SCE, hopes and UMD players

B

bud

Member
So we all know that: 'If there's one thing missing from the current PSP lineup in Japan, it's original music and movie content on the UMD format.

SCE wants to: 'make the technology behind the movie and music playback of the UMD format open to other hardware makers,' while still 'keeping the game side of the UMD closed off from free access'

Read the full article at: http://psp.ign.com/articles/581/581106p1.html

So basically, they're hoping that other hardware makers wil bring UMD players to the market.

If old, am sorry
 
Predictable.
It will be interesting to see if others electronics makers want actually to make portable video devices with the UMD as support.
Of course Sony will be forced to release and let release UMD burners to complete this strategy.
 
too many HTTP://'s in the link mr Jr Member.

And i hope the non-game version of UMD falls on it's ass i dont want another format to worry about.
 
given that the psp is sold way under cost, and has a fantastic screen, how could a standalone umd player hope to match its quality while competing in price? umd recorders might be neat, though.
 
drohne said:
given that the psp is sold way under cost, and has a fantastic screen, how could a standalone umd player hope to match its quality while competing in price? umd recorders might be neat, though.
Click to expand...

I think UMD video portable players with a bigger screen than what we have on the PSP would be interesting products.
 
I don't see anyone ever buying UMD for music, but for movies, that's a tough one.

It means having to buy 2x for home and portable, but DVDs and the upcoming formats are also big, which means large portable devices. No one wants that, so I think people may be willing to buy UMD's for portable movies.

I'll at least buy my favorite movies on UMD.
 
How much does a UMD hold in comparison to other storage mediums? Someone make up one those inequalities with all the funny little little greater than, less than signs.

e.g. ? > UMD > CD
 
Vieo said:
How much does a UMD hold in comparison to other storage mediums? Someone make up one those inequalities with all the funny little little greater than, less than signs.

e.g. ? > UMD > CD
Click to expand...

UMD can hold 1.8GB

It's:

DVD9 (9GB)> DVD single layer (4.5GB)>UMD (1.8GB)>CD (650MB).
 
Make UMDs rewriteable, and I'm sold. Otherwise, Sony can shove it where the sun don't shine. As a media format, UMD is the worst thing since MD. :lol Seriously, Sony makes a brilliant piece of kit in the PSP, then handicaps the format by making it ROM. UMD will never blow up until it's RW. There's really nothing it does better than a regular CD right now except being smaller in size and having greater capacity. But with CDRs a dime a dozen and burners so prevalent, they'll have a hard time cracking the market. And memory sticks still suck ass. PEACE.
 
Pimpwerx said:
Make UMDs rewriteable, and I'm sold. Otherwise, Sony can shove it where the sun don't shine. As a media format, UMD is the worst thing since MD. :lol Seriously, Sony makes a brilliant piece of kit in the PSP, then handicaps the format by making it ROM. UMD will never blow up until it's RW. There's really nothing it does better than a regular CD right now except being smaller in size and having greater capacity. But with CDRs a dime a dozen and burners so prevalent, they'll have a hard time cracking the market. And memory sticks still suck ass. PEACE.
Click to expand...

thats what i am thinking too.
 
Has Sony ever released a format that became dominant?

MD,
Betamax,
Duo Pro memory etc..

They like to always make their own stuff and shove it down people's throats but as far as i can tell, they have yet to succeed.
 
koam said:
Has Sony ever released a format that became dominant?

MD,
Betamax,
Duo Pro memory etc..

They like to always make their own stuff and shove it down people's throats but as far as i can tell, they have yet to succeed.
Click to expand...
I guess CDs, although that was co-developed. And DVDs were a large group together. But no, I don't think any of their shitty...I mean, proprietary formats ever met with great success. I really don't like them for that. It's one of my major petpeeves. MiniDisc would have been HUGE if Sony weren't complete assheads about the MP3 format. ATRAC is wack. I mean, they had MDs from like the fucking 80's...or at least the early-90's. And they had their heads up their asses about it. Oh well, I'm glad it failed. That's one thing you can say. As much as they try to force their crap on the market, the market's soundly rejected most of it. UMD-RW would be the portable media of the future. As it stands, it will be their new MD...BOMB BOMB. And someone else will come up with a good portable disc format and steal their shine...again. I think sometimes they should just make Kutaragi the head of Sony and let him steer the company in the right direction. I don't think the state of the UMD format is necessarily his decision, I think it's Sony Picture/Music who are calling the shots there. :( PEACE.
 
Tabris said:
I don't see anyone ever buying UMD for music, but for movies, that's a tough one.

It means having to buy 2x for home and portable, but DVDs and the upcoming formats are also big, which means large portable devices. No one wants that, so I think people may be willing to buy UMD's for portable movies.

I'll at least buy my favorite movies on UMD.
Click to expand...

Assuming, you know, that they release them.
 
It the very worst PSP still serves a valuable function for Sony -- it's a very compact, cheap, mass media format which can play PSP video game software.

If its successful in any other venture, that'd just be icing on the cake.
 
koam said:
They like to always make their own stuff and shove it down people's throats but as far as i can tell, they have yet to succeed.
Click to expand...
Pimpwerx said:
As much as they try to force their crap on the market, the market's soundly rejected most of it.
Click to expand...
They put products on the market that consumers didn't go for - what exactly was forced upon anyone?

And the love/hate relationship with recordable media isn't exactly unique to Sony among CE manufacturers or content providers. You can talk about how convenient CD R/RW is *now*, but it certainly wasn't that way since the inception of the general CD format. Likewise for DVD R/RW. It took time for these R/RW formats to arrive in the wake of their pre-recorded progenitors

UMD RW would be nice, but for the market that Sony is looking to break into, its a distraction. They wouldn't have given the PSP an RW drive anyway, so at the very least the dream of UMD RW would have FORCED (OMGWTF) you to buy a second device. Those willing to invest in such a thing would amount to a small fraction of the PSP userbase which wouldn't become anything significant for quite awhile. Meanwhile, Sony still offers an option to RW vocal minority with the Memory Stick format, which already has most of the infrastructure in place (readily available and inexpensive read/write drives).
 
koam said:
Has Sony ever released a format that became dominant?

MD,
Betamax,
Duo Pro memory etc..

They like to always make their own stuff and shove it down people's throats but as far as i can tell, they have yet to succeed.
Click to expand...

I thought PlayStation and PlayStation 2 were at least moderately successful formats. :D
 
kaching said:
They put products on the market that consumers didn't go for - what exactly was forced upon anyone?

And the love/hate relationship with recordable media isn't exactly unique to Sony among CE manufacturers or content providers. You can talk about how convenient CD R/RW is *now*, but it certainly wasn't that way since the inception of the general CD format. Likewise for DVD R/RW. It took time for these R/RW formats to arrive in the wake of their pre-recorded progenitors

UMD RW would be nice, but for the market that Sony is looking to break into, its a distraction. They wouldn't have given the PSP an RW drive anyway, so at the very least the dream of UMD RW would have FORCED (OMGWTF) you to buy a second device. Those willing to invest in such a thing would amount to a small fraction of the PSP userbase which wouldn't become anything significant for quite awhile. Meanwhile, Sony still offers an option to RW vocal minority with the Memory Stick format, which already has most of the infrastructure in place (readily available and inexpensive read/write drives).
Click to expand...
Considering the way they still treat the MD format, I'm not holding my breath. Sony's shown an incredible stubbornness about pushing proprietary junk that may be a quality product, but tries to force a new standard. CDs were codeveloped with Phillips and DVD was a consortium. UMD is theirs, and probably subject to the same bullshit policies Sony Music and Sony Pictures have about versatility. I don't expect the PSP to have a recorder built in, but the option of dumping 1.8GB of MP3s to a RW disc make the music-playing functionality a million times greater IMO. I don't want to have to get ripped off for Memory Sticks. That's another standard I've detested since they proposed it.

They kick ass on the consumer electronics end, but for storage I think they are the worst of the big names. PEACE.
 
koam said:
Has Sony ever released a format that became dominant?

MD,
Betamax,
Duo Pro memory etc..

They like to always make their own stuff and shove it down people's throats but as far as i can tell, they have yet to succeed.
Click to expand...

Um, the 3.5" floppy disk?

Anyway, with a potential 25 million players in the hands of consumers within two years, I don't think they have to worry about the format. Same can be said of Blue-Ray.
 
drohne said:
given that the psp is sold way under cost, and has a fantastic screen, how could a standalone umd player hope to match its quality while competing in price? umd recorders might be neat, though.
Click to expand...
Who said they have to be standalone? :P
How about say... a Cellphone with UMD drive (for instance, Samsung has a UMD license, and I've overheard some... talk... of the future products :P ).

Anyway I agree about RW issue, but I doubt it'll happen anytime soon.
 
Pimpwerx said:
Considering the way they still treat the MD format, I'm not holding my breath. Sony's shown an incredible stubbornness about pushing proprietary junk that may be a quality product, but tries to force a new standard.
Click to expand...
I'm still not seeing where anything is being forced, other than your assessment. Who gives a shit if its "proprietary" when its primary function is as a compact rewritable medium for digital audio? Sony has supported the format continuously for more than a decade and even if they stopped supporting it tomorrow, MD owners would continue to get the same amount of use out of their investment, because the primary function doesn't rely on pre-recorded content from publishers. Its ability to continue to provide value is largely self-contained in an initial investment of a recorder/player and a number of blank MDs.

CDs were codeveloped with Phillips and DVD was a consortium.
Click to expand...
Yes, I know. Key point here was that these standards endorsed by many companies besides Sony weren't exactly quick to get R/RW formats off the ground and even when they did, they didn't prevent conflicting "standards" from occurring, most flagrantly on the DVD R/RW front. I can't imagine Sony's approach to UMD ending up any worse :P

I don't want to have to get ripped off for Memory Sticks. That's another standard I've detested since they proposed it.
Click to expand...
If pricing is the main source of your distaste, that continues to drop. Sony already allows third parties to license the format and if the PSP sells as well as some (like yourself) predict, then there will probably be the opportunity for some of the traditional Playstation peripheral providers (current memory card makers) to license the MS format and provide further price competition.
 
2 of the biggest features of the PSP will likely never end up being utilized - Music UMDs and Movie UMDs. It's going to be a VERY slow start out of the gate.

Imagine this:

Sony - hey everybody! Look, we've got this new media format, the UMD. The only device that can use it right now is the PSP, but you can make your own hardware to play it. While you're at, we'll be trying to convince studios and record labels to release UMD versions of record albums and films.

Everybody - What? This reminds us of the MDs you came up with. Kinda interesting though.

Sony - hey everybody, forgot to mention something! We've got this OTHER new media format coming out called BluRay. We REALLY want your support on THIS media format, so we won't mind if you ignore UMDs. Sign on to BluRay! PLEEEEAAASE?

Everybody - What? Sounds good to us.

BluRay will be supported heavily, UMDs...? Well, we MIGHT be lucky to see Sony Pictures actually release some UMD movies. And Maybe Sony's music labels will try a few UMD releases too...

Chances of UMD market penetration reaching 10%? Zero.
 
By early February there will be a million UMD players (PSPs) sold. That's faster uptake than DVD players saw initially. If PSP goes on to sell millions of units, it will become increasingly difficult to ignore such a captive audience for studios and publishers who just love to repackage their content and sell it again, given half a chance. 1.8 Gig discs with MPEG4 support and a screen that people apparently just love to watch - studios just need to come up with the right packaging model.
 
I think it'll be a difficult sell for Sony, as the focus this year is HDD based stuff. iPod etc for music, and now PMPs from creative, samsung etc.

The only advantage they potentially have is availability of content. HDD machines are difficult to get stuff onto. Companies cannot be seen to be supporting DVD ripping (even though CD ripping seems OK to them), which means you still need to be tech-savvy to get movies onto them.

Sony can leverage that, but surely they first need to get Sony pictures support out there?

Alternatively they can support via sony Connect, but then that plays into the hands of the PMP manufacturers too - and they have storage on their sides.

I'd buy a PSP with a HDD for more movie/music focus in a heartbeat. I'm still tempted by the Archos GMini even though my PSP has a way bigger screen.
 
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