UMD Format's Death Rattle Begins 191
Next Generation reports that Wal-mart is dumping the UMD format, because no one was buying movies with the media. Above and beyond that decision, the studios are unimpressed as well. From the article: "One unnamed president of a major studio is quoted as saying, 'No one's watching movies on PSP. It's a game player, period.' Universal Studios Home Entertainment has ceased UMD production. One exec told Reuters, 'Sales are near zilch. It's another Sony bomb.' Paramount is also considering its future with PSP's format. An exec said, 'We are on hiatus with UMD. Releasing titles on UMD is the exception rather than the rule. No one's even breaking even on them.'"
Betamax was better (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Betamax was better (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Betamax was better (Score:2)
I sometimes wonder if Sony's R&D money would have been better spent on a read-only Memory Stick variant for games. With some clever engineering, they could prevent "PSP Sticks" from being read by any old schmuck with a 6-in-1 card reader, ROM chips would be cheaper, and load times should improve.* I wonder how much the UMD drive's motor has on battery life?
*: Based on my own anecdotal evidence. Maybe my sample set is too small, but every PSP game I've played has been slower than dirt.
Re:Betamax was better (Score:3, Informative)
1) Optical discs hold more data.
2) They are far cheaper to make.
In doing so they sacrificed a few things:
1) Loading speed
2) Energy conservation
3) Durability of the read drive
I think of it this way: Sony had a certain set of priorities for the PSP.
1) PS2-esque graphics
2) Portable size
3) Games $50 or less
That could not be achieved with anything but a UMD-like optical disc. They would have to sacrifice graphic
Re:Betamax was better (Score:2)
Re:Betamax was better (Score:4, Interesting)
Development costs for the DS are also much lower than a console game, so game makers need less of a profit margin to recoup the costs of their games.
The PSP needs space for all those textures and stuff to make a game that fully utilizes the hardware. All those extra polygons have to be coded into the game, and that takes space.
Betamax was NOT superior (Score:5, Interesting)
In technology, a common axiom is "Cheap, Fast, Good, pick two." VHS was Fast (shipped worthwhile features MUCH faster than Sony did), and MUCH cheaper. Beta only had "Good".
For starters, there were too few makers of machines and the price was too high. In addition, the first Betamax player was quite feature-poor. The damn thing didn't even come with a clock. You had to buy that as an add-on feature. VHS was ruthless about exploiting this.
2nd, and perhaps most importantly, the capacity was too low. It took quite some time before Sony shipped a tape that could run longer than ONE HOUR. This was colossally stupid. Sony KNEW how to extend it, but the morons in Sony design thought one-hour was an acceptable limit. VHS shipped the 4-hour capable T-120 right out of the gate, with quality that was acceptable. While the quality at the lower tape speed wasn't as good, it was doable for just recording soaps, or whatever. When Sony got wind of the VHS's recording time, they shipped a two-hour Betamax machine, using of course a slower tape speed to extend the time. Of course, this also eliminated most of Betamax's quality advantage.
Time and time again, all Betamax had was slightly superior video quality (VHS and Beta both made continuous improvements to the machines, so Beta wasn't THAT far ahead.) Also, Betamax decks kept the tape threaded at all times, which put a LOT of wear on the tape during Rewind/FF operations. To top it off, Sony made a LOT of mistakes about simple features. VHS was first to ship a pause button on the remote, the first with the longer recording time, the first with a standard programmable timer, the first with an infrared remote, the first with front-loading, the first with a camcorder that didn't suck, feature-wise, the list goes on.
In summary, all Beta had going for it was video quality, but couldn't back it up with features worth a damn. This was compounded by colossal errors in finance, OEM relations and marketing.
SirWired
Betamax was superior by the time it mattered (Score:5, Interesting)
By the time I saw my first home video recorder, the early problems of Betamax had been eliminated. The machine had a timer, multi-hour tapes were available, there was even a multi-load option to put 4 tapes in a stack and have it use them all while you were on vacation. The tape was automatically unthreaded once a certain threshold of FF/RW was hit--and in fact, many VHS decks had started to keep the tape threaded initially, because a 1 second pause to thread or unthread the tape each time you hit a button is damn annoying when you're skipping around trying to find a particular point.
Video stores were about 50/50 Beta/VHS. There were other manufacturers selling Beta decks. And Beta still had far better video quality--maybe you couldn't see it on lousy US NTSC TVs, but on PAL systems it was very obvious.
Yet VHS still won. So I don't buy the argument that alleged early deficiencies of Betamax account for its failure.
Re:Betamax was superior by the time it mattered (Score:3, Informative)
Which reminds me of the old technology adoption curve.
Early adopters want all kids of whiz bang features. Pragmatists are interested in far fewer features, and much more interested in cost. Late adopters are only interested in cost. You make the lion's share of your money with the pragmatists.
It follows that if somebody gets to the pragmatists before you do with a good enough, cheap enough prod
Re:Betamax was superior by the time it mattered (Score:2)
SirWired
Re:Betamax was superior by the time it mattered (Score:2)
This is not true at all, and if you could see it, then you are imagining things. The difference was really negligible. Unless you are comparing the professional Beta format...
Re:Betamax was NOT superior (Score:2)
Re:Betamax was NOT superior (Score:2)
I think you mean "Cheap. Fast. Reliable. Pick two." This was a mantra back in the heyday of Battlebots.
But you're right, it fits just about any technology.Why do we use Digi-Beta? (Score:2, Informative)
plus the rasons you explain why vhs excelled were because of sonys poor choices, not because Beta couldn't do it. It could have been done but sony tried to hold on to there baby to long and ended up smothering it in that market.
Re:Why do we use Digi-Beta? (Score:2)
Don't confuse Betamax and Betacam.
SirWired
Re:Betamax was NOT superior (Score:4, Informative)
I totally agree, although I don't particularly like your tone.
BUT, Beta is totally superior for professional-level recording. I work for a local TV company. We're in a rural enough era, and small enough that we still use Beta as our standard (sadly). Now, it kills me that we haven't gone to a digital format already, but if I had to use VHS, I would shoot myself. Now, we're using BetaCam, and I'm not sure the exact differences (I think the tapes are essentially the same, though the players/recording format is higher quality), but the quality level between Beta and VHS is no laughing matter, especially in my field. It isn't a small difference of quality, it's a fairly huge one, actually. Especially for audio, Beta runs VHS totally up the ass. In fact, before Alesis came out with the ADAT digital standard, Betas were the highest quality magnetic tape audio format. Not only that, but Sony created converters to use the visual track as another two audio tracks, allowing for four-channel recording... again, the ADAT replaced that, but only much later. On the video end of things, Betas are much more robust, they don't degrade nearly as quickly with use, their control tracks hold up surprisingly well, and the video quality is greatly superior. The other day, I had to record a VHS tape for a client, and my coworker and I were in awe of just how shitty it looked compared to Beta.Now, that said, Beta was totally the wrong choice for consumers, for just the reasons you stated. Probably the biggest one was the time issue, since most feature films are between 90mins and 120mins, Beta was incredibly inconvenient. I can't believe Sony's stupidity on that one. If you're going to release a new form of media, at least make it sufficiently large enough to hold the standard amount of data. If CDs had been released that only played 30mins of audio, noone would have switched from LPs.
Betacam is NOT Betamax (Score:3, Informative)
Betamax failed in the marketplace, but Betacam did very well in the professional market. Note that these are VERY different technologies. Betamax battled VHS and lost, but Betacam competed against MII (the professional version of VHS) and won.
Sure, Betamax and Betacam may have the same sized tapes, but the video signals on them are very different.
Re:Betamax was NOT superior (Score:2)
Re:Betamax was NOT superior (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually it could be argued that Beta didn't even have video quality going for it. In the initial market, the US, the quality of NTSC video is so poor that you could barely tell the difference between the initial Beta and VHS recordings. By the time Sony got their act together, the VHS side had also made some advances, and the quality difference didn't really exist any more. (In the PAL market
Re:Betamax was better (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Betamax was better (Score:2)
UMD: Maximum (dual layer) capacity, 1.8 GB
DVD: Single layer, 4.4GB; Dual layer, ~9GB
The shortest (time-wise) and smallest (disc-space-wise) movies I've ever seen on DVD have still taken well over 3GB.
Unless they're encoding in some codec that's better at compression for small file sizes (like Divx or XVid or H.232) we're talking some serious
Re:Betamax was better (Score:2)
LK
I'm not surprised. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm surprised that the studios actually did release movies on UMD. I'd have waited to see how that whole PSP market panned out first.
Re:I'm not surprised. (Score:2)
My son and all his friends all have Nintendo DS systems. That seems to be the rage now.
Re:I'm not surprised. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I'm not surprised. (Score:2)
Of course if you are technical you can just
DMCA (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course if you are technical you can just rip and compress a DVD then shove it on a memory stick.
And to get even more technical, ripping a CSS encrypted DVD to a PSP compatible format is a tort and crime in the United States, Australia, many countries of the European Union, and other developed countries that have implemented the WIPO Copyright Treaty.
Re:DMCA (Score:2)
Re:I'm not surprised. (Score:2)
BTW, for comparison the PSP is still over $300 here and the DS can be purchased for $150.
Re:I'm not surprised. (Score:2)
Re:I'm not surprised. (Score:2)
Re:I'm not surprised. (Score:5, Informative)
I live in NYC and commute via subway every day to work. I am surprised by the number of people who actually play a PSP, watch movies, and even listen to the music (the lame headphones give them away - the left side is shorter than the right). I personally just use it to listen to music because I'm a little wary of holding it out in the open to be snatched away. I wouldn't say I've seen as many people with a DS or Gameboy. Lots of iPods, obviously, and many cell phone gamers and crackberry addicts. But the PSP definitely has a nicer chunk of representation than the other handhelds.
As for the UMD movies, I'm not surprised myself either. I stayed away from them because they were more expensive than DVDs. I always thought that the best way to utilize the UMD movies is to rent, but Sony just didn't seem to get that. If Blockbuster had UMD movies to rent I'd be all over it for when I travel. Great idea, poor execution.
Re:I'm not surprised. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I'm not surprised. (Score:3, Insightful)
Fucking entitlement generation.
Re:I'm not surprised. (Score:2)
Re:I'm not surprised. (Score:2)
There are over 10 million PSPs worldwide in the hands of consumers... hardly niche.
Re:I'm not surprised. (Score:2)
Now, the regular old DVD has a plethora of cheap players. It also has a gigantic library of content available. UMD is a solution to a nonexistant problem. You can get a portable DVD player for around $60-80 USD.
Re:I'm not surprised. (Score:2)
never... (Score:5, Insightful)
Really ... what a shock. (Score:4, Interesting)
The fact that Sony actually expected people to double-dip for an inferior format is staggering. Of course, this comes from the same people who brought us Beta, MiniDisc, and music CD rootkits.
Re:Really ... what a shock. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Really ... what a shock. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Really ... what a shock. (Score:2)
Not large enough, of course, but still...
novelty purchase (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:novelty purchase (Score:2)
Of course noone wants another freakin physical format. Just let us download content finally. Like iTunes.
but without DRM.
Useless (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Useless (Score:2)
It's like the only people that would buy movies for PSP either fly on airplanes or are frequent passengers on long car trips.
A lot of people must live or work under conditions that preclude commuting on a bicycle (harsh winters, hip or knee arthritis, no affordable housing within 20 miles of the office, etc). Many of these people rely on a bus or train, and they can watch one act of a movie for each half hour trip.
Smart consumers (Score:2)
'Cuz you can get a good portable DVD player that shares discs with the rest of your collection for the cost of about 5-10 of those UMD movies.
Big surprise.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Big surprise.... (Score:2)
Not to mention your other (very good) options:
Nobody's buying? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Nobody's buying? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Nobody's buying? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nobody's buying? (Score:2)
Re:Nobody's buying? (Score:2)
Then they all said "Eh" and went back to playing games. No more UMD sales in the past six months!
This is what annoys me. (Score:4, Interesting)
It makes me wonder how much Sony (and now MS with the 360) are paying to make their brands look popular.
And I don't think it's untrue when I say that a sizeable amount of the hate for Nintendo comes from the way these shops are set up.
* Most evidence suggests the DS far outstrips the PSP in sales, but I avoided saying that because that's not the point I'm trying to make.
Also at Walmart, though (Score:3, Insightful)
This always disheartens me a little, and my response is usually just "Huh. Well, the PSP may be trailing the DS in total market [999today.com]
Re:Also at Walmart, though (Score:2, Informative)
The obvious guess would be that Sony is paying for shelf space. It's a common arrangement in retail.
Re:Also at Walmart, though (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Also at Walmart, though (Score:2)
Re:Also at Walmart, though (Score:2)
this has remained constant with the psp. the psp gets more shelfspace and a more prominent location in stores. i vote that your second comment is probably the more likely truth. but more likely at least from my viewpoint, the psp games are usually located close to the ps2 games. the ps
This is a preview of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray for movies (Score:2, Insightful)
Normal people will not bother for a high-def, high-priced, super-DRM'd version of a movie that is available on regular DVD.
I predict it will sell like bonkers for backup media, though.
Forward-compatibility (Score:2)
This seems like the only hope either of these formats have, t
Re:Forward-compatibility (Score:2)
While many feature films either come packed to the gills with extra features, they are not always that worthwhile. I mean, once you've seen the trailer, is anyone other than a completist bothered about the "slightly different trailer"? I reckon that most BR/HD will end up left blank, but one or
Aww, poor Sony (Score:5, Funny)
UMD was invented by a can't-miss tech company and supplied the market of people who wanted a second full-price, lower-resoultion copy of hit movies for their myriad of UMD players. So, you know, I'm shocked.
Re:Aww, poor Sony (Score:2)
They also created the 3 1/2" floppy diskette, which (thanks to AOL) was my primary medium of cheap storage for several years. Sony working with Philips developed the CD standard and that really took off.
The bullet and the gun (Score:2)
It's still a cool machine. I'd buy one if they opened it up for indie development (
Re:The bullet and the gun (Score:2)
PSP doesn't have bluetooth. It does have wifi though, which you can (unsurprisingly) use while charging.
Re:The bullet and the gun (Score:2)
Re:The bullet and the gun (Score:2)
If they would just bundle them... (Score:4, Insightful)
The approach they should have taken would be to bunlde the UMD with the DVD for an extra $5. When you buy the movie, you have paid for the rights to view it privately. The UMD is just another piece of $5 media.
Oh well, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing.
Re:If they would just bundle them... (Score:3, Funny)
Sony Ninjas will soon be coming over to your house to chop you in half for attacking their precious flawed business model.
London Bridge is . . . (Score:2, Insightful)
Surprise, Surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's what could've made the PSP *the* device to own: the ability to burn your own UMDs with photos or videos or whatever without the need for any proprietary hardware or software. A disc-based, portable image/video sharing device -- properly marketed and with proper competition from other companies -- could have created a new "must have" device that would be almost as ubiquitous as cell phones.
This mega-corps are gonna have to stop thinking about what they want (expensive, proprietary, restricted devices) and start thinking about what consumers want (afforable, open, and easy-to-use devices), or else I will continue to write angry rants!
Re:Surprise, Surprise (Score:3, Informative)
The PSP itself really isn't a failure - go read the article on 1up the other day, they say that in the US it's essentially level with the DS in sales. That's not bad for a market newcomer.
Re:Surprise, Surprise (Score:2)
No Special Features (Score:3, Interesting)
If they would start including the same special features as found on DVDs, using two UMDs to do it if necessary, I would buy more UMD movies.
PSP is an ideal travel device (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm really disappointed in Sony for their positioning of the PSP. It has so much more potential than as a vessel for movie sales. I take it with me whenever I travel and use it as my primary entertainment, Web, and email device (usi
Re:PSP is an ideal travel device (Score:2)
I've been hanging out for a decent one for a very long time - the ones that are rips of game browsers are nasty.
It all depends on your FW version too - I am sticking to 1.5 just because I like the freedom of it - homebrew etc
Blu-ray?? (Score:2)
Re:Blu-ray?? (Score:2)
"Universal Studios Home Entertainment has completely stopped producing UMD movies, according to executives who asked not to be identified by name. Said one high-ranking exec: "It's awful. Sales are near zilch. It's another Sony bomb -- like Blu-ray.""
Would say a lot more if Universal were backing BD-ROM at all but having a real executive state an opinion is good.
Re:Blu-ray?? (Score:2)
Re:Blu-ray?? (Score:2)
For one thing UMD wasn't licensed to any other manufacturers so the only device that can play a UMD movie is the PSP. This isn't a problem with Blu-ray.
Second, UMD is a Sony only proprietary format. Blu-ray was developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association [bluraydisc.com] of which Sony is just one member. The last media format that was co-developed by Sony was a whopping success. You might have heard of it, it was the DVD (Sony was a founding member of the DVD Forum [wikipedia.org]).
So as you can s
Bring Out The Cheesecake! (Score:2)
Anyway, I suppose we should start seeing some fire sales of UMD movies to clear existing stock. Here's my own semi-lame attempt to ha [proliphus.com]
UMD (Score:2)
Time for investing (Score:2)
Re:Time for investing (Score:2)
Open the UMD Format (Score:2, Insightful)
Hopefully Apple is paying attention (Score:2)
Few people can really dedicate 90+ minutes to watch a full length movie. Sure, video podcasts, TV shows and music videos make sense, as people can watch them for 30 - 60 minutes without interruption, but movies are just too long for mobile formats.
Plus, I find that these small screens like PSP and iPod don't refresh fast enough, so the movies are often blurry and give me a headache. I also get a neck ache trying to bend over my PSP to watch the Spider-man 2
I watch plenty of movies on my PSP... (Score:2, Interesting)
Sony Format failures (Score:2)
Of course, UMD is in the "what were they thinking" category. Not that it's a bad format. But (a) nobody wants to watch a movie on such a small screen and (b) even if they did, the DVD format is too locked in to allow a competing format with such a limited audience.
Twisting the knife (Score:2)
4 Simple (And Fairly Obvious) Reasons for this... (Score:2)
2) The PSP does not, natively, support output to a TV screen (I realize that there are 3rd party devices which allow this). Thus, if you are going to watch a UMD, you'll be doing it on a portable screen, and almost certainly watching it alone. Even the loneliest of nerds likes to watch movies with other lonely nerds.
3) Playing a UMD movie on
There's a pattern here. (Score:2, Insightful)
8mm video tape. (By the time they did this, VHS owned their lunch.) Magnetic audio disks. (Low-capacity, hard to use, lousy recording time(again!) DAT.(OMG, perfect copies of the *sound* AARGH! Piracy!
I could have told them that before it came out (Score:2)
is this a surprise? (Score:3, Insightful)
UMD and Blu-Ray are both losers. They are expensive, offer no real benefit to the majority of consumers, and did I mention expensive... add in the low acceptance of the PSP in general and you have a big loss. I expect the Blu-ray to shake out the same way. FTR HDDVD most likely won't blow the doors down at your local retailer either.
Consumers are speaking loud and clear, and have been for over a year with the piss poor game sales. It takes Joe sixpack a little longer to get fed up with mediocrity, but eventually they do. Welcome to that time Sony and MS... best of luck with $500+ systems and $60+games.
Re:PSP is dying (Score:2)
Re:PSP is dying (Score:2)
The $40 price tag on games that cost $20 for the PS2 is what's killing the PSP. Who wants to pay $40 for something you can get cheaper elsewhere?
Re:PSP is dying (Score:2)
theres a version of metal gear solid in the works thats action based like the console version. theres a version of killzone on the way. there anothe
Re:The solution to all of life's problems... (Score:2)