Several Blu-ray players just got a free gaming upgrade

August 12, 2026 - 10:10

If you have a shelf full of old PlayStation, Xbox, or even Sega Saturn games, you know the struggle of keeping those discs playable. Scratches, disc rot, and the slow death of optical drives make preservation a constant worry. Now, a recent firmware update for a handful of Blu-ray players is quietly changing that. The update adds support for a feature that lets you back up the raw data from your physical game discs directly to a USB drive or network storage. No PC with a tricky disc drive setup is required.

The process is straightforward. You pop in the game, the player reads the disc structure, and you can copy the entire contents to an external hard drive. This is a huge win for people who want to create digital backups for use with emulators or for safekeeping. It is not a hack or a modded firmware. It is an official feature that just appeared in the player's settings menu. The catch is that it only works with certain models from a few brands, and it does not bypass copy protection on newer titles. But for older, unprotected discs, it is a simple, free upgrade that removes a major barrier to archiving your library. For collectors who have been waiting for an easy way to preserve their physical media, this is a quiet but significant step forward.