Psp Umd On Its Last Legs


BattleCattle

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Some of you may have found this on digg, but here is a news article discussing how the movie studios are dropping UMD like it made racist comments regarding their mothers:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060330/tc_nm/...salmediadisc_dc

The best part, however, is this quote:
(Feingold is president of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment)
Feingold believes the PSP's biggest drawback as a movie-watching device was the inability to connect the gadget to TV sets for big-screen viewing, "which would have made it more compelling," as well as the inclusion of memory stick capability."
*maniacal laughter*


also, this gem, a little further down by the same person:
"I think a lot of people are ripping content and sticking it onto the device rather than purchasing," he said.
Ya think?
 
A while back (not sure if it was here or another forum) it was aid that they would start selling DVDs and UMDs together in single packs for a slightly higher price than just the DVD alone. A couple of days ago I saw several packs they offer bother the DVD and UMD of several movies for 22 bucks.

The movies offered if anyone is curious were Crouthing tiger, RE: apocalypse, and Underground. Not a bad deal if you dont have the movies at all but at the same time if you know how you can just rip the movie form your DVD to the PSP memstick anyway... the only thing is you dont get things like menues and subtitle tracks but not ever havenr watched a UMD myself I dont know that they even have those to begin with so I dont know if that's even a downside.

...of course I have trouble putting much faith in anything anyone says around this time of year.
 
Actually I feel like I've heard the statment made before but the dozens of UMD movies already on the shelf hardly made it seem as dire as all that. Hell I even remember what I said about it now: Sony themselves are a media company, even if every other studio in existance stops making UMDs Columbia/tri star and their catalog of hundreds of thousands of movie titles still belong to Sony and those are still very likely to be released from time to time.

Thinking about it now, with as many UMD movies that have been pressed to date as there are now they could stop making them tomarrow and there'd STILL be enough of them floating around for someone to pick up if they were so inclined.
 
In the future you can expect to see retro collectors buying up UMD movies on ebay :D
IMO, if sony was really supporting the UMD format, we would have seen a VAIO laptop with a UMD drive by now, or some kind of stand alone player support. Take the memory stick for example. Sony really made an effort to get it out there as much as possible, by pretty much using it on every product they produce. If sony made a coffee mug, they would probably put a memory stick slot on it :D The UMDs on the other hand have so far been a one-note song. It never really had a chance of becoming a standard, when the userbase is limited to just psp owners.
 
...not completly true, there have been standalone UMD players in japan already but I thnk Sony wants to make the thought it's use on PSP more favorable. The fact that even before there were rumblings about the format that Sony said the PS3 wouldn't have a UMD drive told me they wanted to be very cautious about how they spread the format.

I remember a while back someone here mentioned that the resolution of the UMD movie would look pretty crappy on a tv screen which might be a reason they've resisted it.
 
Didnt know they had standalone UMD players in japan, thanks for pointing that out. The resolution is certainly a valid concern... but im sure the movies would look adequate on SDTVs. At the very least i would have expected them introduce a umd video only portable. If they could manage it for the $100-150 range, that would probably sell. At the very least it would give people another option, which is what the format needs the most.

I actually read on another site that Sony has been shopping a tv umd player to hollywood execs, in an attempt to rekindle interest in the US. Dont know if its true or not.
 
I only have one UMD movie atm and it is the free Spiderman 2 that got sent to me by Sony.

The only other movie I would consider buying in UMD format would be: suprise suprise Ghostbusters. :)

I think it is great news they are dropping UMD movie support, hopefully they can push forward and release more games.
 
If the format weren't so stupidly restricting in both usability and content, it might have been an okay idea. But instead you got a format only compatible with a game system and less (or no) extra features compared to the similarly priced DVD.

DVD/UMD packages would be cool, but that's certainly no way to promote a format. :rolleyes:
 
Alpha2 posted on Apr 1 2006 at 04:51 PM said:
...not completly true, there have been standalone UMD players in japan already but I thnk Sony wants to make the thought it's use on PSP more favorable. The fact that even before there were rumblings about the format that Sony said the PS3 wouldn't have a UMD drive told me they wanted to be very cautious about how they spread the format.

I remember a while back someone here mentioned that the resolution of the UMD movie would look pretty crappy on a tv screen which might be a reason they've resisted it.

As far as I know, there haven't!
Please provide a source or proof via image. Thanks in advance Alpha2. :)
 
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The UMD player I saw was shown back just before the GP2X was released and sites were doing reviews on portable media players. it was reviwed along side of the 2X but I can't seem to find the post with that link. I'm googgling for it now but it's hard to find something like that in foreign language sites.

EDIT:
I've given up googgling for it, these sites are too dense for me to parse sorry for stating it without direct proof, I admit my comment is likely wrong. But I do maintain that I was lead to beleive one was in the works due to a korean review site that had also reviewed the GP2x.

In retrospect it's possible that it was only a prototype or mock up for a planned device but since I was never really interested in the format (being burned by the whole MD thing) so I didn't follow up on it.

I dunno.... I think ultimatly they probably would restrict the number of UMD players just push the PSP as a video device. People who might by it for videos might be swayed if there was a cheaper player for the movies.

And I don't know why I have to keep saing this. the loss of UMD movies will not create some incredible flood of games! The game and movie devisions are completly separate entities, uneffected by what the other does. DVD movie sales went up astronimically after the release of the PS2, that dosent mean that game sales demished any.
 
I just found This link from 16th Feb 2006 which states that Sony have developed a prototype stand alone UMD player and have been showing it to Hollywood execs, trying to rekindle interest in UMD.

Personally I can't see it happening, but there you go.
 
cant wait untill they stop making them ;).... would mean Mega Price Drops :D

I mean come on... £15 - £20 per a Film to watch ONLY on the PSP!!! No wonder they are getting LOW sales!!!... If they sell them for £2 - £3 I bet they would sell 100 times more :)
 
They've already started selling double packs of DVD+UMD movies here for 22 bucks. If they werent all movies that I've seen or own already it'd be a nice deal.
 
White Demon posted on Apr 2 2006 at 12:25 PM said:
I just found This link from 16th Feb 2006 which states that Sony have developed a prototype stand alone UMD player and have been showing it to Hollywood execs, trying to rekindle interest in UMD.

Personally I can't see it happening, but there you go.

Even if they do - the world is currently awaiting HD DVDs - and the current UMDs are only half Standard TV resolution (VHS quality...)

Nobody wants to see THAT on TV...
 
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