The end of physical media is neigh

Are newspapers with real paper even a thing anymore?  
 

That’s progress. 

There will continue to be blue ray players and everything else. The market will determine the details. If no market, then no blue rays.

You can still buy CD players, cassette decks, record players and even rtr.

Not so sure about 8 track. How about a vcr? I still have 2.  I think they both work but frankly I hardly ever use them.   
 

I’d recommend having any old personal media digitized if you want to be able to watch moving forward  just to be safe  

Back in the day, I had a DVD collection around 1200, even had a picture binder with everything in it on the coffee table. This is back in the pre HDMI days, when Netflix did not stream, they sent you DVD's in the mail. It was so much fun to get the latest DVD in the mail the day it dropped. 

Then streaming started, things started to move to HDMI, had a yard sale with my DVD's, the rest (other than a chosen few) went to a 2nd hand store. 

Same for CD's got about 2000ish CD's they are in a huge box in the garage. All have been riped to HDD years ago. Stopped buying Cd's when iTunes came out, got my first iPod. No need for cd's anymore, enjoyed having 2000 Cd's in my pocket, also worked very well in my cars. Haven't purchased a CD in about 25 years?

However, my Kid is into Kpop, they have around 300 cd's now, the bands are marketing masters, they drop EP's of everything (come out about every 6mo) also have 4 versions of the same disc. We also both enjoy records, weirdly Target has a ton of special edition Kpop vinyl. My kid has almost 50 records now. 

Of course Blue-ray came out, started down that format, but never got even close to my love of collecting DVD's. I remember that one of the highest rated Blue-ray players was with a Sony PlayStation or Xbox, went down that path.

Now, I might have 40 DVD's and Bluerays. Hardly every play any of them, unless I can't find it streaming. However, Blueray does look good, but always sounds SO MUCH better, the dynamic range is so much higher over streaming. 

This last generation of game consoles has versions without a media player. Most games are now downloaded, and not purchased on disk. Disk sales are on the decline. They may come back up when we all get fed up with streaming services. Not sure you all have noticed, but prices are going WAY up (Hulu full is $80/mo) also commercials are popping up in every streaming service. It's starting to piss me off. 

I have hundreds of CDs still. I ripped them to a music library years ago.  They still make useful acoustic treatments stored on the walls of my office room.  Blasts from the past.  May come in useful as backups someday should I ever happen to lose my flac files.  Hopefully there will be a cd ripper available.  Probably.  

we are becoming a world without any control at all over our music or movie culture.

Nu? Market demand controls these things. Always has always will.