Everyone Hates UMD

PSP-Fanboy writes "More bad news for the UMD, which is already dying a speedy death at retail: not only are stores not stocking them, but no one really wants to buy UMD movies either. Although 40% of PSP owners claimed UMD media was a big reason why they plopped down a few hundred on Sony's pixel-spurting game brick, the complaint from actual owners is there just isn't anything worth goddamn buying on UMD."

Comments

Well, no, I don't

[mobby_6kl]

I just don't give a shit.

But if I did, I wouldn't expect them to make any movies just for the (U|W)MD, so the only problem would be price.

Re:Wow, how strange...

[generic-man]

You mean ATRAC3. AAC is what Apple licensed and rips to by default in iTunes, making song files incompatible with any portable player other than an iPod.

Re:Wow, how strange...

[Dis*abstraction]

I think you might have been referring to Sony's ATRAC, which was the format used on Minidiscs. AAC is MPEG-4 Audio.

That said, the Zen doesn't play AAC, seriously? Why does everyone say it's more "featureful" than the iPod?

Re:Wow, how strange...

[mrchaotica]

AAC is what Apple licensed and rips to by default in iTunes, making song files incompatible with any portable player other than an iPod.

That's a lie. AAC is just another name for "MPEG-4 Audio" (whereas MP3 is "MPEG-1 Layer 3"). There's no reason why any other portable audio player couldn't choose to support AAC; all they'd have to do is licsense it (from the MPEG people, not Apple).

The things that only work in iPods are files "protected" by FairPlay DRM, and those only come from iTMS -- iTunes defaults to unprotected AAC for ripping.

Re:PSP in general was just a huge mistake

[mrchaotica]

I keep wondering how public perception of the Blu-Ray and PS3 would have been different had the PSP just never happened.

I think it would still be pretty bad, because even if there was no PSP or UMD, there was still Beta, MiniDisc, ATRAC3, MemoryStick, DRM, rootkits, etc.

Re:Wow, how strange...

[booch]

The MiniDisc format was not completely proprietary. It was developed by Sony, but licensed to nearly all of the major audio equipment companies. Over 20 manufacturers made MD players and records.

Related news: 4GB Memory Stick Duo now available

[MojoStan]

I'm surprised TFA didn't mention UMD's competition from high-capacity memory cards for playing movies. Note that the max capacity of UMD is 1.8GB and the PSP has a flash memory card slot for Sony's Memory Stick Pro Duo format. Movies can be played from these memory cards and several easy-to-use utilities exist for ripping DVDs and encoding into MPEG-4 at the PSP's 480x272 resolution.

Movies on memory cards don't have DVD-like menus like UMD movies do. However, I'm sure many users like the memory card's rewritability, PC compatibility, and ability to use existing DVDs to make PSP movies.

4GB Memory Stick Duo cards were released this month and Dell sells it for $136 (most sellers price it around $200). 2GB Memory Stick Duos have fallen to around $80-$90.

Also, the PSP displays photos and plays MP3 and AAC. UMD is not dead because they distribute their games on it. Remember, the PSP actually plays games, too.

(-8 Million, Ignorant)

[tm2b]

making song files incompatible with any portable player other than an iPod.

What in the blue bloody hell is wrong with people that they keep claiming this?

ONCE AGAIN: AAC is the standard for MPEG4 audio, every bit as open as MP3 (both encumbered by licensed IP, less open than Ogg Vorbis). It's Apple's "Fair Play" DRM, wrapped around the AAC format, that's exclusive to the Apple iPods and the Motorola ROKR (excusably, people also like to forget that beast). Note that Fair Play is not a factor when you rip the songs yourself.

AAC is supported by tons of players, including (just from a quick Google) the Sony Network Walkman and the Viliv P1. Hell, there's a press release from 2000 when Toshiba first announced theirs.

I'm sure there are tons more, AAC support is integrated in a number of the chipsets available now.

Jackass.

Re:What's new?

[Keen Anthony]

UMD failed because there is nothing worthwile to watch anymore; I am down to watching one movie a week and I still go to Blockbuster and spend most of my time wondering who approved a movie where Carrot Top is the President.

The artistic quality of the content has never had anything to do with adoption of the medium. Eight Track didn't die because of the success of K.C. and the Sunshine Band. UMD just offered very little value proposition. The first rule of any medium is that it be useful. To the consumer, UMD looks like DVDs, acts like DVDs, but is not DVDs; and yet does not offer more value over a DVD. UMD is portable sure, but so is MPEG4, and MPEG4 doesn't require any special media for DRM-protected distribution. UMD was limited to the PSP and a few other Sony products, so consumers were forced to weigh the ubiquity of DVDs vs. the exclusivity of the UMD. Arguably, even Video on GBA seemed more intriguing.

Unless movies suddenly start improving I suspect that both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD will fail to become adopted because people have better things to do than watch third rate movies staring Paris Hilton.

I think we're looking at a VHS vs. Betamax type of war with Blue-Ray and HD-DVD. I'm placing my money on HD-DVD dominating personally. It will take a while for either to get adopted just because of the heavy investment in DVD. Then it will play out just like it did with the shift from VHS to DVD and audio cassette to CD. As soon as we start seeing entire back-catalogs released on HD-DVD/Blue-Ray there will be a compelling reason to stop collecting DVDs and start collecting the new discs.

Porn. That what drives innovation in video technologies. The porn industry did it all before anyone did. VHS, VideoCD, DVD, streaming video, video on demand - all of it. Many people don't realize that Hollywood does watch what Porn Valley does when it comes to content distribution. Had consumers been able to get their erotica on UMD, who knows?

Re:You have misinterpeted it

[vertinox]

I know this is offtopic, but when they said "Don't take the lord's name in vain!" they weren't talking about litterally saying "Don't say his name in combination of a curse word!"

Rather they meant, don't do things in God's name that isn't in God's name.

You know... Like pass law's in the name of God. Wage a war in God's name. Tell everyone God told you to have them give you their money so you can wallow in women and wine when God really didn't tell you that. Things like that...

The phrase God damnit is more or less from "God damn's (something)" or something like excommunicating some one to an eternal damnation in hell.

Truth be told... God is from the old English/German word acenstory of Goden, Gud, or Gott (etc) and if you were going to take the Bible literally you'd have to say "Yaweh damnit!" or "Jehovah damnit!" to take god's true name in vain. Because God really isn't God's true name in a sense but rather a reference to the only god in the universe.

However for some reason it doesn't roll off the tongue as nice when you say "Yaweh damnit!"