The one thing I hope happens with a revival of CDs/DVDs is that hopefully we get a new generation of players.

I still buy movies on DVD but the players are a bit hit and miss. That said, I do frequently see Sony bluray players in second hand stores for a few dollars and that is how I have my collection of players, but that is not a sustainable system.

I just wish my PC case had a slot for the drive bay, that was a foolish choice on my behalf.

I have a pile of my own so I know what you are talking about. I love how even today DVD and Blu Ray players look, long after they were released. They are compact and chic, looking a tad futuristic but not at all the sort of stuff that screams attention-seeking, gaudy design. The kind that you could put unassumingly on a shelf next to a pile of books and wouldn’t even know it’s there without a closer look, or take up to a cottage and leave with a pile of old movies to watch on a dark, gloomy day, like in the old days. One looks at, say, LLMs nowadays and is amazed but, to me personally, we haven’t stopped living in the future for a very long time now. This message was typed on a device with a touch screen no larger than my hand.

For some reason, the PS4 and PS5 actually cannot play audio CDs

If true this is quite ironic because being able to be a media centre for a household is what propelled the sales of PS1 and PS2.

The bigger irony is that Sony and Philips worked together to create the CD-Audio specification.

This is also what pushed me to get a PS3 later in its lifetime : getting a game console, CD player and DVD + Blu-Ray player all in one box was pretty convenient.

And killed HD-DVD in the process, hehe.

To be fair on a technical scale, Blu-ray was the superior format so losing HD-DVD wasn't the biggest loss. I appreciate what Toshiba was trying to do but it also felt like they were trying to cut-off the competition with a lower quality but cheaper product.

This is also what pushed a lot of people to get the PS3 earlier in its lifetime!

Sure, it wasn't cheap at launch and it marked a leap in console prices compared to previous generations, but it was around the same price as a standalone Blu-ray player as those were just coming to market.

So at that point, why not get the more capable console?

Some people still use a PS1 for playing CDs. They came with a DAC that some people love.

audio CDs use a different wavelength for the laser (infra red) while PS game disks are BluRay (blue laser).

Of course, 99.9% of other BluRay players will also support DVD/CD, so yeah it still does seem silly.

I also remember my Dad’s disappointment when he put a standard DVD in our Wii back in the day. Those are literally the same physical format as wii disks.

That was the unfortunate side of licensing fees. The Wii has all the hardware to play DVD, there is homebrew of it, but if you want to do it the legal way Nintendo would have to pay.

Also I don't think Nintendo wanted to turn the Wii into a cheap commodity DVD player, they make most of their money on the games. It is a shame because the Wii was one of the most TV friendly interfaces and inputs, at least when the Wiimote wasn't being throw at the screen.

any one less item on the BOM brings down the costs.

I think this is a bit more complicated than that. There's more music and video being made today than ever before and social media is how it gets distributed. Attentive time spent on streaming platforms is completely dwarfed by social media. If at all, people have something streaming in the background while they barely pay attention to it and instead focus on their phones.

This aligns with the broader historical trends of the internet creating deep niches. You have to take the good with the bad. We wouldn't even be discussing physical media at all without the internet being how it is. Despite there being a large audience for physical media, they're not the majority. The majority has moved on.