A letter to sony regaurding UMD's

Dear PlayStation, I have recently acquired a PSP handheld system, and 2 32mb memory sticks... it is a truly extraordinary device, yet before it came out Sony released the UMD... it is suppose to be, and I quote, "common application for everyone" yet there has been some controversy about all this, for the Nintendo DS has a movie player that you can get memory for, much more cheaply, than the PSP... hence forth I researched online, everything I could of what Sony is going to do about this, and I came to a number of people / websites, that said "About the only thing Sony can do to make their video and media on the PSP cheaper, and more efficient, than the Nintendo DS, is by making a UMD burner, however, Sony always charges A LOT of money for their burners, so IF they even release one, expect it to be about 500$"... the Nintendo DS can acquire 2GB of movie/ media for under 100$ extra... so will you release a UMD burner? For you did say "a common application for everyone" so if you want UMD's to be as popular as CD's you will ultimately need a burner, one of the main things making CD's popular...

So why don't you surprise them all, and make millions at the same time, by releasing a UMD burner for about 50-120$, and sell blank UMD's for 20-50$... this way it will work similar to a memory stick, in that when you put it in the PSP, you can go to music and select UMD, or video and select UMD, simple really...

So please, I beg of you, respond to this letter! Millions of people await upon it, and it will draw free attention, if you answer it, in a positive, or negative way

___________________________________

this is my letter to sony, please tell me if you'd like to add anything, or see any mistakes...

I can hear them laughing already ;) ;) ;)

RedKing14CA,
What you're saying sounds good. But maybe too good to be true. The problem is piracy. I think if they come up with a UMD burner piracy will make the "best" use of it and that's bad. That would affect the developers/publishers of legal software.
I do hope that I can see a UMD burner one day. But I don't think it will happen any time soon.
If you have registered your PSP (I did it online) you will get an e-mail to complete a survey about which features you would like added to your PSP. That may be good way to request that too.

No offence, but perhaps you should of worded that letter differantly, then perhaps you may have recieved a reply.

I would imagine that there will be a UMD burner eventually.

how about all of us send a letter, then maybe we could recieve a reply lol

power to the people!!!

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Originally Posted by rest05

how about all of us send a letter, then maybe we could recieve a reply lol

power to the people!!!

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or at least all of our emails will end up in a spam bin somewhere ;)

Well If Sony doesn't supply a burner chances are that this will be another failed Sony media format. I'd imagine the UMD format would die with the PSP in this case.

On the other end of things it could be an opening to a new porable format. One of the reasons DVD's became the new movie format-of-choice these last 5 years has to do with Sony building a DVD player in the PS2. A typical consumer would probably neve buy a DVD player on its own back then since the prices were quite steep for even the most basic of players. But when this regualr Joe consumer decides its time to buy Sony's newest system and find out it comes with a DVD player it ushered in a new age. when DVD burners became reasonable priced it opened up a whole new possibilites for the format as now the DVD was not just a movie format but a media format.

Sony could strike gold with the UMD if a burner came out. Chances are Sony will spend more time marketing Blu-ray discs and leave the UMD to die with the PSP (5 or 6 years from now). Hell we might see UMD survive on the PSP's successor when the day comes.:)

If Sony want the UMD to become a 'standard' then they will have to produce a burner.

If not, as Kaiser says, it will just die a death.

the same way DVD took/taking over VHS, UMD will eventually take over DVD and CD, considering the unversal media part, there are many application, music, vids, etc. , so a real good move for sony would be to make a home UMD player (for vids or movies), and then market the UMD's for all aplications not just for PSP

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Originally Posted by Viperguy212

the same way DVD took/taking over VHS, UMD will eventually take over DVD and CD, considering the unversal media part, there are many application, music, vids, etc. , so a real good move for sony would be to make a home UMD player (for vids or movies), and then market the UMD's for all aplications not just for PSP

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I agree.

well, i havent sent it yet, i was wondering if you guys could HELP me with it, make it better, maybe sign it? and it would be excellant if mulstiple people could send this letter.... it would be dumb of sony not to make a umd burner to "protect" its users from "piracy"...

shiver me timbers, i aint bein no pirate....

i get my music from my cd's directly to my psp.... :cool:

and umm, bill gates is a billionare, do you know why sony, because he makes CD's, that you can "burn" ANYTHING too, and wtf, you give us memory sticks!?!?!? we cant put pirated movies/music on that, now can we :rolleyes:

i would love to see umd's prosper, there so small, and they protect themselves, and 1.8 gigs, wow....

edit- wait, i gots an idea...

RedKing14CA: *waves his hand* "you will make a UMD burner.."

Sony Employee: "who are you, what are you doing here?"

RedKing14CA: "you dont need my identification..."

Sony Employee: "i dont need you indentification..."

RedKing14CA: "you will take me to your master"

Sony Employee: "i will take you to my master, come with me"

*the weak minded sony employee guides the jedi in the red cloak through a sony building, until they reach a musty smelling cave within... "follow me" says the sony employee... the red cloaked jedi follows the Sony employee... until they reach a fowel smelling area..*

RedKing14CA: "whats that horrid stench"

Sony Employee: "my master..."

*the red cloaked jedi looks up, and sees on top of a platform, a huge worm like creature, eating..*

RedKing14CA: "who are you.."

Creature: "I am Sony the Hutt, who are YOU, and why have you come here?"

RedKing14CA: "I am know as RedKing14CA, i have come to help you make money..."

Sony the Hutt: "excellant, RedKing, how so?"

RedKing14CA: "By making a UMD burner, to make UMD's for the psp and players to come..."

Sony the Hutt: "No, evil pirates will put BAD things on our PERFECT devices, i cant have that!!!"

RedKing14CA: "you will make a UMD burner"

Sony the Hutt: "what do you think you are, some kind of Jedi, waving your hand around like that? gaurds, escort this 'jedi' to his vehicle outside!"

RedKing14CA: "I have a bad feeling about this" *activates his Redish orangish LightSaber*

TO BE CONTINUED....

whoa whoa whoa is that the acutal email!?!?!? do u honestly think there gonna take an email like that seriously enough to even consider what were proposing to do, the best way to get there attention is to be as formal and serious as possible cause if u dont they wont even bother read ur whole email, itll end up in the trash along wit 2 millions other emails. you have to make it stand out but make it stand out in a good way not the way that makes it look like a bunch of 4 year old kids are asking this of them, no offense. just a suggestion. thats my two cents

SaRlA

this is th emessage you dork, i was joking about the jedi thing, dork!!!

________________
Dear PlayStation, I have recently acquired a PSP handheld system, and 2 32mb memory sticks... it is a truly extraordinary device, yet before it came out Sony released the UMD... it is suppose to be, and I quote, "common application for everyone" yet there has been some controversy about all this, for the Nintendo DS has a movie player that you can get memory for, much more cheaply, than the PSP... hence forth I researched online, everything I could of what Sony is going to do about this, and I came to a number of people / websites, that said "About the only thing Sony can do to make their video and media on the PSP cheaper, and more efficient, than the Nintendo DS, is by making a UMD burner, however, Sony always charges A LOT of money for their burners, so IF they even release one, expect it to be about 500$"... the Nintendo DS can acquire 2GB of movie/ media for under 100$ extra... so will you release a UMD burner? For you did say "a common application for everyone" so if you want UMD's to be as popular as CD's you will ultimately need a burner, one of the main things making CD's popular...

So why don't you surprise them all, and make millions at the same time, by releasing a UMD burner for about 50-120$, and sell blank UMD's for 20-50$... this way it will work similar to a memory stick, in that when you put it in the PSP, you can go to music and select UMD, or video and select UMD, simple really...

So please, I beg of you, respond to this letter! Millions of people await upon it, and it will draw free attention, if you answer it, in a positive, or negative way
_______________

A UMD holds 1.8 gb. That's a bit of a step backwards for a new format. And a home UMD player? Considering the DVD's of today use 720x480 for standard 4:3, how much of a market is there for watching movies on your TV at a measly 480x272 pixels? I don't think the UMD will be a failed format. Will it die with the PSP? Yes, unless they use it with the next gen of handhelds. So why won't it fail? because it's main function is to prevent Joe Anybody from burning UMD's and cutting Sony's profits. They've given us enough with our memory sticks, and hopefully through firmware upgrades, we can encode video in the native 480X272 resolution for full quality.

umm, bill you sound.. erm... uneducated in the ways of the force....

the UMD is suppose to replace CD's.... 1.8 gigs measily? how about 700mb for cd's????

its not suppose to be like a umd movie player for a home tv, im talking when they come out with umd players (music)... and perhaps a UMD player (for computer)..

its not going to be like the new DVD, for Big screen t.v's... its suppose to be the new CD, not DVD, there is a difference!

Why? I believe a DVD player and rewriter came out a while ago for PC. Many games are now being set on these DVD's of which is much, much, much larger than a UMD.
No developers are going to use them, seeing as they would be much more costly to make more then one of them as opposed to one DVD. Therefore, the UMD format will be useless to developer.

Sony would also tag on a nice price tag to buy a 10-set and a Burner. There goes the consumers. Unless of course you think Sony is going to put a cheap price on em', if so, then that would go against everything you stand for.

and to be clear, I doubt that a UMD could stomp a DVD. DVDs already have multimedia capabilities and enough space to make a UMD look like a floppy disk.

Therefore, for PCs the UMD will fail.


Nothing says Sony doesn't make a video and music player, such as Video Now.
Developers of films and music would be happy, but I doubt they would make a burner and seperate "write-able" UMDs just for it.

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Originally Posted by RedKing14CA

umm, bill you sound.. erm... uneducated in the ways of the force....

the UMD is suppose to replace CD's.... 1.8 gigs measily? how about 700mb for cd's????

its not suppose to be like a umd movie player for a home tv, im talking when they come out with umd players (music)... and perhaps a UMD player (for computer)..

its not going to be like the new DVD, for Big screen t.v's... its suppose to be the new CD, not DVD, there is a difference!

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You can just buy a dvd +-r supported cd player now that holds 4 gigs for alot cheaper I imagine. UMD's wont replace CD's at all.... no one is going to pay for this crap when a CF/SD/HDD is so much more sturdy and reliable. I also imagine blank UMD's are over priced (just as everything produced by sony is). Even if Sony did make some kind of umd supported music/movie player.. it would just fail. The current media is much more sturdy and reliable and more likely less expensive than the UMD and its supported hardware.

just.. why would some crappy easy to break disk that is much easier to loose and less only half the capacity of the current common media replace the current media thats had almost 10 good years on the market? Not to mention that sony has a track record of failed media (betamax). The only differance in that case is that Betamax was higher quality than VHS so it was a shame that it failed... but because the DVD can hold alot more digital media then a UMD, It can easily display higher quality video or music... Sorry but the idea that UMD will replace CD and DVD technology is just plain dumb.

Couldn't have said it better myself 1timeuser :D :D :D

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Originally Posted by RedKing14CA

umm, bill you sound.. erm... uneducated in the ways of the force....

the UMD is suppose to replace CD's.... 1.8 gigs measily? how about 700mb for cd's????

its not suppose to be like a umd movie player for a home tv, im talking when they come out with umd players (music)... and perhaps a UMD player (for computer)..

its not going to be like the new DVD, for Big screen t.v's... its suppose to be the new CD, not DVD, there is a difference!

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Uneducated? I'm just being realistic. I can get a dvd+-r that'll hold 4gb for about 50 cents (thats canadian money, too!). Sony would have a rough time undercutting that. It's all about supply and demand, and a lot more people have hardware that will read dvds. Considering the "measly" 700mb CDs were introduced 12 years ago, a brand new format with a little more than double that isn't all that impressive.

Maybe the UMD would have worked a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but in the here and now, no dice.

also umd's will certainly not replace CD-roms. CDroms were the digital media standard from about 1983-1997 and are still one of the most common media types used by the Music Industry. They are cheap, effecient, easily manufactured and reliable. besides.. how many millions people own cd players or have cdroms inside their computers? and how many millions of people play DVDs through DVD players or DVD-ROM drives? Now if UMD devices cost around 150-200% more than modern media devices how many people are going to trade in their reliable machines for this new technology that no one except psp users care about?

thats right. nobody.

sony said its cheaper to manufacter them than cd's... but they also said home brew would render your psp useless..

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Originally Posted by RedKing14CA

sony said its cheaper to manufacter them than cd's... but they also said home brew would render your psp useless..

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Yup. There is a lesson to learn from this, never trust Sony. I mean the Playstations 1-3 were hyped beyond imaginable. The Mini-discs,beta players and ATRAC CDs were all hyped, expensive and failures. Makes you sick after awhile thinking about all the Bullshit Sony force-feeds you.



( :eek: TOY STORY IN REAL TIME ON TEH PS2 :eek: )

yeah, i hate sony, but nintendo has failed me, now in both the handheld and home console area... they came out with the virtual boy, and it all went to hell from there....

(toy story? huh?)

Hell I like Sony (Quality products for the most part) .I just don't trust anything they ever say.

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Originally Posted by Kaiser

Hell I like Sony (Quality products for the most part) .I just don't trust anything they ever say.

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thats probably the best way to look at it. pretty much everything (excluding their game hardware) is pretty well made. the price is a totally differant story though....

aha, price... yes, i suppose you kinda get what you pay for... to bad i couldnt pay for a better screen.... the display itself is beautiful, but the plastic is like... its like they used the stuff in air cleaners that dust CLINGS to, and made it extra soft, for scratches!!!

but back to UMD's, why are CD's so populaur ya think?

and in what ways are UMD's better than CD's?

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Originally Posted by Kaiser

Yup. There is a lesson to learn from this, never trust Sony. I mean the Playstations 1-3 were hyped beyond imaginable. The Mini-discs,beta players and ATRAC CDs were all hyped, expensive and failures.

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Actually mate, Minidisc recorder/players were pretty affordable not too long ago ('round '02) if you went with a budget unit. One might also argue that it had a rather good run in Sony's native country of Japan up until recently. (No arguement as to whether it was a failure over in North America. :P)

Also, it's worthy to note that "ATRAC CDs" were merely user burned CD-Rs using SonicStage for use with Sony's discmans that were ATRAC compatible. Not really on the expensive side unless you're used to buying portable CD players for under $100 USD.

You also forgot about Sony's other soon to be failures: Super Audio CD (SACD) format as well as their "newest" incarnation of the CD, the Dual Disc. (Which refuses to play the CD side in nearly all my CD players, most of which are Sony. ;) )

Anyways, UMD does sound like a good portable replacement for the audio CD when you look at it: 1.8 GB capacity, hard shell for protection, smaller size means smaller portable devices.

That is not enough to even mess with the current audio format king. (CDDA) It looks good when mobile, but is there a reason to chose it over the current standard at home? Two formats (one portable, one not so portable) for audio simply would not fly.

Look at the Minidisc: A compact disc in a protective shell that enables a user to write and erase up to (so sayeth Sony) one million times. Stored audio data digitally, albeit compressed. It was marketed as a replacement for the cassette, but if I was to walk into a London Drugs, which one has the better chance of being found? :D

simply would not fly having two? um, dude, do you know what REPLACEMENT means? like records... were replaced by tapes, and tapes with cd's and cd's with? (UMD?)

(video is another story)

video i beleive started like the radio n such, without any tapes or anything, and then went to tapes, then to DVD's... and it wont go to UMD

edit- all sony needs to do is make a burner, and burnable UMD's... and a UMD player...

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Originally Posted by RedKing14CA

simply would not fly having two? um, dude, do you know what REPLACEMENT means? like records... were replaced by tapes, and tapes with cd's and cd's with? (UMD?)

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Oh no mate, I understand what the word means quite well. Thanks for checking. Also FYI friend, records were NOT replaced by cassette tapes, they were a portable supplement. I don't think any of my friends threw their LPs out of the window once pre-recorded cassettes came out.

What I'm saying is that at this point in time, replacing CDs in the HOME is just not required. It's not necessary. For a portable aspect, it sounds like it could be a replacement as the discs are more armoured than normal CDs.

It has no benefits in the home. Forget the 1.8 GB size. Mind you, that's DUAL LAYER. CDs are 700 MB and single layer.

whats dual layer? well anyways, i guess your right, im just tying to say UMD's would totally survive with a burner and such, and could be like the new cassette tape.. i gues....

but anyhelp with the letter to sony? lol, thats why i posted this thread...

how much memory does a umd have like 300mb? i dont know but with that much you can so burn your own movies onto it, then u can buy htose little plastic cartragies to put the umd in.

umm, dude.... a umd is 1.8 gigabytes, thats anout 1800mb, and a saying "then u can buy htose little plastic cartragies to put the umd in." is like saying "then you can buy one of those protective plastic cases to put the floppy disc in" the umd IS the plastic thing, its PART of the umd, ok?

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Originally Posted by 1timeuser

You can just buy a dvd +-r supported cd player now that holds 4 gigs for alot cheaper I imagine. UMD's wont replace CD's at all.... no one is going to pay for this crap when a CF/SD/HDD is so much more sturdy and reliable. I also imagine blank UMD's are over priced (just as everything produced by sony is). Even if Sony did make some kind of umd supported music/movie player.. it would just fail. The current media is much more sturdy and reliable and more likely less expensive than the UMD and its supported hardware.

just.. why would some crappy easy to break disk that is much easier to loose and less only half the capacity of the current common media replace the current media thats had almost 10 good years on the market? Not to mention that sony has a track record of failed media (betamax). The only differance in that case is that Betamax was higher quality than VHS so it was a shame that it failed... but because the DVD can hold alot more digital media then a UMD, It can easily display higher quality video or music... Sorry but the idea that UMD will replace CD and DVD technology is just plain dumb.

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Isn't that what I said?

anyways, sony already made it big with the walk-man as a music player.

why risk it with another betamax type situation, like you said 1timeuser?

The UMD would fail on its own, Just live with it. With how Sony is, It would cost you the same amount of money to buy a 10-20 pack of UMD= 18gb-36gb or so

as to buy an 60-80 cd pack at 600mb= 36gb-48gb or so

so even for cd's it would comes out better
not to mention how much you get for DVDs at 4g a pop.

Just not worth it.




-James

well still, it would be much cheaper than the memory stick, i dont get why theyre freaking out about "pirating" if they just gave us a memstick to put pirated stuff on...

No! No! No!

there is too many dishonest people out there for them to release a UMD burner!

if they do piracy will run rampant and kill the homebrew scene as well as the console itself!

this device is too promising for us to allow it to fall to piracy!

:mad:

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Originally Posted by leggy

If Sony want the UMD to become a 'standard' then they will have to produce a burner.

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not really UMD videos are selling like hotcakes actually!

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Originally Posted by AKB

how much memory does a umd have like 300mb? i dont know but with that much you can so burn your own movies onto it, then u can buy htose little plastic cartragies to put the umd in.

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AKB - you really should 'google' before you quote figures :D

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Originally Posted by gimpyjr

No! No! No!

there is too many dishonest people out there for them to release a UMD burner!

if they do piracy will run rampant and kill the homebrew scene as well as the console itself!

this device is too promising for us to allow it to fall to piracy!

:mad:

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WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!?!??!?!

kill homebrew? we already have 1 gig memory sticks to pirate movies music and games, what would be the difference of having a umd burner? we couldnt burn the games, retard!

there is a huge pirate scene on laptops and computers, and bill gates is a billionare now, lol...

well i think we actually have 2gig memory sticks now(or in the very near future). but for sony to release a UMD burner would be like saying "here are the keys to my car, please just steal it" UMDs have only one purpose -storing video games for the psp- although i think it would be fun to store backups of my stuff, and all of my roms on a umd and keep my memory stick clean. but honestly people would just rip/download, burn, play, give sony the bird.
im not saying that someone wont come up with a umd burner, but sony would fight it.