UMD is dead!

I think UMDs would have been great if they either gave them away on regular DVDs or sold slightly more expensive DVDs with UMD versions. But when these things cost as much if not more than a DVD, you have to wonder who's the moron who came up with this as a viable idea for movie distribution.

Sony's recently planned to do exactly that - bundle UMDs with regular DVD releases, though that probably won't last long, if it even happens now.

That's too bad. I have been doing a lot of flying lately, and watching movies on my PSP was nice.

If they released a writing drive and a writable UMD, that would make sense. Then you could make your own content, like I can for my iPod Video. I love having movies with me, but not being able to put it on the machine yourself is a bit silly.

You can, you just need a big memory stick.

Sometimes you just know the right words to turn a man on, Devin.

Good riddance.

Except for, as in Devin's case, people who travel a lot, I never saw the point of this. Who wants to watch a movie on that little screen? I doubt that everyone who bought the PSP is hopping on a plane every other week. It was just another part of Sony's burning desire for their devices to be everything to everyone. Maybe now they'll focus on games.

Why do people often make these statements like "focus on gaming now". It's not like there's a bunch of people at Sony working on making sure the PSP can play movies that are now free to do games or anything. The thing was designed to play movies at the start, that's done, and the technology to make that possible is not that far off from the technology to allow movie playback.

I travel a lot too, I would love to watch movies on this thing instead of opening up my widescreen laptop. ipod videos are pretty popular and people are watching TV episodes on that, and the screen on this is a 100 times better than on an ipod, so it is a good device for this function. What sucks is the delivery method for the movies, if Sony had it's act together, it would have been something like itunes a cheap pay per download model.

As it is ironically, the failure of UMD as a media will make people rip their DVDs so they can watch these on memory sticks. Which makes more sense, you don't want to pay for the same movie multiple times.

What he means is, putting it all out to make an actual dedicated gaming machine that isn't trying to cook toast and answer your email all at the same time. That's why the GB is still the best handheld. All it does is play games, and it does it very well.

The PS2 plays movies too and it didn't do that bad. I agree with more and better games is better, I just don't think for a second that because some UMD movies are not going to be produced, that now they have more resources left for gaming.

The actual result could be the opposite btw, if they lose a lot of money from not selling UMD movies, the price of the games might go up (or the unit's price won't go down). We'll see, since it's supposed to go to $200 (a much more reasonable price).

Hmmmm. I hope I can get some of the UMD's on discount now if stores are going to be dumping them. Like someone said above, my problem is the fact that they cost as much as a DVD. I don't have enough money for a large (gig or more) memory stick either. But if I could get a few cheap, that would be cool. As of right now, I just use a portable DVD player on trips. It works just fine. I only have to worry about skipping if I hit turbulance.

I can understand not giving a damn about a particular product, but "good riddance"? Were UMDs interfering in your life somehow?

Wait, we found the UMDs after all?

I don't want a dedicated gaming machine. It makes no sense to have a dedicated gaming machine anymore.

Except, y'know, to play games. Which might be why Nintendo DS is doing better than the PSP.

That said, I hope the UMD market manages to stay around. The simple fact that I don't spin the discs doesn't mean it should be a "good riddance" situation. I found the (admittedly gorgeous) screen too small to really enjoy any films. But if some people, like Devin, use it on long flights and such, the product should still be provided.

Or they should release incredibly cheap 4GB memory sticks.

My PSP plays games. Maybe you bought the wrong one?

I bought the one with Grand Theft Auto, thought the controls were absolute shit, and sold it. I might as well type this with a lisp, but I'm having more fun with Super Princess Peach than any PSP game I've played. Of course, I'm a Nintendo whore.

Your problem is with the games, not the machine, I would assume. I mean, some people here seem to be complaining that the PSP has too much functionality.

I don't know about that. I'm kind of unexcited by Sony's strategy of including everything but the kitchen sink and then charging an arm and a leg for it (how's that for mixed metaphors?) Of course, as soon as a widescreen iPod comes out, I'm going eat my words somewhat.

Sony reminds me of Rand Peltzer and the Bathroom Buddy.

That's the sound of a reference going over my head.

You've seen GREMLINS, right?

The PSP is not doing well? Why, did somebody hurt it's feelings?

If a device includes an optical drive, a microprocessor and some kind of graphics hardware, it can play back movies in one format or another.

I believe SHREK is out for the DS or the Advance or something. Saw a big ad at the Times Square Toys R Us.

This, and the Bathroom Buddy quote both nail why I'm not gonna be sorry to see this format go.

When I see an entire wall of movies I already own in a format nobody uses next to a teensy section full of games nobody wants, all for a price there's no way in hell I'd be willing to pay, it's hard to feel like Sony's got their priorities straight for any of these concepts.

I already own an all in one device that lets me play music, movies, games, share photos, talk to people, and remember addresses and phone numbers. This device is called a computer.

Not in at least a decade. But I've seen the sequel a bunch if times between then... (odd.) After the reminder, it sounds familiar now.

I dont have one of these gadgets, but it seems like SONY had its head buried in the ground from the get go, Exspensive system, games and a medicore game line up with out too much 3rd party support. At least thats what it seems like to me.
SONY should have looked at Atari as an example as to how to do it all wrong. Does anyone remember the Lynx?

UMD would have sold better they weren't so expensive.

Additionally, neither dedicated gaming systems nor multi-purpose systems are inherently superior to the other. Practicality, functionality and quality are the standards by which both ultimately live or die. The Sega Game Gear was a dedicated gaming device, but it was fucking massive and ate new batteries in about four hours.

Similarly, with the PSP, UMD discs were occupying shelf space next to a similar product, DVDs, offering the same product but at a higher price. Most customers aren't going to see the benefit to that unless they travel all the time like Devin.

Any system, no matter what it offers, has to make sure its offerings are sensible to customers and of quality, or it will fail.

I do, it was a great system, I still have mine around. It was way too far ahead of it's time as far as the technology went, and the price and power consumption killed it.

However, the Lynx was pretty much a gaming system, so seing that people here are complaining that *gasp* the PSP can do a bit more than games, I'm not sure if they're comparable.

You guy do know that in the US the PSP is selling fine right?

But is "fine" good enough for Sony?

In any case, it's not the actual machine, but rather the UMD which Sony seem to have put a lot of effort into, which is apparently not doing fine.

You're right. When I buy these things, whether it's a DS or PSP or whatever comes next, I look at it primarily as a games machine. There can be other features, but its primary function is to play videogames. When the games fail, I don't tend to look kindly towards it. PSP's a nifty piece of hardware (and the screen is gorgeous), but the games aren't good enough and the UMD movies are too expensive.

That said, if Sony put out a movie-only PSP for $150 with a bigger screen, I might pick that up. Am I a hypocrite or what?

Don't know, but this wouldn't make any sense. Again, it's not like the movie functions have affected the device that much in the first place.

The PSP is a wonder of a machine, and the extent to which it can be hacked, upgraded, and made to do things sony either didn't think of or didn't intend or hasn't gotten to yet is mind-boggling. I've watched movies on a plane on mine, played games of course, but I've also checked my email in an airport, improvised a set of live music on it using a homebrew drum machine application, taken pictures of my family on trips to show friends, and listened to hours of mp3s... and I don't even fuck with it that much. The possibilities are phenomenal, and if UMD dies, the PSP and the homebrew movement will continue to thrive that much more. Plus, you can squeeze a feature length film on a 256 meg stick, not to mention you can fairly easily make a converter to use the cheaper memory sticks with the psp, so what's not to like?

I was trying to say that I don't think the PSP works very well at all as a game machine, but it does have potential as a movie device if Sony would make the screen bigger. That said, it was theoretical only -- I don't anticipate Sony doing anything like that.

I don't understand this "doesn't work as a game machine" nonsense. It plays games, right? Am I wrong or did you say that you played one game on the thing? Maybe New York is better than where you live, but here the stores have a number of games for the system.

I think most people's complaint is not with the number of games, but the games themselves. There's an overwhelming number of remakes, ports and handheld versions of old standards. It's hard to get excited about playing yet another version of something I've played before just because I can do it on the bus. The DS, on the other hand, has a number of games that not only are unavailable anywhere else, but couldn't be played on any other device because of the unique functions. It makes it a more exciting device game-wise.

And it's not so much that the complaint is that the PSP has too much functionality. It's that if they had concentrated on the gaming aspect, the thing might not be so freaking expensive. And it's not as if it does these side things all that well. How many people interested in portable music don't have an iPod at this point?

Yah, in theory. But when a machine is engineered and marketed as a swiss entertainment device, the reality ends up a little muddled if the ingredients aren't perfect. At least the PSP won't end up like the Atari Lynx or Apple Newton.

Can you point to us how the movie watching aspect makes it significantly more expensive?

Which BTW the machine is dropping in price supposedly this year, at which point I might get it. Just think that for $250 with no games, it's always been a no deal for me, even if I think it's a great device.

Quite frankly, the homebrew/emulation stuff is still the most interesting aspect of that system.

If Sony was smart, they'd stop seeing this stuff as a threat, and start seeing it as a very clear signal of what their customers really want from this system.

And for the record, yes, the PSP's doing just fine in terms of hardware sales. They also don't make much of a profit from hardware. UMD movies, games, and accessories are where Sony intended to turn profit, none of which have been selling as well as Sony would like, memory sticks being the sole exception.

Meanwhile, Nintendo's sold about the same number of systems (last i checked, it's something like 14 million DSs vs 15 million PSPs), but once again, has a stranglehold on software. Not to mention, they still make a profit on all of it.

Riiiiiight......

Again, I understand not being interested in a particular piece of hardware, but A) what possible difference does it make if Nintendo outsells the PSP? and B) if you don't own a PSP, why would you even give a shit about UMDs?

I mean, what is it about UMDs failing to catch on makes you happy? It's weird.

Primarily, because despite my bitching about it, the PSP has just a shitload of potential, not only as a game machine, but the homebrew stuff is proving that it could have plenty of peripheral uses that aren't an exercise in redundancy.

Instead, Sony chose to waste time on a crap video format, and ports that were done better on its big console brother, and doing their best to kill the great little homebrew commnity that's sprouted up.

I'm happy the format flopped because just maybe, it'll light a fire under Sony's ass to realize that they're currently squandering that system's potential, and that even with all the peripheral possibilities, it should be a game system first and foremost. Nintendo gets that, and they're reaping the benefits. Sony currently doesn't, and they have a failed video format and people hacking their system to show for it.

For my part, I'm happy for UMD movies to disappear because they're landfill. They replicate an existing product with fewer features at the same price. To me, they've never justtified their existence. I travel lots and the only times I've watched a UMD movie on my PSP it was essentially a novelty. (Spider-Man 2, when the system was new, and a spare copy of Hellboy Nick gave me.)

It's money, shelf space and raw materials that can be better used for something else.

And if you buy four or five movie UMDs, you can afford a memory stick large enough to rip movies to.

I know this thread has been dead for quite a while, but I thought I'd throw in my two cents anyway and let you guys know about an alternative option for getting movies onto your PSP (more about this later). I've been predicting the demise of UMD since the PSP first came out here in Japan. As soon as Sony declared that it would be a playback only format, I knew that it was going to fail. I mean, who the hell wants to buy two copies of the same movie? I'm assuming here that if you like a movie enough to buy it on UMD, you probably double-dipped on DVD too. Add to that the fact that the resolution on UMD movies is so limited, it could never be practical as a home playback format. Besides, Sony was never going to make a UMD playback deck for home use anyway. All these factors combined just made UMD too restrictive a format to make much sense from a consumer standpoint. Depending on a single consumer device to sustain a media format was just plain stupid.

Because I'm not much of a gaming person, I get far more functionality from my Windows Mobile PDA. I just rip a bunch of movies or TV shows I want to watch onto a 4 GB Microdrive (which you can get for less than $120, or half the price of a comparable Memory Stick) and watch them on the train or when I'm on a flight. The VGA screen gives me picture quality with roughly the same resolution and quality as the PSP, and I can use the same device to listen to music, browse the Internet (wifi AND bluetooth are built in), edit Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents, connect to and control my home PC (via GoToMyPC), send and receive e-mail, IM, and lots more. Unlike the PSP which is limited to a single proprietary video playback format (H.264), I can watch AVI, MOV, MPEG, MPEG4, Divx, and Xvid files using a kickass FREE software program called The Core Pocket Media Player. For me, this device serves all my media needs with the added potential to upgrade features via new software and built-in Compact Flash AND SD card slots for hardware expansion. And because the interface is basically a simplified Windows, even my wife had no problem adapting to it.

Ok, enough preaching. Like I said earlier, all is not lost for PSP video lovers. There is an alternative for getting movies from your DVDs to a memory stick for playback on your PSP. Best of all, you can do this without spending hours waiting for your PC to rip and save the file. A company called Neuros has what is essentially a memory stick video recorder that can record directly from any DVD player or VCR in real time via analog audio/video inputs. Heres the link for their official website:

http://www.neurosaudio.com/store/pro...&cookie_test=1

From what I've heard so far, it does a pretty good job, although there are some minor aspect ratio bugs that need to be ironed out. Hopefully this can be addressed by firmware upgrades later. I also recently learned that Sony is coming up with a similar product, maybe in response to the imminent death of UMD:

http://www.pspfanboy.com/2006/03/16/...-duo-recorder/

If everyone already knows about this gear already, my apologies. If not, I hope you find this helpful.