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Another Sony Format Bites the Dust
Lam1969 writes "Reuters is reporting that Universal Media Disc, Sony's PSP-only movie format, is about to kick the bucket. While the discs' novelty factor resulted in strong sales shortly after the PSP's May 2005 launch, interest rapidly dropped and movie companies are no longer interested in producing titles. From the article: "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."'"
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/30/ 1626239
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The article or article summary is written by someone that wants HD-DVD to win, and uses the UMD failure to try to achieve that.
Common FUD tactics.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
The movies are dead yes, but the format itself will live on, no? How else are they going to ship new games?
Because just this December I was travelling to Colorado in a car, and guess what I was using to watch movies? That's right, a PSP with UMD discs. I admit, they can be tedious; just like many other technologies, one piece of information (a movie, a book, an album, etc.) per storage device is starting to become obsolete (notice how companies put more and more bonus content on DVD's) because of the vast amount of space available on modern media. The UMD disc was inconvenient in this respect in that it held one game/movie per disc, and it was not writable, and not supported by practically any player other than PSP--a console which in itself isn't all that great.
Overall, I'm glad that this format, among others, is becoming extinct. The closer we get to a universal storage format (flash drives seem to be the popular candidate), the faster we'll get to complete integration of information. Benjamin Feingold, president of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, said in the article, "We're hoping the format's going to be reinvigorated with next-generation capability that may include living-room or normal television playback." I, on the other hand, hope not.
Also, they had no distinct advantages over DVD. Why buy a UMD Movie, that is the same price as the DVD so you can watch it by yourself and can't rip it to anything else.
Finally, who in their right mind is going to rebuild their collection, or even build a new one in a completely useless format that only has a single device capable of playing it.
Any moron could tell them that this was doomed from the start.
I always hoped these things would die: 1) yet another gimick to make money on a saturated industry 2) yet another proprietary sony standard 3) yet more trash. These things are even more disposable than dvd's. I would think the resale is low, and the life expectancy of the whole UMD standard was already low, apparently now they're good and dead.
Doesn't completely invalidate his point though, Sony is responsible for many formats over the years that didn't achieve any kind of market dominance.
A dupe? Didn't see the first one.
Ya think Sony would remember this lesson and quit repeating it. They've introduced so many formats that *would* have been good, had they not been intentionally crippled by their media division.
Memory Stick is about the only format they've introduced that hasn't been bombed into oblivion by the reality of a market unwilling to buy crippled products. It's only a matter of time, however, since MS is inferior and more expensive than just about any other flash-card format.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Sony has its entertainment side, and its electronics side. For some reason they let the entertainment side tell the electronics side how to do its job and then they are !!! SHOCKED !!! when the electronics bomb. Hmmmm.
UMD, had little usuability because of DRM, (Crackable but who needs the headache). Also, was a low quality format because of the target device. Had a small odd media that was more expensive that its full size counterparts. And just for that final sauce releases were pretty much priced as high or higher than DVD.
Sounds like a winner
The US and possibly the British markets are small. But the Japanese & Korean markets are reportedly solid. I work at a post house, and we are still turning out quite a few versions for UMD. There must be people buying them somewhere.
One studio is not indicative of the entire market. Unless that studio is Sony itself. They own the largest catalog of movies, making up over a third of the titles produced by major film studios in the last 60 years.
Of course not completely sony, but they did help to come up with the compact disc. Beta is also still used in a lot of professional area's, as with mini-discs.
You have to admit the comment about blu-ray is a bit strange.
That could be why it wasn't included in the list of failed formats. Nah, that makes too much sense. Must be a conspiracy of some sort.
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It was always a no-brainer that the UMD format would fail in the movie arena.
It's the lack of interoperability that make the format useless - it's all very well being able to watch a film on your PSP, but there's no facility to use UMDs in your PC,PS2/3 or home cinema (unless you buy a TV adapter.)
It's the minidisc story all over again, but accelerated because UMDs aren't a home-writeable format.
--
The format, whatever. The price was the fucking kicker. Who the hell is going to shell out $30+ for a god damned movie you watch on a 3" screen? If they would have priced them more like $10 a piece at least, you would have seen better sales. $30? no way.
Sony should have put MD into its PSP gaming device instead of comming up with a "new" UMD disc format. I think it probably would have been cheaper to have a recordable MD instead of developing a new disc format that from all accounts is failing at everything except psp games.
Also the 1 gig storage capacity of the mini discs would have been usefull and at 6$ dollars a pop pretty cheap compared to gum stick media.
Now both stagnate...
Hope they enable full-res H.264 playback from memory stick now. I guess they were holding it back in a futile attempt to make UMD videos more attractive.
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Step 1) Use Extremely Proprietary Format Step 2) ??? Step 3) Miserably Fail! I saw this coming from a mile away. UMDs are far from useful, especially considering it takes zero effort to rip a DVD movie to an almost-infinitely rewritable media (Sony's *proprietary* Memory Stick, ironic enough). Besides, don't we have Laptops and *dare I say* portable DVD players for on-the-go movie watching?
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They've decided to go back to a known method that worked in the 80's. You get the games printed in books and you have to hand code the hexdecimal in before you can play the game. Of course if you turn off the unit or switch games you'll have to re-enter the game. Since the printed word is compatible with all systems it's sure to be a winner! HD-DVD of course stands for HexDecimal DVD. You'll get the fun of hand entering all the hex before you can watch your movies too. The kids will love all the family time that gives you and for porn it'll be fantastic because you'll develop such strong hands!
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
"The article or article summary is written by someone that wants HD-DVD to win, and uses the UMD failure to try to achieve that."
, 40057346,00.htm
That specific quote is attributed to an anonymous exec at Universal Studios Home Entertainment, a member of the HD-DVD consortium.
http://www.cnet.com.au/hometheatre/dvd/0,39025983
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
SACD is freaking the best digital sound format on the market AND it's 1 bit (DSD). How cool is that?
not too cool.
Why 1-Bit Sigma-Delta Conversion is Unsuitable for High-Quality Applications
Single-stage, 1-bit sigma-delta converters are in principle imperfectible. We prove this fact. The reason, simply
stated, is that, when properly dithered, they are in constant overload. Prevention of overload allows only partial
dithering to be performed. The consequence is that distortion, limit cycles, instability, and noise modulation can
never be totally avoided. We demonstrate these effects, and using coherent averaging techniques, are able to display
the consequent profusion of nonlinear artefacts which are usually hidden in the noise floor. Recording, editing,
storage, or conversion systems using single-stage, 1-bit sigma-delta modulators, are thus inimical to audio of the
highest quality. In contrast, multi-bit sigma-delta converters, which output linear PCM code, are in principle
infinitely perfectible. (Here, multi-bit refers to at least two bits in the converter.) They can be properly dithered so
as to guarantee the absence of all distortion, limit cycles, and noise modulation. The audio industry is misguided if
it adopts 1-bit sigma-delta conversion as the basis for any high-quality processing, archiving, or distribution format
to replace multi-bit, linear PCM.
You're right about the other aspects, but I think the main problem is that you can only play it on a PSP (the Universal part is a euphemism)
The Raven
Since when is being able to play video on a television "next-generation"? These people are removing features, realizing that people won't buy without the features, and then adding the features back claiming they're innovative and new.
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Think about it:
(1) Sony is affiliated with Sony Pictures and has ties within the film and TV world;
(2) Sony uses that influence to negotiate rights for UMD / PSP versions of movies dirt-cheap - practically give 'em away. New releases at $6-$8 a disc; older stuff, $2 or $3. Enough to cover production. So what if they take a loss on the rights? They'll get it back in sales of units.
(3) The format's pretty secure, so piracy is a marginal issue - and the inexpensive price makes it hardly worth the time to rip and burn if you could, unlike discs that cost between $18-$20.
(4) The ability to use the PSP as a dirt-cheap portable movie player - and a little strategic marketing in the right places could help parents see this as a Good Deal ("it does more than play those damned games, we can watch movies on it, too..."
(5) They let other movie studios start making UMD movies also; they license out UMD to some cheap Taiwanese outfit and make some $60 - $80 UMD movie players and sell 'em at Wal-Mart. They let the format spread itself around. They keep the money in the game market and the PSP-2 or whatever the next item is.
(6) Profit - not mega-millions, but not the loss that the current situation is likely to be.
I'm sure there are some flaws in my idea and I'm sure someone will point them out. But in the end, somebody dropped the ball here big time. I love the PSP; it's a neat toy. But I've never bought a single movie for it; in fact, I saw this coming and told my friends to expect it - dropping the movies inside of a year - and I said that the first time I saw a UMD movie at a Goddamned Wal-Mart with a $20 price tag.
But, I think that if Sony came back at it, even now, and tried this strategy, it could work. Even this late in the game, with the right promotion and presentation. But it's a good idea, so, fat chance of that happening, eh?
I don't know why these companies just don't pay me on retainer to tell them things suck beforehand.
Usually in big companies, when a few products totally flop, heads roll. I don't seem to be seeing this with Sony. Its obvious in my mind that there's a huge collusion between their Media and Electronics devision (guess who always wins).
The Blu-Ray standard, I don't even know why they're even trying it. Look at how well their Memory Sticks are going once Flash memory has become commoditized (its 30 or 40% more). The UMD format is going to work because its linked to the PSP. Just not for movies. I don't see Nintendo trying to sell movies on Gameboy cartridges (they won't fit) but they just make the unit for gaming.
I have an MD player, and I must say its completely unusable. Not the hardware. The software. Everyone complains about SonicStage. I've thought of buying another MP3 player (I have one w/ bad sound quality right now), but I'm really hoping they can pull off the next MD software (and get it working on my Mac). Nothing, even flash MP3 players have been able to beat the Minidic for sound quality or battery life that I've been able to find. The quality in the MD player is gained from the audio processor I'm sure.
My complaint to Sony have really neglected me as a customer. I'm still satisfied with the product. Hopefully someone at Sony who has a clue will read this Slashdot thread and fix it. I'm sure they're putting off more people from their products then they think. IMO, PS3 is really the hit or sink product (esp if they will be losing as much money as predicted per unit) and they want the Blu-Ray stuff to succeed.
Apparently UMD movies are encoded at DVD resolution (720x480), 16x9 if appropriate, and the PSP re-sizes the image down to 480x272 for display on the LCD.
Now, why do sony waste the space on the UMD, and processing power to scale video, if they don't have to.
I would have expected to see, by about now, a set-top UMD player. Sony's stated design goals are to reduce the size of a media player device to the size of the carry case for the media. See MiniDisc players for an example.
How cool would it to be to have an iPod sized DVD player that plugs into a TV?
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Also take into account the fact that you can use a free program like PSPVideo9 to automatically take those DVDs you already own and create mp4 files to put on memory sticks.
Nobody's going to want to shell out money for a different format of the DVD they already own.
Funny that that high ranking exec was from Universal Studios.... now where have I seen that name before. Oh yeah, front and center on the HD-DVD roster!
Is it not simply sad to see a high ranking executive reduced to trash talking? How desperate is he?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...It's a small disc that holds 1.8GB of data...this is more than the physically larger in diameter disc that nintendo uses (1.5GB) in their gamecube. When the system came out flash memory wasn't available at a resonable price - and actually, you still can't find a 2GB cf or sd card for $50 I don't think. So, for a game system, which is normally propriotary anyway, I'm not sure it was such a bad idea. Also, since the psp does have excellent hardware mpeg4 playback why not make movies for the thing since you can do very high quality video with mpeg4 at only 480x272 resolution and have tons of room on a 1.8GB disc for a movie.
I think the place where sony made a bad choice was on the price. I think if the movies were $5 to $15 dollars they would have continued to sell at a good rate - I may have even bought some...but at $15 to $30 when you can get the same move for $10-$18 on dvd for playback on a much bigger screen and with more extra's on the disc, who would want the umd!?!?!? I think the price is what killed the umd movies.
Or rather, at helping them lose. Beta is a wonderful example. Higher quality aside, it had the advantage of compatbility with professional gear. Indeed Beta won the pro wars and Betacam SP is STILL the standard to which things are compared (you often hear DV called "Betacam SP quality"). However they totally missed it on the consumer market and mainly by locking it down and keeping it proprietary ensured it's failure.
As a more receant example take HiMD. HiMD was a wonderful extension of their neat MD format that did ok, but really failed to launch. HiMD added much better quality, more storage, and most importantly of all, high speed async computer transfers. Orignal MDs had to be dumped to computers via S/PDIF which meant no faster than realtime.
Now it would seem this format would be ideally positioned to make major inroads for recording. DAT is on the way out fast and is expensive anyhow, flash devices cost a lot and storage is pretty expensive, HD recorders are large and inflexable. HiMD would have a big market as the next DAT in essence.... Except they locked it down all to hell. You can only transfer files to your PC with their peice of shit software. Worse yet, it orignally didn't even let you transfer it to non-DRM'd formats. So you'd record your band, transfer teh recording, and then you couldn't open it in Wavelab. Wonderful.
I personally am skeptical of Blu-ray mainly because Sony is the big backer. They've a good track record with pro formats, but they have hosed thigns in the consumer market so many times I tend to predict they'll fail just based on their track record.
Betacam and Digital Betacam are used professionally... but sony has flopped (off the top of my head) Minidiscs, UMD, memory stick (sort of), and a load of other ideas.
I used to sell both computers and audio equipment, back in the 1998-2000 era, and it's astonishing to see what sony wasted. They of course couldn't jump on the standard flash memory bandwagon (compact flash or smart media, or later SD) - no, they had to invent their own thing, and of course it only worked with sony stuff. Stupid.
Minidiscs were a novelty, and were pretty cool for a while, but then... CD-R's and mp3 platers became cheap. Who wants to pay $5 per minidisc in order to listen to music when CD-R's are $0.25, or you can get something solid state for less than the price of a MD player? Even when a 512MB mp3 player cost $299, it was comparable to the high end MD player, in features and size. They should have LONG AGO made a minidisc MP3 player - the technology existed, and those disks hold about 480megs or so, not to mention $5 / 500MB is still a good price for media. But they didn't. Arrogance.
All the time, I see sony's marketing people put out all this shit which, in a perfect sony universe, would all interpolate, interact, and be amazing. But, in the real world, only a few people are going to buy all sony. They have yet to deal with that reality. People want their flash memory to be usable for their camera, mp3 player, and phone. They want their media to not be format locked.
It's just marketing stupidity and corporate hubris. Plain and simple. Develop good ideas, then drive them into the ground by making them proprietary.
~Will
sig?
UMD is not dying, UMD _movies_ are. And when I say UMD _movies_ I mean _US/UK_ UMD movies.
And with good reason. No one's going to pay $25 for a movie they already have in a higher quality format, when they can just rip their DVD and transcode it for PSP playback. UMD video probably isn't going to fail as spectacularly in Japan though, where most of the time, you can get a UMD _with_ your DVD purchase (For a little extra) I should know, I have a couple. And I certainly wouldn't have bought them seperately, since I could have just as easily put my videos on the memstick for free (Though that is one of the two advantages of UMD video; it's encoded better than you could possibly do transcoding, and it doesn't take up any space on your memory stick.) As for this 'cavalcade of failed Sony formats'... Seriously, drink the koolaid. No one else is buying that crap.
Betamax? Still the top choice for many professional video applications.
Minidisc? While MP3 players have their advantages, the latest generation of MD player/recorders are still going strong, even outside of Japan. Also, minidisc recorders are pretty much the #1 device for bootlegging live performances for its blend of small size, and high fidelity.
Blu-Ray? Let's skip past the part where it ISN'T EVEN OUT YET, and get down to the facts. The Playstation 2 cemented DVD in Japan. It hadn't caught on until then, they were still using VCD! So, considering that the Xbox 360 had such an abysmal launch (Usually what happens when your product can't withstand the rigors of...well, WORKING), which do you think is going to win in Japan? HD-DVD, or Blu-Ray? And don't forget, a growing constituency in the US and abroad care more about the outcome of that battle than what format Universal is going to put their latest summer blockbusting crapfest on.
UMD was about putting software in the PSP, first and foremost. The fact that they never had plans to manufacture anything ELSE to play UMDs should speak for itself.
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First, I still use Beta, and have a great professional-grade late 70s early 80s beta deck. I love Beta.
Many Beta lovers (like I used to) tout the "Beta is better quality than VHS" line, and this was 100% true. Beta lost due to marketing ploys and buying off video distributors/publishers into VHS, ultimately killing the technology. Also killing the technology was Beta's choice to make smaller, neater tapes that lasted for an hour, whereas the VHS manufacturers used basically the same technology with a bulkier tape that lasted two hours, sacrificing quality. Beta fixed this with Beta II and Beta III record modes, so it was only in the initial recorders, plus of course additional extensions like SuperBeta, Hi-Fi Audio, and so on. Beta offered more luminance detail and a cleaner image.
Can any modern late 80's or higher VHS VCR run circles around beta? Damn straight! The technology has since evolved in all recorders, in film, in the filters on various images, in audio and video pickups, etc.
Had Beta still been evolving today, they're be pretty close BUT Beta was defeated in '88 (officially).
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
But although your comparison is wrong, you're still right — one shouldn't judge a race before it's over, never mind before it's started. I think a lot of folks are looking at the fact that Sony is a member of the Blu Ray consortium and saying, "That settles that! Sony formats always fail!" Hardly logical. But of course if enough people buy that theory, it doesn't have to be logical.
Comment from UNI
How can it be a Universal Media Disc without Universal Studios?
Minidisc has achieved great success in Japan.
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Who the fuck modded this informative? It's more like completely wrong.
You've actually proved yourself wrong.
DVD is 720x480 (NTSC) or 720x576 (PAL), whereas UMD movies are 480x272.
That makes UMD movies roughly one third of the resolution of a DVD, and indeed at lower bitrates. H.264 is a good codec, but it's hardly better than high bitrate MPEG2 (MPEG2 sucks for small files, that's where MPEG4 shines; but on pressed DVDs bitrate isn't much of an issue). 1.8GB vs 9GB is about 5 times as much space - even given the 3x higher resolution of the DVD, that's more bits per pixel than UMD. And DVD movies can be as progressive as anything else (3:2 pulldown).
So no, UMD movies aren't low quality only because of the shitty player, but very much so because of the low resolution and lower bitrates too (excluding the issues of DRM and all). Not comparable whatsoever.
I'm no fan of the DVD format (much of a H.264 fan actually), but UMD discs sucks. Really. Big time. Enough that anyone who isn't blind wouldn't have issues seeing the difference on the average 27" standard def TV. The UMD has less resolution than crappy SVCDs - more like along the lines of VCDs or VHS tapes.
I recommend you see an optician sometime soon...
Here's the article: Sony's UMD format breaks through to the mainstream.
I can't help but laugh at some of the things the author wrote:
Apparently "extremely popular" is weasel-words for "we will hype the format now and abandon in 6 months".
Wow, customers must really appreciate paying through the nose for a UMD, and this can only be good for the studios! (note: this is an example of Irony).
The Inquirer article even quotes a Newsweek article, PlayStation Portable - New Format for Hollywood, which is less glowing but was clearly the only source of information for the Inquirer author.
Even Newsweek can see the rorting going on with UMD but they seem to not have a problem with it, as they tell of the studios "milking their catalogs" as if that's a good thing.
Ok people wait a minute, this is completely unfair to BluRay. BluRay is NOT a Sony format. Some other big names are behinf it too.
Lets also take a look at history and the two most successful digital media format still being used today:
CD Audio (Red Book): Philips and Sony
DVD : 10 founders - Hitachi, Matsushita, Pioneer, Philips, Sony, Thomson, Time Warner, Toshiba, JVC.
No granted those two formats didnt have any competition, but when you campare BluRay and HD-DVD who do you find behind each format?
HD-DVD: Toshiba and NEC
BluRay: Hitachi, Matsushita, Pioneer, Philips, Sony, Thomson, LG, Sharp, Samsung
JVC, who was VHS proponent against Sony's Betamax, is not among the BluRay founders, but still is a BluRay supporter.
So please, do not count BluRay as a Sony Failure, it might end up being a failure but I dont think Sony would deserve to be the first to take the blame. (I would probably blame Fox first)
I will say that if you brick wall filter audio at 10kHz it will sound different (arguably worse) than without the filter. In other words, there IS musically important "stuff" above 10kHz. Above 15kHz I would start to agree. (FM radio rolls off around 15kHz.) Above 20kHz I definately agree. If you read what audio engineers have to say about 48, 96 and 192kHz converters they will tell you that the 192kHz converters *DO* sound better than older converters but they sound better even if you run them at 48kHz! In other words, it is *not* the higher sample rates, it is the fact that the 192kHz part works better within the important (human hearing) range that makes it sound better.
;) Anyway, such converters accept various input formats (PCM or DSD) and the delta sigma modulator "converts" the input signal to match the output stage.
Also, modern "24 bit" audio DACs are still delta sigma designs they just use more than "1 bit" at the output stage. A 1 bit output stage has a matched current source and current sink and the converter switches rapidly between these to produce the states "in between" a full positive or full negative swing. The raw output of a delta sigma DAC is low pass filtered to eliminate stuff way out beyond the normal audio range. This can be as simple as a capacitor from the output pin to ground but for high quality audio there is normally an op-amp based active filter involved. The external filters for delta sigma DACs are certainly not very aggressive as "true" old school PCM designs and this is one of the reasons these converters sound better. (An aggressive low pass filter causes uglyness within the audio band.) I suspect you probably already knew this much.
On multi-bit delta sigma converter you just have additional matched current sources and current sinks. (Say, two sources and two sinks. Presumably this results in a "2 bit" output stage
And actually, at least on high quality converters, each channel (the left or right output) has both a positive and negative going version of the channel (that is, a balanced output stage.) The DAC outputs run through a current to voltage conversion and then a differential to single ended conversion using op-amps external to the DAC. The idea behind the differential output is to cancel any non-linearity between the current sources and sinks. Close matching of like parts such as the N channel transistors on a chip is possible but close matching between the N and P type is generally not. Also, absolute precision is not easily achieved which is the reasons "24 bit" DACs do not actually have 24 bit output stages. Early (true PCM) 16 bit and 18 bit converters achieved precision by laser trimming the on chip resistor elements which is expensive and so early CD players were also expensive.
My apologies for rambling. I recently designed a product around a TI/Burr Brown DSD1796 24bit/192kHz "segment DAC" and all of this is still running around in my head. (The segment DACs are actually a hybrid of a traditional 6 bit PCM style resistor ladder with the extra 18 bits being generated by delta sigma modulation.)
I would want a minidisc over a cd because it's far mre durable. That said, I had a minidisc recorder and it more than anything made me hate sony; it was crippled with stupid artificial limitations, such as the inability to upload recordings to the computer, or that stupid DRM nonsense, or that crazy ATRAC conversion.
Yeah, right. MDs can be recorded to 100s of times; let's compare like for like.
Even when a 512MB mp3 player cost $299, it was comparable to the high end MD player, in features and size.No, that was never the case. Have you ever seen an MP3 recorder ? MD lets you record on very small portable devices. And how long does it take you to transfer 512 MB of MP3 to your player, is it as quick as eject-insert-play ? I don't think so. Did you compare the original iPod size to high end MD players ? iPod is massive in comparison.
They should have LONG AGO made a minidisc MP3 player - the technology existed,What is your problem with Net MD ? Sure it's not MP3 but Sony offers a way to transfer MP3 to MD directly. Did you really think that they were going to "forget" about DRM, or try to support other companies' equipment ? By the way, Sharp etc also offer NetMD.
I think you're being unfair on minidisc - it still has several advantages over other formats (although they're now outnumbered by disadvantages).
Compared to CDs, minidisc is small - that might not sound like much, but it means I can slip a MD player in my jeans pocket, my shirt pocket, hold it comfortably in my hand, whatever. For portable music, that's a must - CDs can never be as portable.
Compared to MP3 players, the sound quality is vastly better (OK, maybe "vast" is an overstatement, but for someone into hi-fi, try listening to a decent MD recording or a decent MP3 recording - the MD is clearly better; even my 9-year old deck sounds better than any MP3 I've heard, and I've heard a few). Most consumers don't care much about this (which is why you see so many Ipod owners with the original, nasty, low-quality earphones), but some people do. You can also get MD hifi units to put next to your CD player, which I've yet to see for MP3 (although I'm sure someone has made one somewhere); related to that, for MP3 players, you really need a computer for them to be worthwhile. You may be able to record from line-in on some of them, but that's not what they're designed for. I like listening to music on my stereo, not my computer. I still buy CDs - not MP3s. And I like my portable music player to sound good and be usable with my home stereo and music collection - all this fits much better with MD than it does MP3. Lastly, you exaggerated the price for MD units. I've never paid more than £1 for a minidisc (blank; although the new data versions are about twice that), and I've been using it since 1997. I've also never paid more than £170 for a player - hifi or portable - and for that money I've never had to buy the cheapest one, but have managed to get a good mid-range unit (my MD deck is 9 years old and still sounds comparable to CD, just about). That makes it better value than any MP3 player, for my needs. My current MD portable is about the size of an Ipod nano, give or take, and cost £150 two years ago. It sounds far better, and the battery lasts for days on end. It holds far less music, granted, but I personally prefer listening to an album or 3 several times per day than 200 unique tracks; if I wanted that, I'd listen to radio.
I know none of these reasons are likely to hold much weight with 95% of consumers, but if i was sure the format had a future, I'd still buy it (I'm not, so I don't anymore - my current units will be my last)
You're 100% right in saying that sony messed up with marketing the format, though: first it was touted as a replacement for CD when it should have been replacing cassette tape, then they tried selling pre-recorded discs. When MP3s started getting popular, sony held out and refused to give the few remaining MD fans a proper MP3 compatible unit - as far as I know the ones that currently exist are still crippled with poor software and DRM.
As you pointed out, this is par for the course with sony. MD, Memory Stick, the list goes on. Apart from anything else, it's bad business.
Bonus stuff on a DVD just annoys me. When I get a movie, I just want to watch the movie. I have no interest in how it was made, or feel like hearing the cast and crew talk themselves up. Now, with a DVD, I just want to stick it into the machine, and the movie starts playing - but no, I get all this crap instead, telling me not to pirate and dolby sound commercials, etc... Then, when it is finished, I have to tell it to play the bloody movie - why doesn't it just play it straight away - ridiculous.
Sony - "Hey lets make everyone buy two copies of a movie one on DVD and the other on UMD"
Consumer - "What ?! The PSP has no facility to play a UMD movie and output in a TV?! Well screw buying two copies - I'll buy the DVD, rip it, put it on a memory stick, and still get to watch it on my PSP"
Enough said really.
Compact Flash yes, but you can't blame them for not backing the SD format when SD cards came out after memory stick.
I agree with you on the early md players not being able to playback mp3s. They shouldve made the md players capable of playing back mp3s along with atrac from the start. Also they made minidiscs capable of storing pc data but decided to make the format incompatible with md audio. So that weakened one advantage minidiscs could have had and improved their market share. by the time sony bought both these things to the general md format (hi md) people had moved on the flash memory and hd based players.
sad.
There is still one area where the md format shines and that is in live recording. Dat is dead so maybe minidisc will take its place. Its the best format for stealth concert recordings and taping your own music practices.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/metricmusic
Had achived - it's dead now and they've totally failed to make any inroads into the Japanese MP3 player market.
Don't forget the 3 1/2" floppy disc. Back in 1983 or so, there were three competing formats at that size. One got used by Amstrad and Nintendo, another got used by some typewriter manufacturers, and the third was used... in the new Apple Macintosh. It was also used in an new HP computer at that time, but it was the Macintosh which caused the Sony format (which this time really was the best) to win.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Compared to CDs, minidisc is small
You got that one allright. Although there are mini-cd MP3 players quite cheap that fit that requirement equally well, if not better.
Compared to MP3 players, the sound quality is vastly better
This is just FUD, nothing else. It would depend on the player and the MP3, for sure, but trust me, I can get you an MP3 that you will be just unable to tell from the source, let alone ATRAC. In fact, many listening tests have proven ATRAC to be inferior to MP3 at equal bitrate. And you can choose your bitrate with most MP3 players, hence defining YOURSELF the perfect quality.
You can also get MD hifi units to put next to your CD player, which I've yet to see for MP3
Virtually ANY DVD player on the market will play MP3-CDs. Where have you been in the last 5 years?
I like listening to music on my stereo, not my computer
Dude, there is no comparison on hardware support. MP3 is way out of reach on this area. Most CD/DVD players will play MP3s, even at $30. You are just out of your league out here.
Lastly, you exaggerated the price for MD units
Still, it much more expensive than a an AIWA Z3C, which is a mini-CD MP3 player. $50 (although I don't think you can still find one).
My current MD portable is about the size of an Ipod nano, give or take
This is not one manufactured by SONY then... The MZ-RH10 is 80x19x84 and the Nano is 89x41x7... That's about 5 times bigger !!!! Have you ever had a look at a Nano?
I know none of these reasons are likely to hold much weight with 95% of consumers
Of course, since none of them are valid (or at least still valid). You need to look around: The MP3 world has also evolved in the last 5 years.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Yes, The fact that Minidisc is far more durable than cd's is what has made me really wish sony had actually thought about what they were doing. Minidisc can hold any data, 170? MB worth of data. Had they marketed it not only as a music storage format, but as a general storage format, they would have been unstoppable. In the days of Zip drives and other such wonderful inventions, they had a format that not only was smaller, but had more capacity, and was durable. Oh, and it was much cheaper. Zip disks were quite expensive from what I remember, but maybe that was more due to demand and lack of competition.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
It's true because it has a hard plastic case around it, protecting the disc, and you could throw it across the room or rub sandpaper all over both sides without any worrying about doing any damage to the actual data. This also helped protect it from light, which is anohter thing that is known to damage CDs, especially recordables.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The sound quality issue isn't FUD; ATRAC (in its latest incarnations) is simply a better compression algorithm for audio quality (at comparable file sizes); see here or here for example. Now, I'm not saying you couldn't produce an MP3 which sounds better than ATRAC, but in common usage, ATRAC generally has more fidelity. Saying that, I'm sure as MD drops off as a format and MP3 becomes even more mainstream, MP3 will improve to the point that it overtakes ATRAC - and it's not a huge difference at the moment. But it's big enough for me - I didn't spend money on a decent hifi to waste my time listening to poorly compressed music on it. They're both compromises, but at the moment, in practical usage, ATRAC is less of a compromise than MP3.
A DVD player which plays MP3s is not an "MP3 player" - you'd have to use a computer to burn a CD/DVD specifically for listening on it. This is not the same as having one MD which I can use in a portable player or a deck. How many people do you know who keep their MP3 player contents sync'd with CDs ? If I'm listening to music while walking home, then decide I want to carry on listening to the same music, but on my hifi, I can simply take the disc out of my MD player, put it in my deck, and i'm done. With a computer based format like MP3 I'd need to burn it to a new medium first. Again, a computer is required. I spend all day in front of a computer - when I'm relaxing, listening to music, I don't mind using a cd player, but having to use a computer is an intermediate step i don't want.
Of course, with some portables you get a line-out which means you can plug it into your amp and listen direct from there, but not many come with a line-in which you can record via without using a computer. that's fine for many people, who want to use it via a computer. I don't.
And my MD portable IS a sony - an MZ-E909, at 71.1 x 77.6 x 12.5 mm (2cm smaller in height but 3cm wider, and about 5mm deeper - not that much difference - they both slip into a pocket easily). For that I get around 40 hours battery life (and more like 100 hours if i don't mind one AA battery piggybacking) - a nano gives about 14 hours. The build quality is also much better, IMO (magnesium shell - dropped many times with no ill effects, and even sat on a couple of times). So i get a slightly squarer, slightly thicker body, but only have to charge it every few weeks rather than every few days. Again, not a big deal, but it suits me.
I'm not saying MD/ATRAC is better than MP3 in all it's forms, it isn't - I'm just saying that it isn't quite the dead duck some people would have you believe - at least not in technical terms. For me, it's a great format, let down only by Sony's refusal to make it more mainstream. MP3 on MD could have been huge, if Sony had not been so dense a few years ago. Now anyone who hasn't already invested in the format would be mad to buy into it.
If they had added a UMD slot to the PS3 they could have kept it alive, even if the PS3 UMD slot only played movies not PSP games.
They chose not to do that and so now they have to live with that choice.
I was ready to buy into UMD as a portable movie/game format until they announced that PS3 would NOT have a slot.
Why aren't regular CDs and DVDs like this again?
When I was a kid, I went to my dad's office and he had some sort of digital media drive where you put the CD in a bulky plastic cartidge, and slide the whole cartidge into the PC. Those things stayed in better shape than most of my 3 1/2 floppys.
When I get a movie, I just want to watch the movie.
Damn, the anti-piracy / commercials / trailers that can't be skipped on most DVDs are super-annoying. When the kid wants to see the movie, I've got to stand there and wait for a couple of minutes (pressing FF when the disc deems that I am allowed), and then finally press "play"?
I learned how to use DVDDecrypter / DVD Shrink based on this annoyance alone! Now I tell everyone about it. Way to shoot yourself in the foot, studios!
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
MP3 doesn't retain the very high or very low frequencies as well, in my opinion.
... listen to what you are saying - if you heard someone else make a comment like that wouldnt you think they were a twat?
...
When MiniDisc came out in its first incarnation of Atrak was booed by audiophiles for suffering the EXACT SAME inadequacies (lack of top-end and bottom-end frequencies) as your are describing with regard to MP3, but - just like the Atrack system has improved over the years so has MP3 and the myriad of other codec's floating around these days.
but when I'm sat in a dark room concentrating on the music, or listening to each chord through a decent pair of headphones, it's that sort of thing that i'll pay money to improve. MP3 doesn't cut it for me (yet).
I can understand forking out for a decent music system its easy to tell the difference between a plastic midi-hifi and a decent seperates system!.But your comment is borderline obsessive. You sound so obsessed with the sound quality and the finer intricacies of the sound; Do you actually enjoy music? Good music is good music. Its a shame you judge it chord by chord or frequency by frequency. You sound like an obsessively biased audiophile fanboy who's more interested in tweaking his stereo than actually enjoying music (as opposed to listening to the inadequacies of your set-up). I cant imagine what it must be like to be so distracted by the details of the sound that i couldnt enjoy my music collection!
Nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
>Who the hell would make an MP3 CD? Make a damned ordinary CD... MP3 sounds bloody awful on a decent hifi .id files or whatever show up so you get names of the music your playing on a few supported players.
many advantages for MP3 CD,
I)theirs more sound per bit so
1) more music per disc
2) you can spin the disc slower or less duty cycle.
a) longer battery life
b) less prone to skipping
c) longer cd life (less likely to rub: spinning slower = less momentum, so less disk distortion, and easier to read a scratched disc at slower spin rates
II) more future format flexibilty,
1) mp3 now can support 5.1 surround sound (high bit rate rip from a DVD)
2) categories: my car mp3 disc player supports directories, etc in the mp3 format discs, so you can easily catagories, no such thing on inflexible audio CD format.
3)file name is more supported than the CD name system, the CD burn programs I currnelty use don't even support the dual mode disks you have to create to make those
If Sony wanted to make UMD's popular, they would have included for free a copy of UMD movies with every DVD purchase. Do that for a year or two until they get people interested in the format. Then come out with stand-alone UMD players to connect to TV sets. Agressively market the design (i.e. give it away for almost nothing) for 3rd party players.
Instead, they came up with a format that was only playable on an overpriced game system then charged $20-25 for UMD disks that could be purchased on DVD for $12-15. I got the impression Sony felt they had invested big in the PSP and the business plan said it was going to pay off in 18 months and by-gosh, they were going to make it pay off in 18 months even if it meant absurd revenue predictions from UMD format licensing. Which meant that companies had to add $5 more per disk retail to pay Sony for licensing.
But you know, given that this is Sony, they'll blame *piracy* for the demise of UMD. The thought process will go like this....
"Hmmm, UMD failed because people were ripping DVD movies and putting them on a memory stick. What we *should* have done was to make the PSP so that it was incapable of playing a movie from a memory stick. Also, we should ask the U.S. Congress for laws that will throw people in jail for ripping movies from their DVD. Those dirty pirates."
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you