Sony to Standardize UMD Format

PSP411 writes "It was announced today that Sony has decided to open up the UMD format in a limited fashion as a formal standard. According to a PC World article, companies interested in releasing movies and music on UMD may soon be able to do so. Those interested in developing games and software are still out of luck, however, as the format for 3rd parties is still being limited to movies and music." UMD stands for Universal Media Disc, the media format used for Sony's new handheld gaming console (the PSP).

Comments

In other words...

[xaqar]

Sony says "Pleeeeeeeeease put movies and stuff on our console...*sniffle*"

Re:In other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

They just learned from their mistake with Beta, that's all. They've opened the CD, Blu-Ray, Mini-Disc, and now this.

Re:In other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

How lovely of Sony to open the CD, considering that they were only one of the colllaborators on the various CD formats.

Blu-Ray isn't out the door yet.

Mini-Disc was big in Japan, and is practically dead everywhere else.

UMD will not succeed as a format for anything other than games, and even its role in that regard is subject to credible scrutiny and doubt.

Re:In other words...

[zonker]

the only way this will be popular is if it becomes (re)writable and is very cheap (both the burner and the discs. else, this will be another stupid propreitary sony standard that went nowhere...

tv on the go

[nadadogg]

If it gets opened to the big guys, it's only a matter of time before the little guys(us) get a crack at it too.
If I could pop a few episodes of scrubs or iron chef america on it, then have something to do while waiting for my calc2 teacher to show up, I'd be more inclined to buy one. As of right now, my newest portable is an old-school gameboy, but I'm open to change.

Re:tv on the go

[moonbender]

You could have been doing this for years with many PDAs, and without resorting to odd UMDs. There are also plenty of standalone portable video players, think iPod with mpeg video instead of audio.

Re:tv on the go

[nadadogg]

I do have a pocketpc from work, but I'd prefer something that was less geek, and more chic. Besides, PDA's dont have any games that I wanna play.

Re:tv on the go

[Deliveranc3]

Dude you should get ribbon or a derivitive...

It's great for picking up women they love that game. :P

Re:tv on the go

[nadadogg]

Eh, I've got a math major girlfriend already, and hopefully I'll have a sixpack(non-beer) by spring break. I just like showing off tech stuff to random people, it's my inner geek.

Re:tv on the go

[TLSPRWR]

More than likely this is just going to go the way of the Minidisk. Well, that's a bad example. Some people actually use Minidisks (myself included) because they have a few good uses, but on in the real market they have failed. Unless some players/drives (read: burners) aside from the PSP are released, no one is going to take it seriously except for the Sony obsessed.

Interesting

[Pan T. Hose]

It certainly provides a new context to their recent decisions, doesn't it?

Major Change?

[Prien715]

Along with the other story today, found here does this signal a major shift in Sony's actual strategy with respect to formats or is this merely for PR benefit and marketing? Thoughts?

Re:Major Change?

[doofusclam]

You're right. Standardise my arse, it's more they want other companies to fill the gaps in their content.

Re:Major Change?

[SetupWeasel]

If they ever wanted non-Sony movies and music to be released, they had to allow other companies to use the format. Movie studios and record labels wouldn't have stood for a video game type licensing scheme.

Unless other appliances use the format I don't think any major label will bother with UMD. Sony might be hoping that someone else thinks the UMD is a good idea, and make their own UMD players.

Good luck with that, Sony.

Good one! Hehe!

[Anonymous Coward]

Next time please add links to something from here:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/graphics/ (there are nice pics with guns in the Raymond 007 series)
and from here:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/sextips/ (yes, those are actually Sex Tips For Geeks written by ESR! I fucking kid you not dude!)

OK, a better version - please improve adding link:

[Anonymous Coward]

Monday, March 04, 2002

I do the club scene a lot, some say I am a good dancer. I enjoy having a few drinks, usually ale or mead, and I have been known to cause a scene now and then...

Eric paused, breathing heavily. He'd never done this before and he wanted to make sure all of his best qualities were included in this email.

I am a geek, to be frank, and I enjoy hacking UNIX and maintaining Open Source programs such as Fetchmail and a bevy of FAQs regarding 386 sound internals and role-playing games. I've been doing this for 15 years though I've never held a job in my life.

Eric wondered if this woman he had found on match.com would be impressed with his talents. He decided to put more detail into the message.

I recently drove 24 hours straight, with but two stops for gasoline, from Eastern PA to Kansas City in an effort to destroy my two arch-nemeses. I would have succeeded except that I blew a head gasket as I was about to shoot one of them from my moving car on Route 69. I am an excellent shot and love guns in general.

Eric pondered for a moment, wringing out his soaked handkerchief, and continued with his typing.

So what languages do you know? I fancy myself quite an accomplished amateur linguist and know Anglo-Saxon and Old Icelandic inside and out. I often compose little riddles in them for fun and mental exercise. In fact, I'll include one for you now!

Chewing on his tongue and squinting, Eric pushed his mind into overdrive and produced a beauty of a riddle on the spot:

Windeth I towarde the skye
I haveth eye but blinde am I

Pleased with his linguistic talents, undoubtedly matched by no one, Eric then asked his potential love-conquest:

Can you guess the answer to that? In case you can not, the correct answer is "my erect penis." I hope you enjoyed that; I do this sort of thing all the time.

Eric exhaled slowly and rubbed his belly. It was growling and no doubt wanted its nightly bottle of Jägermeister. He decided to finish up the email in anticipation of the coming alcoholic stupor.

Well I don't want to make this email too long -- I have a lot of responsibilities in real life to deal with. My role-playing group is coming over and we are spending the next week holed up in the forest near my home in character playing out a possible scenario from Beowulf. I need to get dressed up and I can not find my bear-claw mittens.

Eric wondered how to wrap up the email, something that would hook the lady on him and make her want more...

I hope we can meet and have sex. Despite my cerebral palsy, I am a monster in the sack! Maybe you'll get to see for yourself, LOLOLOL! ;-)

Love,
Eric S. Raymond

Not as good as you think

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't opening the format, they are licensing the format. You
won't be able to buy a burner.

If you are a company that makes products, you can pay for the
privilege to add UMD support to your device to allow it to play movies
and music on the device, much in the way a 3rd party can developer a
Memory Stick reader. The 3rd

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea of stuffing an
optical disc into a portable device has a butt-ton of problems. Why
would anyone want to do that when it can play a TINY selections of
music and movies from a single company (Sony)?

Why would a 3rd party want to deal with the battery issues that have
plagued the PSP's: moving parts, the fragility of the media and the
ejecting UMDs? Why build a product that has to compete with the PSP
but can't play games? Why not build a cheaper, smaller,
battery-efficient, flash-based music-movie player?

This is the dumbest thing I have heard.

Re:Why?

[polyp2000]

UMDs are 2.4-inch optical discs in protective cases that have a data storage capacity of 1.8GB. :: (from the article)

Why
would anyone want to do that when it can play a TINY selections of
music and movies from a single company.

1.8gb ? Thats 2 or 3 divX movies of easily good enough quality to view on the PSP's screen. Its also enough for roughly about 15-20 albums in mp3 format. Couple that with the fact that its a removable media. I think its actually quite a decent and useful capacity - certainly not tiny - as you describe it.

Nick ...

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that's what the gp meant by tiny selection. I think he meant that there will only be a small portion of Sony's movie and music library available on UMDs. That's not an unreasonable assumption.

As for getting 3 movies or 20 albums on a UMD, I think that's going to be unlikely. Unless UMDs really take off, there won't be stacks of blank UMDs and UMD burners on the store shelves. Forgive me for being a pessimist, but the only content besides games you'll see on UMDs will be single movies and single music albums, regardless of how much space is wasted.

UMD-+R/RW

[roseblood]

When will these show up at your local computer store?

UMD and MD

[bugbeak]

I wonder if anyone has tried to pop in a regular MD into one of these. Seriously, if they fit, then Sony could try to make a cheap-enough MD burner for smaller stuff, no?

Re:UMD and MD

[SimplePaul]

I have just tried and no it does not fit. The UMD slot is just big enough for a UMD and by placing a UMD on top of an MD, it is clear the MD is longer and wider.

WAHOOOO!!!!

[TJ_Phazerhacki]

Sony licensing the UMD means UMD drives are inevitable. Plugging anything into a computer means hacking is inevitable. The only thing sony could do now is announce: 1. UMD support on the PS3, ergo... 2. UMD Burners. If the PS3 is really a total integration device, well....

Re:WAHOOOO!!!!

[MilenCent]

Sony licensing the UMD means UMD drives are inevitable.

I'm not so sure. The format is basically a smaller DVD that holds less. It's only benefit at the moment is that PSPs can read it... ...and if you think Sony will leave open a path that allows arbitrary content, even just video files, to be played on their system then I've got a bridge to sell you. They want DVD-like license fees from this thing, not to allow Joe Consumer to use the device for their own purposes.

I see a long road towards widespread adoption for UMD. If the PSP does really well, then that could be a good first step towards getting it adopted, but that's not a sure thing yet.

Re:WAHOOOO!!!!

[valkoinen]

Just like you can have a MiniDisc writer on your PC, right?

Really though, if a burner exists a mod chip will be coming soon that will bypass any copy protections.

(Un)fortunately, never.

[GerbilSoft]

Not even the developers have access to UMD writers. They have to send their games to Sony on DVD-Rs, and Sony then burns them to UMDs.

Off Topic: Help a guy out. Please.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm prepping to go back to college to complete my degree, and every place around
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the free iPod for x referrals programs. There's several of the offers that cost
$0.00, and can be cancelled as soon as the program verifies completion of the
offer. (I used the eFax offer, and it was verified in 2 days, after which I
cancelled it.)

If anybody is willing to help me out, go to
http://www.notebooks4free.com/defaultaspx?r=17 4196 , and complete one offer on my
behalf.

Theo

When will Microsoft be adapting the format?

[Cabriel]

I assume they'll modify it into a new standard and call it Windows Media Disc. Pretty soon, civilians around the globe will have untold numbers of WMDs.

Re:When will Microsoft be adapting the format?

[Zero1za]

AAAArggh.

No mod points, the parent is both funny, and topical...

Re:OK, a better version - please improve adding li

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, that's the funniest fucking thing I've seen since I smoked three bowls and watched Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.

UMD: Usual Marketing Dishonesty

[2TecTom]

Universal? howabout that eh?

Heya Sony, why should I buy anything from a liar?

Re:OK, a better version - please improve adding li

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, that's the funniest fucking thing I've seen since I smoked three bowls and watched Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.

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