PSP's UMD as a movie format is a flop.. days numbered?

[disciple]

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Exactly a year after it was launched in the United States, the Sony PlayStation Portable's days as a hand-held movie-viewing device might be numbered.
ADVERTISEMENT

Disappointing sales have slowed the flow of movies on the proprietary Universal Media Disc to a mere trickle. At least two major studios have completely stopped releasing movies on UMD, while others are either toying with the idea or drastically cutting back.

And retailers also are cutting the amount of shelf space they've been devoting to UMD movies, amid talk that Wal-Mart is about to dump the category entirely.

Wal-Mart representative Jolanda Stewart declined comment on reports that the retailer is getting out of the UMD business. But studio sources say such a move is imminent, and a check Wednesday of a Wal-Mart store in Santa Ana, Calif., revealed a drastic shrinkage of UMD inventory. Several shelves of movies in the PSP section were gone; all that remained were seven UMD titles sitting bookshelf-style on the top of the PSP section, with no prices or other information.

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."

could have seen this comin a mile away...  yeh, you might buy one for the novelty factor, but why would i stock my collection with proprietary UMDs, that can only be played on my handheld..  when, for the same price, or cheaper, i could buy the full dvd, that can be played everywhere, and if i need to, i'd just rip the dvd, shrink it and put it on a memory stick..
perhaps if they release standalone UMD players, or perhaps a rewritable umd...

i think they heading in the direction of the 2.88 floppy and the minidisc..

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060330/tc_nm/universalmediadisc_dc

[shivadee]

Notice the SONY boys REALLLLLLLL quiet eh

[shivadee]

SONY always trying something like that
Before it was the Minidisc....which was the transition between CD Audio and MP3

Then its UMD....which was the transition between HDD and Flash memory for portable devices

These people good eh, i like SONY too bad, but they "ideas" comming and going like the 8-track.

[SPK]

I think Sony trying too many proprietary formats to discourage piracy, but they shooting themselves in the foot in doing so, by making formats that you can only use on their systems...in an age of widespread compatibility, Sony has a very antiquated vision in certain departments.

[Beomagi]

what do you mean sony boys? sony actually has followers?

Come on people! distinguish between a company and a device!!

sony as a company makes mind blowing stupid annoying decisions.
psp:
1. propietart media
2. limited media format support
3. bios updates in games to prevent users from using home brewed decoders.

When a coworker overheard a friend and myself chatting about it and declared that moronic (he's into his late 40's) "if you wanna make a product interesting, let the hackers make the tools you don't want to spend time making, or can't legally make yourself. admintting defeat that you have no control overwhat people do with your hardware isn't a crime. it's why intel and microsoft isn't sued for viruses"

anyhoo, it's a beautiful device, but i found a nice cheap way to watch movies on my ds -  more info on that later when i get it down.

thank god nintendo has declared the use of SD cards instead of making their own flash. SD is perhaps the most popular of flash types being accepted by most cameras and pda's.

[shivadee]

i should be more specific...the Playstation boys.
They acctually getting worse than the Nintendo fanboys who get cussout at E3.

[TrinireturnofGamez]

Sony should have made some of their DVD players support UMD.. in fact  they could have pushed it as a way to get around piracy and force people to buy new dvd players industry wide....  Instead its a novelty item for PSP users to n00by to get  video on a 1 gig flash card .

[38_CalibuR]

or they could of just developed a hdd for it
mini disc could of been more successful than umd even thought they hold less

[shivadee]

or they could of just developed a hdd for it
mini disc could of been more successful than umd even thought they hold less

you had buy Minidisc ent?

[BeoBear]

This is just coming back to what ive been saying for a long time...

Sony is the devil!