Blu Ray Media: Sony Review

Blu Ray blank media guide : Best Blu Ray media brands
Best Blu Ray Media Brands Part 12: Sony Media/ Discs Review


Sony has had, in the past, very good reputation as a DVD media brand, both as a manufacturer (through Daxon) and as an outsourcer (mostly to Taiyo Yuden) through Q1 2010, when it discontinued its own DVD media manufacturing and switched to outsourced providers of lower standing, such as Ritek. When we screened Sony's DVD media user reviews accumulated over the past 5 years, we found that Sony, primarily as a manufacturer, scored at over 91% though 2009, but went to 88% and below when compounding all of its brand reviews history through today - meaning that 2010 reviews were reflecting a much lower assessment of the brand. We see this recent change in manufacturing strategy with real regret - it reflects badly on the brand.

When looking at Sony Blu Ray media, we found BD-R, BD-R DL, BD-RE and BD-RE DL formats, where all formats where manufactured by Sony except for the BD-RE DLs, which were outsourced to Panasonic. Given the low volume of BD-RE DL discs across the whole range of products, in this review we will treat Sony as a manufacturer of its own Blu Ray Media.

We found 50 reviews of Sony Blu Ray media, scoring an excellent uncorrected rating of 94%. To create our predictive quality rating for Sony Blu Ray media, according to our standard Blu Ray media process, we added an equivalent of 10 user reviews with the brand's DVD media rating (as its own manufacturer of media, up to 2009) of 91%. Because the number of user reviews is not quite high enough to give us a margin of error of 5% with 95% certainty, we lowered the resulting rating by 1% to allow maximum downwards statistical margin of error to be exactly 5%. Sony's Blu Ray media predictive quality rating is a very good score of 93%.

Conclusions

• Sony's Blu Ray media predictive quality rating is 93%, a very good rating for the Blu Ray media industry.
• At this time we believe that Sony manufactures its own Blu Ray media, except for some or all of its BD-RE DLs, which it outsources to Panasonic.
• Sony's record as a manufacturer of DVD blank media is very good, scoring 91%. Sony stopped manufacturing DVD media in 2010, and stared outsourcing to lower quality suppliers.
• We rate archival quality all Sony Blu Ray media that the company manufactures itself, i.e., at this date, BD-R, BD-R DL, and BD-RE.
• Because Sony has started outsourcing its DVD media to lower quality suppliers, we advise buyers of Sony Blu Ray media to verify the MID for purchased Sony Blu Ray discs (and make sure it still is Sony's), and to carefully monitor upcoming user reviews as well.

Next we review Taiyo Yuden/ JVC blank Blu Ray media... So come back soon!

To understand Blu Ray lingo, check our lexicon of Blu Ray vocabulary. Our Blu Ray brand predictive quality rating process is explained here. Our statistical analysis practices are described here, which is also where we discuss ConsumerPla.net's predictive quality rating.

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