What is Digg?76 Comments
- Nobi-Wan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+42Priced higher than DVD's with less content...yes UMD's were dead before PSP's hit the shelves. What really sealed the deal is when people (very quickly) realized that it was extremely easy to put DVD's that you already own on a memory stick (which you have effectively proven, Neo).
As for the movie downloading service...I doubt that it will take off. Why are people going to pay for DRM'ed to death movies from Sony? - ahhell, on 10/12/2007, -6/+31Another Sony format success!!!!
Everyone cheer! - mrdctaylor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22Shame on Sony for their continuing practice of proprietary formats. I'm glad to see UMD going downhill. That's why I don't buy Sony products. Memory Sticks are b.s. when everyone else uses SD cards. Unless you buy Sony EVERYTHING, it is a pain in the butt.
- Zippo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Excellent idea! Thanks!
Best regards and buy our stuff,
Management of Sony Entertainment - Crass22, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15Ahhh another piece to add to the collection, UMD looks perfect next to a Beta-max cassete and mini-disc music player.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12Beta Down, Mini Disc Down, Magic Gate Down, UMD Down, Next up!
You guessed it! Blueray :) - lickmygiggle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Hopefully we won't need the PS3 to buy movies too.
- ayeroxor, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11"Priced higher than DVD's with less content...yes UMD's were dead before PSP's hit the shelves."
I just want to make sure everybody understands this: SONY wants to strangle their own customers. They want to force you to use media that only sony can make or license others to make. They wanted to control your minidiscs. They wanted to control your UMD discs. Their cameras only take Sony's proprietary Memory Sticks. Their CD recorders only take Sony co-designed "Music CD" blanks, with a generation control bit.
SONY is makes high-quality hardware, but the company has a ***** attitude that reveals itself in 2 glaring ways:
1) The customer is a filthy little thief that needs to be contained.
---Let me refer back to the "music CD" aspect above. Some friends of mine give voice lessons, and they wanted to start recording the lessons on disc instead of casette. They got a Sony recorder and it refused to use any disc that wasn't sony-blessed. So they got a different one. Sony's foot self-shot once again.
2) Now that the customer is stupid enough to buy our product, lets make money off of them since they have nowhere else to go.
---The cheapest 2gig memory stick on pricewatch.com is about $60.00. The cheapest 2gig Compact Flash is $30. Thanks for pocketing my money now that I have to give it to you, sony.
Knowing that Sony would gladly lose millions (billions?) of dollars on failed initiatives to contain you, when you have a choice between sony or any other brand in the world, why pick Sony? Clearly this doesn't apply to the PSP as a gaming device, but if bought it thinking the movies thing was going to work, you clearly haven't been paying attention to Sony for the past, oh, 3 decades. - LycoLoco, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10It's not just a "pain in the butt" - it's an entire marketing scheme. My girlfriend owns a Sony digital camera right now and it broke. She's got a 1 gig Sony Memory card that came with the camera. Now she wants another Sony camera because then she won't have to buy an SD memory card. Proprietary formats lock you into a brand, which is why Sony wants Blu-Ray to succeed.
- LycoLoco, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9"Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight... because Gameboy, the DS, and every other handheld video game system uses a freely available format."
Nintendo used those formats because they don't suck up battery life like UMD does and the load times are near instantaneous. You wouldn't be able to play PSP games on a DS or vice versa even if they did use the same format, just like you can't play PS2 games on an Xbox, even though they both used DVDs. Sony created UMD because they wanted another outlet for their movie subdivision. End of story. - Xion, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7The "Caps Lock" key is located on the far left of your keyboard right below "Tab" perhaps turning this feature off would make you look like less of an ass.
- whiledo, on 03/25/2009, -0/+7@turbo
None of those other handhelds played movies, so your argument isn't really applicable. No one faults game companies for using proprietary formats for their games that only play on the single piece of hardware. The big problem here is that they used proprietary formats for no good reason. - Pundan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6In 1979 Philips and Sony together invented the CD-ROM (still used today).
In 1983 Sony introduced 90mm micro floppy diskettes (better known as 3.5-inch floppy disks).
In 1985 Sony launched their Handycam products and the Video8 format. Video8 became popular in the consumer camcorder market.
In 1990 Philips and Sony made the CD-R (Still used today, although it's on the end of it's run).
Sony is currently touting its Blu-ray Disc optical disc format, which is likely to compete with Toshiba's HD DVD. As of quarter one of 2006, Blu-ray Disc has the backing of every major motion picture studio except Universal.
You can't really blame a company for being inventive. At least there are companies out there that tries to keep technology going forward. And sure, sometimes it works out, sometimes it don't. - CritterNYC, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"And SD ain't gonna be around forever. They are already pushing SDHC as the next SD card. Hopefully they will be backward compatable... but this proves there will always be another memory card format."
The big difference is that SD was designed and licensed to be a standard that multiple manufacturers can use. And nearly every consumer digital camera takes SD with two exceptions. Fuji with its proprietary xD (the reason I avoided buying a Fuji camera I was checking out). And Sony with its proprietary Memory Sticks. If you have lots of either memory card formats... you have no choice about who to but a digital camera from. And, of course, you'll be limited to other devices that support them. Mentioning Compact Flash is just silly as that's targeted at a different market (professional and prosumer cameras)... but you'll note that it's used across all manufacturers in that market, too.
For any consumer-level device, SD cards are *THE* format. My Avaretec laptop has an SD card reader built into it. My buddy's Panasonic plasma TV has an SD card reader built into it. My Nintendo Wii has an SD card reader built into it. My Treo 680 smartphone has an SD card reader built into it (so did my old Palm Tungsten E). And, my digital camera takes SD cards. NONE of those devices take memory sticks. Everyone in consumer electronics supports SD cards except for proprietary-format-obsessed Sony.
Proprietary formats are lame. Always have been. Always will be. And a company like Sony will always attempt to wield them over markets to make a few extra bucks. - probune, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5UMD as a gaming format on a portable isn't exactly working out so well either. The drive drains the battery and provides the horrendous load times we've seen from PSP games. So, in other words, UMD wasn't really that great of an idea for games OR movies.
- ptaylor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@ theduck
I'm a PSP owner and I love the PSP's potential. It is a great product, just from from the wrong company. Sony has a history of coming out with some hot products, but they are presented to the public in the most offensive way. The marketing and decisions in how products are launched is really f'ed up! Take the PSP for instance. Why not add a SD card slot!? WTF! Then Sony creates Memory duo cards, fine. But no matter how big the card is, the resolution will never match that of a UMD disk. Sony coded that little spoiler in there. I bought a Black Hawk Down UMD last holiday season and it showed a great picture, but cost me $15! I sold it on Half.com because there wasn't anything else to do with the disk but watch the movie (I can't watch that movie over and over again). I ripped my Spiderman 2 and Harold and Kumar movies (movies that I don't mind seeing repeatedly) and put it on my SanDisk duo (that's another thing, if you make a proprietary product, don't let another company make it way better than you) card, and even though I love those movies, the resolution is bad compared to the UMD. So now, I only use my Duo card to store homebrew, pics and music. The PSP doesn't have any exclusive games that will sell the system, but the features of the PSP are better than the DS. Playing Madden or SOCOM over a wifi connection is enough for me. I also love the PSP Radio homebrew where I can use the PSP as an Internet radio walkman.
But in my opinion, the PSP should not still be $199, but $150, or less. I think that $50 of the $199 is due to PSP's multimedia (mainly movie playing) features (and who really use that Location Free thing anyway? Just use Orb for free). But as I said, it's really not all of that. The picture is great and the sound is great on UMDs, but $15+ for a UMD sucks. Sorry, duck71 but I have to disagree, it is Sony's fault for the price of the UMDs. It's their format and the disks themselves looks like they are more expensive to operate (create, burn and package) than regular DVDs. As a matter of fact, my madden UMD's clear plastic has separated from the hard edge casing. So the UMD is expensive and fragile. Nice!
I really believe that the PSP IS the best handheld game player on the market now. But Sony really is not making it as attractive to the public as it should. - turbochop, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4As a movie format? Never.
- NeoTechni, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"I tested PSP games awhile back and they seemed to be little more than bloated cell-phone games"
I could see you claiming DS games are, but not PSP games. - awhite2600, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Of course the downloaded movies will contain large amounts of DRM. Gotta keep the public honest. After all we are all pirates....
- mandarin, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6You mean you have Sony branded ballhair sucker/trimmer EK-3221 ?
- NeoTechni, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"No need to apologize for disagreeing with me. We are free to agree with or disagree with anyone"
I dugg you up for not being a jackass like most people - Nobi-Wan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4What may have saved the UMD format is if they were in the price range of $5...$10 at the most. It was just such an obvious ploy to create more cashflow that backfired on them in the end. Yes I have a few UMD's for my PSP, though, but I got them for like $4 at some used video store.
- aegis9975, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4>>Um, we've been able to download movies to PSP since the day it came out, that doesn't make UMD dead.
UMD as a movie format is dead. Wasn't a good idea to begin with, but as a game format its pretty effective. UMD itself is basically a mini-DVD and is dirt cheap to make 1.8GB discs, for the graphics PSP presents and relatively high cost of development compared to the DS, having cheap optical storage does have its benefits over flash memory. - kilodelta, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4how is the EK-3221?
i've got the EK-3120, and it really roughs up the ballbag. - EtherGnat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3A few thoughts:
1. The argument Sony would have preferred to use a non-proprietary format is bogus. Sony *loves* formats they conrol. Witness Betamax, Blu-Ray, Mini-Disc, Memory Stick, and others.
2. While I don't necessarily fault Sony for releasing a proprietary format it would have been much more useful to have set top players as well. 1.8GB should have been plenty for a 720x480 DivX file plus a PSP native resolution file.
3. For low quality movies playable only on a portable device the movies were too expensive.
4. It was obvious from the start the movies would only appeal to a small-medium subset of PSP owners. That demographic is far too small to sustain sales necessary for retail outlets to carry the movies.
The big problem isn't the proprietary format--the problem is the format sucked for just about everybody but Sony. - Bibimbap, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5The funny this is beta was higher quality than vhs. Minidisc was successful outside of North America.
- MScrip, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Is there an official list of all the failed formats that Sony is responsible for?"
Do you mean "commercial failure" in that list? Because they all have some use in this world.
Betamax - Still used in professional video/news
MiniDisc - Bad for buying music... but the first way to digitally record music... way before CD burners
Memory Sticks - Sony sells a ***** of digital cameras... 1 out of 3 digital cameras sold is a Sony
UMD - PSP games
BluRay - too early to say... but PC storage looks promising - Justin6512, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2didn't apple do this in the first place when they started to offer movies
- staticneuron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Take the PSP for instance. Why not add a SD card slot!? "
Why should they? Do you seriously think if nintendo had their own format they would be doing anything different? The UMD's were expensive for movies but what on earth makes you think the price of the PSP is enhanced by software? The PSP is literally a minuature PS2 and I am pretty sure it cost more to make the PSP than a PS2. The PSP has a specialized chip that can render Non-uniform rational B-splines(most likley put to use in Loco roco. I wonder how much that one cost them as well. It's pretty heavy handed to knock a company that wants to support the other parts of their company. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Pundan,
It's not the studios that will decide the format war. The people will decide the war.
Mom and Pops, who have been buying this new fangled 'dvd' for the past 10 years, and are interested in getting HD movies are not going to buy "blueray".
They are going to see HDDVD which is a familiar name and obvious choice and buy that. They are not technical, and will go with what sounds logical.
They want to buy DVD movies in HD. HDDVD is only a name, but that alone will win it the war. Technical ***** aside, most people wont care.
Blueray will fail. Just like Beta. - theduck71, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7MrDc, obviously you are not a fan of Sony, and thats your right, however, what do you think would have been a good format for the PSP? Obviously a DVD/CD would have been way to big to put in the PSP. I am sure Sony, would have loved to use an existing format that would have worked with the PSP, it would make it more popular. However, that just wasnt possible for the size of the machine.(unless you want to carry around a portable DVD player, and who the heck wants that? It wouldnt be no where near as portable)
- MScrip, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"My girlfriend owns a Sony digital camera right now and it broke. She's got a 1 gig Sony Memory card that came with the camera. Now she wants another Sony camera because then she won't have to buy an SD memory card. Proprietary formats lock you into a brand."
So, if you have SD cards, will you be forced to buy SD card cameras forever? I don't think the memory card dictates camera purchases. In you girlfriend's case, maybe, but usually when people buy their next camera, they buy whetever card it takes.
And SD ain't gonna be around forever. They are already pushing SDHC as the next SD card. Hopefully they will be backward compatable... but this proves there will always be another memory card format.
Say you have a Canon Elph, and you've outgrown it. You want a Canon Rebel XTi SLR. Whoops... it takes CompactFlash. And Fuji/Olympus cameras use xD cards. Yikes.
I didn't wanna buy a DVD player because of all my VHS tapes... riiiight. - theduck71, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2INfa, I take it you do not own a video IPOD, or a portable DVD player? That was the idea behind it. You may want to read my post to PTTaylor. I think I covered a little of what you said in this post.
- theduck71, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2PTtaylor, all valid points. However I have not come across the problem with the UMD cartridge that you have had. I will keep a heads up on it. No need to apologize for disagreeing with me. We are free to agree with or disagree with anyone. Its knowledge that makes the difference. You presented a well thought out argument, and presented it thoughtfully. Never apologize for your stance on anything. (As long as your educated on the subject, just don't repeat something you heard, and given no thought to what was said)
- enforcerpsu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I just had to say...
that was ***** hilarious. - kayjay, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1in the long run movies, games and music will be destributed DIGITALLY.
that means theres no place for DVDs,Blu-Rays, HD-DVDs,CD-ROMs etc.
dvd/blu-ray media will solely be used for recording your own stuff or backups of downloaded stuff. - MikeMania, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@MScrip
Um, if you haven't noticed, Memory Sticks only work with what brand of camera? Sony? oh!
I'm pretty sure when you say limited to SD cameras, you know you are talking about over at least a dozen possible brands right?
And I don't doubt that this will also be the case with the SDHC format. - theduck71, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Fani, all of your points are valid, except for the last one 6. Touche' As far as proprietary format, that just doesn't fly. Everyone uses their own proprietary format. You cant slap a Gamecube disk into a PS2/Xbox and play it. It just wont work. As for the cartridge idea, that was for obvious reasons. I live out of my car, and have a portable PS2 with LCD screen. I have many DVD/PS2 games in my car in my CD holder, and I try to take very good care of them. However, no matter how careful I am, I still get more scratches on those DVD/Games than I do when I had them in the house. My PSP Games/Movies are virtually scratch free.
- fani, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5UMD has gone the way of the dodo.
Where they failed -
1. U in the UMD doesn't mean UNIVERSAL. Sheesh.
2. You could easily put a movie on a memory stick rendering the UMD movies moot
3. UMD movies cost almost as much or more than regular DVD and contained almost no extras
4. No blank UMD's or RW UMD's so people could make their own.
5. Stupid cartridge design. Its protects the UMD, but people now know how to protect them since they're used to CD's and DVD's
6. Proprietary Sony format.
I for one, hated the UMD since its release and used to smirk seeing people buy the UMD movies when it first came out. Sony has an excellent track record with its proprietary stuff. It released crowd lovers like Betamax, MiniDisc, ATRAC format and now UMD. Bravo Sony, Bravo. - probune, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@ Neotechni
Are you serious? PSP games have no load times? Games like Lumines and Tekken: Dark Resurrection that have short/no load times are the exception, not the rule. And games that push the system like Liberty City Stories drain the battery pretty quickly from spinning the UMD. I have no idea what you're talking about. - phort99, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Bring on the DRM!
Seriously, Sony, if somebody's gonna pirate a movie for his PSP he's gonna do it in a way that isn't DRM'd to death. Take it easy on us for once. - Necraz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Since when was the UMD alive?
- staticneuron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@Nobi-Wan
I have owned two different PSP's since it launched. I have played an other friends (white) PSP's. After playing for quite some time on at least 7 different PSP's it leads me to wonder, what exactly are you talking about. I have never experienced a hot battery on any of them and I have never really heard that complaint before. Do "you" really own a PSP? - Xion, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I don't know why everyone believes that the PSP is failing so miserably. The total US installed base of the PSP is 5.7 million versus the Nintendo DS at 7.6. That is by no means a "slow, painful, anguish filled, lack-luster titled death", in fact with MGS Portable Ops on the system now, and the remake of Final Fantasy Tactics on the way; expect the PSP to give the DS a run for its money. UMD movies are dead, UMD games however are just starting to prove themselves, and therefor the format is not dead.
Here's where I got the sales numbers.
http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=14737 - theduck71, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@skywake The Mini DVD still does not carry the capacity as they have with the UMD. I was thinking of that when I posted originally. The Mini DVD today will store 1.4 GB per side. http://www.memorex.com/html/newsroom_newprod_detail.php?FID=175&PID=1072 When the PSP was being designed, I am guessing that the storage was even less. However, even if it was still the 1.4 GB as it is today, its still 1/5 less than UMD at 1.8.
@10011 While havening a built in hard drive would have been great, could you imagine what the price would have been?? Think in the $400+ range. People are pissed about the PS3 going for $600, could you imagine paying $400+ just to walk out the door for a hand held gaming system? - archer1012, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Yeah, but untill then you can still get movies for your PSP. "Hello"
http://watch-dogreviews.com/pspdownloads.html - staticneuron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"A few thoughts:
1. The argument Sony would have preferred to use a non-proprietary format is bogus. Sony *loves* formats they conrol. Witness Betamax, Blu-Ray, Mini-Disc, Memory Stick, and others.
2. While I don't necessarily fault Sony for releasing a proprietary format it would have been much more useful to have set top players as well. 1.8GB should have been plenty for a 720x480 DivX file plus a PSP native resolution file.
3. For low quality movies playable only on a portable device the movies were too expensive.
4. It was obvious from the start the movies would only appeal to a small-medium subset of PSP owners. That demographic is far too small to sustain sales necessary for retail outlets to carry the movies.
The big problem isn't the proprietary format--the problem is the format sucked for just about everybody but Sony."
I agree with all your points, especially about UMD being to expensive. It would have made more sense if the movies were alot cheaper but at teh same token I really do not get how sony is in the wrong for having thier own media formats work in thier own devices. The horror.... you have to buy a sony product to work in another sony product?!?!??! Damn them!!!! Even as such the UMD made sense for the psp to deliver games on. Not because they like proprietary media formats. The PS1 was cd based and the PS2 was DVD based. It is more cost effective to make games on an open format. Both of them worked very well for video games. So it looks like they chose a format that works best with the games. If they want to try to sneak in movie formats... more power to them. - skywake, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@theduck71
they could have used standard Mini-DVD's
just as cheap... just as small
plus it could let you play the movies in a standard DVD player
of course... it wouldn't have worked,
because according to SONY everyone would start pirating the movies and pirating the games for it.
then again... they did include a way to do that anyways... they just wanted to fuk the consumer....
if you are going to take on Nintendo in the portable market... you need to do better then that SONY! - Nobi-Wan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3@ ayeroxor
You've hit the nail on the head describing Sony. And don't forget the whole rootkit disaster. Didn't a Sony exec stupidly state to the effect of "The average consumer doesn't know what a rootkit is, so what would they care?"
Yes, they don't look at the consumer as someone to make a cool product for, they look at us as sheep and want to fleece us as often and as much as possible if they can corral us in the right market.
This is exactly why Blu-ray in the PS3 is pissing me off so much. It's completely unnecessary and they want to corner the HD movie market...they don't give a ***** about the size of games. It just makes it look like Sony has so little confidence in their Blu-ray media format and believe that it can't stand alone so, hey, why not throw it in our best selling product? We have pleny of Sony fanboys that will try to justify the cost of the PS3 for us!
@ probune
Actually I have a PSP and some of the games loading times are cut down very well. Lazy programming leads to long loading times. I have the new Metal Gear Portable Ops and I don't even think I notice ANY loading times. The games are fun but they're too few and far between. - NeoTechni, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"None of those other handhelds played movies"
GBA does
"The big difference is that SD was designed and licensed to be a standard that multiple manufacturers can use"
So is memory stick. I own a sandisk made one for example -
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