Pondering UMD's value on sale

I'd be MORE than happy to watch videos off the MS if Sony would enable full-res 480x272 video playback. Maybe once UMD is officially dead, they'll capitulate.

Well, the games are still coming out on UMD, right? So it's not *completely* dead.

Sony should consider a standalone UMD player- and cut prices too!

That's like saying vinyl records are still viable because your house has vinyl siding.

I don't think the format is dead, just a bit of higgledy-piggledy at pspfanboy.com. The same site lists weekly releases such as The Pursuit of Happyness, Rocky Balboa, Casino Royale, so on and so forth.

I recently bought 4 UMDs from a website running a promotion. It is linked from PSPfanboy, but the promotion is over. Had them shipped to my house with a total under 22 bucks. The UMDs were 4.99 a piece.

What is it with Sony and their pricing scheme? They'd be selling like mad if at a smaller price (below DVD prices). The PS2 is a testament, cause my sister just picked one up on Sunday, and now I'm enjoying Shadow of the Colossus. Beautiful.

DMCA Be dammned, indeed!

US government: taking your rights and giving them to a faceless corporation since 1999.

UMDs suck! The copy of Spiderman 2 that came with my PSP locks up almost every time. I just rip DVDs and put them on the 2GB memory card.

The whole UMD thing is a misfire. It relies upon the concept that your consumer is going to need a portable device to watch movies on. How many people really want that? You can buy a portable DVD player for less. If they had only charged $9.99 for the movies it MIGHT have worked, but the studios would never go for that, even though it is a reasonable price for such a format.

I can't fit any movies on my 4GB stick with all these game ISOs taking up space! Now THIS is living!

I see no reason these should have existed in the first place. Bub-bye

the UMD is too much trouble to deal with. I own a PSP.. but like hell I'm going to get anything new for it. It wasn't necessarily a bad idea.. but why bother when DVD are the standard format. You can buy a portable DVD player for a lot cheaper than a PSP.

But this is just my opinion..

Wow! you all suck. UMD is awesome, IT'S SMALL. I can put in my pocket. Can't really fit a portable dvd player in there, let alone a dvd. UMDs are in a enclosure, you don't have to carry around the stupid case. Buying UMDs is much more cost effective and practical than having to pay 50 bucks for a 4GB mem stick that i now have to go and rip movies convert them and load onto the MS and off each time i want to switch out cause 4gb is not a lot to work with. Damn, and then i have to have a PC around to move data on and off so i can watch another movie, thas stupid. People hated on the format before it even had a chance cause they said it was the minidisc, losers. good tech never gets a chance when stupid people make the internet jump up in a tizzy. if everyone was sooooooo smart and new what was best, you would be working in that field, making the products, and getting paid a ton of money to do so. but, you aren't, so you don't, so you won't, so you complain. just stop already. also look at the technical advantages of UMD vs your mem stick, do your math.

technical advantages of UMD vs. Memory Stick?

Winner: Memory Stick

UMD: standard optical media loadtimes (about same as the GC's, maybe a bit worse depending on the media)
Memory Stick: all digital load times (rather like the DS's cartridge read-speed, or that of a PS2 memory card)

UMD: 1.8 GB capacity
Memory Stick: possibility of up to 32 GB (although only 2-4 on the market yet)

pwnt

iNime and UMD sittin' in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

DVDs are cheaper, more readily available from any store (including some grocery stores, McDonalds (ew) and other places). UMDs are available in limited supply and through only a few vendors. They're also 20 bucks (if you're lucky) and they play only on PSP. God forbid I want to watch the movie with someone else (who won't want to sit in my lap).

Why was I supposed to buy UMD movies again?

I bought a couple UMDs on sale and I really do have to say I was annoyed. On longer films, compression rates sucked. Not to mention all these films were chopping content from the DVD version and expecting more money. And anime was just completely batshit insane on UMD. $25 for 2 episodes? The fuck do you think you are, FLCL?

Now if they were cheaper, had some exclusive features, or hell, maybe even didn't have space for trailers but I can't get director's commentary, they could have gone somewhere. $10 should have been the de facto most expensive UMD movie... period.

They failed because of a) High Price and b) Non-versatile

You can only play a UMD in one product: PSP

You can play a DVD in many products: home theatre, portable player, computer, etc.

As of right now the new firware update allows full video from memory stick:

http://www.us.pspfanboy.com/2007/03/28/firmware-3-30-now-available-on-network-update/