Sony's PSP Handheld Storage Media Pictured

Thanks to Evil Avatar for pointing to an article on the new PSP Insider website that has the first pictures of the UMD disc format. The Universal Media Disc, or UMD for short, is the game storage medium that Sony's handheld, the PSP will use when it launches in late 2004, and is a 2.4 inch disc that can store up to 1.8gb of data.

Comments

Dataplay?

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like a revamped DataPlay disc, only higher density and double sided. And unless Sony made some huge advancements, the PSP is probably going to suck a ton of juice and bigger than a GBA SP.

Re:Dataplay?

[Yorrike]

As much as I prefer Nintendo over Sony, I must cite the fact that Sony has more than a decade of making CD Walkmans / tape walkmans behind them, so the battery life shouldn't be an issue, as they've already layed down the foundation with their CD players.

For example, my Sony MP3 CD player plays MP3s (decoding them off the CD, while spinning up and slowing down the CD every 30 seconds to fill the buffer), for 30 hours on 2 AA batteries.

I'm not worried about battery life in the PSP, what I'm concerned with is price point, games (fully 3D handheld games? Just doesn't sound right) and the usual shoddy quality of Sony's past portable devices.

If their CD players are anything to go by, then the PSPs will last about 1/20 the time a GBA will. Sony has the cool factor, but lack the hardware quality factor, in my experience.

Is it just me?

[wizarddc]

Is it just me, or does it look like Sony is presenting this purely as a new media format, that they just happen to be using in the PSP? Kinda like the memory stick, Sony seems to be addings another proprietary format to their ranks. Your new VAIO will not only be able to read these, but eventually, they'll be UMD-R's and RW's that will write your AIBO 3.0 code on and slip right into your digi pooch. Or not. I'm only guessing

PSP UMD vs. GameCube Mini-DVD

[peel]

This isn't so different from a GameCube disc. It's a little smaller and has .3GB more storgae but other than that I don't see a real significant leap in technology, nor another reason to introduce yet another optical disc format.

GC Optical Disc - 7.62cm(3in) 1.5GB Storgae capcity
PSP UMD - 6.1cm (2.4in) 1.8GB Storage Capacity

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but GC discs do not employ dual layer technology, so theoretically they could hold twice the amount of data. I'll leave all of the comments about using this type of storage in a handheld to others. -peel

Re:Discs in a hand held?

[macdonaldorama]

These discs look strikingly similar to Sony's MiniDisc format. I used a MiniDisc walkman for years and I honestly can't remember ever hearing it skip once. If this new format is in any way related (and it's a good guess that it is) I wouldn't be too worried about skippage.

Re:Discs in a hand held?

[NeonSpirit]

I would assume that Sony will build on the MiniDisc technologies. The MZR-900 has a specified 66 hours playback. With music continuous read is required ( with anti-skip buffer ). With games I would assume there would be burst read into RAM of some sort, when you get to a new level or whatever.

I am wondering how save games will be handled, with Sonys history I would guess a limited internal memory with memory stick for transfer.

Three things are certain:

[uradu]

Death, taxes, and Sony forever pushing new proprietary formats. You'd think that Pavlovian learning would have set in by now.