UMD Format's Death Rattle Begins

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.'"

Comments

This is what annoys me.

[Lave]

I hear stories like this all the time, and from my friends with PSP's they say the same things (hmmm, anecdotal), but when I go into any GAME/Virgin/HMV etc the PSP UMD section outstrips the entire DS section. A console with comparable success*. This was particularly annoying when I was walking to every shop in town desperate for a Nintedogs Mulitpack, which had sold out everywhere.

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.

Betamax was NOT superior

[sirwired]

This is a persistent myth that has gone on for decades, and has become "accepted wisdom". Betamax did have higher-quality output (though not by much), but it was certainly not a superior format, at least IMHO. The true test of any technology, is "does it meet the consumer's needs?". In the case of Betamax for a long time, the answer was "not as well as the available VHS machines", not even close for "regular folks". For the extremely limited market of Videophiles, Beta may have been better, but that couldn't sustain the market.

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

[metamatic]

That still doesn't explain the Betamax failure, though.

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.