UMD is dead

Loud Orange Cat

Loud Orange Cat

Pro Member
indiePRO
Here's an interesting article. It says Target has completely pulled the UMD format and Walmart and Best Buy severely slashed retail space for it. The format have slowed to a trickle, causing several major movie studios to cease supporting it altogether.

Sony is offering a very limited selection of direct-to-memory (Their proprietary Memory Sticks) movies.

It looks like UMD is yet another victim of the Sony media curse.
 
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See for me it sucks even more because we had a distribution deal in place for LFD on UMD. Be interesting to find out what's going to happen to that... (sound of toilet flushing and a big commission cheque going down the drain)
 
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Let it be a lesson.... stick to standard formats for distro deals. ;) Then at least you don't have to worry about the media format going away.. DVD will still be around for a couple years anyway, until Blueray or whatever surpasses it, but just think how long VHS (even though it was substandard to Beta) was around...
 
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I think it's about time we visited the future-format discussion.

Almost all of Sony's formats have been losers since the 1970's. It started with Sony's Betamax format. True, it was technologically superior, but JVC's VHS won the war.

There were a few other weird formats over the years like MiniDisc (I had one of these, but only because it was given to me) which never 'caught on' and now UMD is on its way out. MiniDisc still exists.

Sony has its new Bluray DVD format set to be released in what, a few months from now? HD-DVD is its competitor and it's already available. I've seen Best Buy selling this player for $249USD. The movies are also available at this time.

As much potential as Bluray has and with all the animosity towards Sony killing almost any format it releases, do we really see this format taking off?

From Sony's own press release, Bluray players, in order to work, must be connected to the internet via a preexisting IP connection. When a disc is inserted, it verifies the disc's CRC with Sony directly to verify it's a legitimate disc and only then will it play. If the disc is fake, Sony's software permanently cripples the player remotely. All your money goes down the drain. (Will the **AA come calling the next day?!)

HD-DVD does not have such a draconian copy-protection/big-brother like monitoring system. With HD-DVD, you insert the disc and press [PLAY].

Thoughts?
 
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For all the consumer failures, Sony does quite well in the professional and pro-sumer categories. BetaSP, DigiBeta, HD-Cam, DVCam, MiniDV. All pioneered by Sony, all dominant formats in the film industry.

On a side note, I would never ever buy something that MUST have an internet connection in order to operate, if there was another option. In case of armageddon I still need my entertainment!!!

Cheers!

Jim
 
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So I guess you can't play your own movies on Bluray, if they arn't registered with Sony?? Ha! Screw that. There's a better way to stop piracy- make good movies, and eliminate poverty. If I had the money to spend on DVDs, I'd have to rent storage space for my collection.
 
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Format wise, sony just seems to come up with proprietary formats to hedge their revenues. The rest of the industry is based around other more popular formats that have been beat up. Sony doesn't start these format revolutions, they try to twist them to their proprietary business model and end up losing out every time due to low adoption rates. They push through the problems rather than looking for an opening. This causes them to operate more slowly than the competition who is able to see what they shooting for and undermine them by the time they reach production.
 
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knightly said:
Sony doesn't start these format revolutions, they try to twist them to their proprietary business model and end up losing out every time due to low adoption rates. They push through the problems rather than looking for an opening. This causes them to operate more slowly than the competition who is able to see what they shooting for and undermine them by the time they reach production.
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Wow, I couldn't have said it better.

It's surprising that almost all of thier end user formats have gone down the toilet while their industrial formats thrive. Bizarre.
 
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