sherwood

i believe that UMD will finally be the CD killer... discuss..

asiandoood

i believe that UMD will be as sucessful as the Mini Disc.

sherwood

MD was never a good format, it offered nothing more than a smaller disc to people, it used a lossy ATRAC compression method and it's quality was never truly on par with cd-audio (raw 16-bit with 44? khz sample rate)

UMD has the space on it to allow for higher sample rates as well as a new universal platform that can push somthign like a lossless compression standard (right now we have many lossless codecs that shrink cd's to, in practice, 75% of their total volume)

not to mention the MD never had a chance because people had just really started buying into CD's... and it never had any hardware other than a music player to back it up (IE inital sales for PSP units may give the UMD enough of a backbone to stand up on it's own to the world)

asiandoood

yes...im sure people will pay 39.99 for a UMD SpiderMan movie that only plays on a PSP (for now) over a 14.99 DVD.


Music wise... who would pay that much for music? People are griping over a 12.99 CD. And I doubt any artist will need that much capacity for their 12 track avg. music album. Buying MP3's online for your PSP and iPod is the next thing. Paying 30-40 bucks for a UMD is not.


I predict the UMD as the new BetaMax. Other companies will make a variation of the UMD that will be more successful and become the next standard like the VHS did.

Nelson

I agree I see UMD going same direction as MD's.

e3NiNe

mass digital storage is the new cd.

UMD, MD, SCD, DVD Audio ... all failed attempts.

the .mp3 was nearly the death of the music industry ... in the end, it'll end up saving it.

sherwood

who said spiderman 2 for PSP is 40 bux, i believe that it is only listed as 19.95 at most places online (MSRP)

also, you are paying $40 for a game (which is on par with PS2 DVD based games...)

MP3 will never be the future because many people cannot take the loss of MP3 or even MP4.

a UMD has many options being new media... imagine a player with a screen that shows a personalized menu for the music... much like the psp screen only only like 1/2 or 1/3 the size...

Nelson

WTF are you talking about?

e3NiNe

have you seen iTunes sales? have you seen iPod sales? do you see a car radio without MP3 playback?

i beg to differ.

who wants to buy a $12.99 cd from the store when you can get the song you want for $0.99 (legally) without leaving the house?

MP3 isn't the future, it's the present.

reech-around

keep in mind the MD was successful everywhere except the US.

actually UMD movies are priced under $14.99.

there is no way UMD is going down the same path as BetaMax. Even though Beta was technically superior to VHS, it didn't catch on because of Sony's stubbornness. well times have changed, and hopefully they'll move to being open source (http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000840028378/). also, disney has confirmed they will release UMD movies. i'd like to see if other studios will follow.

btw, i still dont see why PSP-haters are bitching at/hating on UMD. yeah it's a proprietary format, but what portable gaming console doesn't have one? of course they weren't going with DVDs again, it would have made the system too large and another victim of bootlegs.

back on topic - i dont think UMD is neccessary for music. it's way overkill.