not always user friendly, and often requires further googling and reading to understand.

Despite this site’s best efforts to make recommendations (it’s a godsend given how many versions there are), I’ve still had to test a lot of different versions to find one that works well with my phone.

This link should help you find something for your phone model:

https://www.celsoazevedo.com/files/android/google-camera/links/

The Camera2 API was introduced in Android 5 in 2014 I believe. It was a big deal at the time. Most phones should support it.

I didn’t know Xperia phones made rooting easy. Are they any good nowadays? They’re obviously really small market-share-wise.

Agreed. Google really does have a reputation for killing good things.

The main reason I still buy them is that it is one of the only brands that makes it easy to root your phone. Used to buy OnePlus but they’ve kind of abandoned their enthusiast community quite a few years ago.

Until recently, I think you could do it with the Street View app, but apparently that has now been discontinued. Not sure what you can do now.

What are you talking about? Genuinely?

It might be permanently out of stock… cries

BP60NB10, though that may be different by region.

Also had just as much success, including with UHD BD, with the older BP50NB40.

I recently bought a second PC Blu-ray writer just in case this would happen. Lucky me. I should be good for the next 10 years.

Looks like they’re still available for now in the UK but at inflated prices sent from America

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B079LTC6ML

The above supports UHD and is easy to… adapt for legitimate ripping of your Blu-ray. For backup purposes of course.

I think Panasonic still make some too but I’ve used LG ones for years.

Like you say, it will just happen on the other side as I don’t normally hang them from a chain. I’d rather pick something that hangs nicely from the start.

Hey, no shame man.