Advancement in UMD technology?

**motormaniac** · July 20th, 2006, 19:49

That would be pretty cool to be able to rip and burn umds lol

**Accordion** · July 20th, 2006, 21:10

perhaps if the umds gave excusive links to special content to download to psp it might add some value...
but perhaps it is too late now

**F9zDark** · July 20th, 2006, 21:53

Originally Posted by BlackJack23

Anyway, don't get you hopes up folks.
Maybe in 40-60 years when we have grandchildren Sony will release a UMD writer, not before then. Sony is wise to the fact that piracy would not make such writers worth their while. I commend Sony for being the first company to take this so seriously and actually make a propietary format for just this reason. Although there are ISO's, memory is limited and I can bet as someone said previously there would be a wealth of bootleg disks.

Since the game UMDs need to have the AES signatures intact (which, I believe, are lost when its dumped into ISO format) how is piracy going to be an issue? For UMD movies, yeah, but UMD games is what makes Sony money...

Anyway back to UMD movies. (I still don't believe you accordian_boy :P) I don't see any benefit in making UMDs multiplatform. Imagine seeing UMDs on a bigger screen *shivers* I really think they should start 2 UMD box-sets(but not 2 for the just the movie!) so one disk can hold the movie and the other special features and trailers. Maybe they could produce 900mb disks for just the purpose of being special features disks and thus retain almost the same price as single disk UMD movies. I don't know, just a thought. After all, most money gets spent on licensing and red tape while it costs next to nothing for the actual disks.

How can you not see the benefits? Its the easiest economic model to understand. The more widespread a format is, the more market potential it has.

Haven't you seen any of the posts about the fates of Blu Ray and HD-DVD? Their destiny relies wholly on which one movie studios prefer. Once hollywood adopts it, then other industries will catch on and the more widespread format will reign supreme.

Sony has the ability to inter-link all of their products together (which is something they seemingly like to do). If they added UMD support to their Handycam, imagine the added potential it would give to the PSP.

While you're off at college, mom or dad can send you a UMD of a family trip they took, and look at that, you can load it up on your PSP and watch it and peruse photos from it, etc.

Sony not doing this from the get go is what destroyed UMD as a format. I gurantee you, that if Sony had made UMDs more widespread, you'd see it thriving.

**blackskimmer** · July 26th, 2006, 16:38

Well in my humble opinon, the UMD failed due to price.

You simply cant justify spending more money on this then you would a DVD.

1)Bundle UMD's with DVD's say for 5dollars more

2)Out source UMD production to other companies dropping the production costs. SONY (from what i know) maintains the mint on these things and its bloody expensive to get them to do a run.

**NiGame** · July 26th, 2006, 16:54

Why buy a UMD film when you can buy the DVD for cheaper and at a much better quality and still put it on your psp PC or whatever other format you may want

**DessyDago** · July 28th, 2006, 17:29

The umd vidoes also might only have 2 channel surround, and also could u imagine the resoultion dif to your tv? If a dvd player could some how read it it would have to change the resolution to fit on our screen. Not to hard, but it would be fairly grainy and thats only if your tv isn't hd or trying not to emit in hd.

blackskimmer I think had the best idea with the bundling. I'd spend 20 bucks on a new release if it came with the dvd and the umd. That would be pretty cool.

**Video_freak** · July 28th, 2006, 17:33

UMDs were a bad idea from the start. that and horrible prices killed them

**crait** · July 28th, 2006, 18:59

F9zDark, 110% agree
i think the reason for the umd discs on psp when the psp came out, and not on other plats was to see how much it would sell
and maybe if they sold well, they could make it multi-plat

and the idea for the camra
omg thats the best idea ever!
sony already has a blueray disc player inside thier newest notebooks, why dont they make a umd drive, and to activate, or even look at the info on it, you would use an app like iTunes, that makes the files unopenable from anywhere else on the computer?
and maybe, they could host a market for media, such as iTunes does
i mean, how could they go wrong?

just to note, i think somewhere i heard that the umd's can have anywere from 900megs to 1.8 gigs

**motz** · July 28th, 2006, 19:54

Originally Posted by crait

F9zDark, 110% agree
i think the reason for the umd discs on psp when the psp came out, and not on other plats was to see how much it would sell
and maybe if they sold well, they could make it multi-plat

and the idea for the camra
omg thats the best idea ever!
sony already has a blueray disc player inside thier newest notebooks, why dont they make a umd drive, and to activate, or even look at the info on it, you would use an app like iTunes, that makes the files unopenable from anywhere else on the computer?
and maybe, they could host a market for media, such as iTunes does
i mean, how could they go wrong?

just to note, i think somewhere i heard that the umd's can have anywere from 900megs to 1.8 gigs

UMD capacity works as follows:

A single layered UMD is 900mbs
A double layer UMD is 1.8GBs.