As computers shipped with CD and DVD drives by default, people enjoyed digital audio and video, the easy installation of applications, and portable high-capacity storage to share large amounts of data. CD and DVD discs featured storage capacity well beyond what even hard drives could accommodate. Now, however, it’s becoming more difficult to find a PC that includes any sort of optical drive.
Less Available Space Inside Devices
At nearly five inches in diameter, CD and DVD discs are big when compared to the size of modern laptops and tablets. Even though the size of optical drives has greatly decreased, many laptop manufacturers have opted not to include them to conserve space. With more people using tablets for computing, there’s even less space available to accommodate these drives.
Limited Capacity
When CD drives first hit the market, they offered ample storage capacity that rivaled magnetic media. The typical 650 megabytes of available storage was well beyond what most hard drives featured at the time. DVD expanded this capacity even further with 4.7 gigabytes of storage on recordable formats. Blu-ray, with its narrower optical beam, could accommodate almost 200 GB, though most consumer applications only required 25 GB. Since then, however, the storage capacity of hard drives has increased even more quickly. Using CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs for storing data just isn’t worth it anymore, especially given the increased portability of newer computers. The price is right as well. Terabyte drives generally cost under $100 and offer faster access to your data. Solid-state drive technology has also improved over the years. The flash memory used in these drives and in USB flash drives is what made floppy technology obsolete. A 16 GB USB flash drive retails for less than $10 yet stores more data than a dual-layer DVD. SSDs are still fairly expensive for their capacities but they’re getting more practical every year and will likely replace hard drives in many computers based on their durability and low power consumption.
Non-Physical Media
With the growing popularity of smartphones and other devices as digital music players, the demand for physical media has declined. With this shift, CD drives are needed only to rip music tracks to MP3 format so they can listen to them on new media players. Streaming services have also contributed to making optical media increasingly irrelevant. A similar phenomenon has taken place with video DVDs. Over the years, DVD sales have declined greatly, partly because of the increased popularity of streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu. Additionally, as with music, more movies can be purchased in a digital format from online sources. Even sales of high definition Blu-ray media have failed to catch up with past sales of DVDs. Software applications, which used to be distributed through discs, became available through digital distribution channels. Later, services such as Steam made it easy for consumers to purchase and download programs. The success of this model and services like iTunes has led many companies to offer digital software distribution. The same principle applies to installing software. Most modern PCs no longer ship with physical installation media. Instead, they include a separate recovery partition.
Format Wars
The last nail in the coffin for optical media has been the battle between HD-DVD and Blu-ray that made adoption of the new format problematic as consumers waited for the format wars to be worked out. Blu-ray was the eventual winner but it hasn’t been popular with consumers, partly related to difficulties with digital rights management. The Blu-ray format has gone through several revisions since it was first released, many of them based on piracy concerns. To prevent digital copies from eating into sales, manufacturers introduced changes to make the format more resistant to illicit duplication. As a result, some newer discs can’t be played in older players. So, these discs are more adaptable but users must upgrade player software to ensure functionality.
