Sony misses boat on their UMD movie format
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JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
Stealing a bit from my own threads elsewhere on the WWW. (For example here: UMD on PC or home TVs)
I swear that Sony is missing the boat with their UMD format for movies and videos.
My comments on the Playstation community site are included, and expanded upon a bit here.
I swear that someone is asleep at the switch at Sony.
I was sitting at the eye doctor's yesterday, waiting for my time with the doctor and playing SOCOM Fireteam Bravo. Typically I tend to forget that I can take my PSP along to a place like the Doctor's office and keep myself entertained with it while waiting, though I've seen some comments from others mentioning that in the past, as well as some TV news reports talking about the popularity of the PSP as well as the Nintendo Gameboy series for just those purposes.
While waiting at the eye doctor's, one of the employees that worked in the place came over and said she was very curious about the PSP having noticed I was playing it. She said she was very interested in getting one to watch movies on, but had passed for now because she wasn't sure she'd get enough use out of it if it was purchased for only that purpose.
Since she mentioned the desire to watch movies, I mentioned that I could have been watching the movie Office Space, since I had just gotten that one the other day. One of the two, count them two, UMD formatted movies I have. Spiderman 2 being the other UMD movie that I have, and that one only because it came with the PSP when I got it. And even though I really enjoy Office Space, I thought long and hard about buying it in the UMD format and yet again almost passed on it because I had already gotten it in DVD format.
I went on to tell the nice lady that personally I have avoided buying UMD movies because they just don't make much sense to me. If I buy something in UMD format, I can't watch it on anything but the PSP (though a respondent in the thread started over on the PSP forum site at Sony did respond with a tip to check out the following item: TV Adapter Kit (PSP2TV) (Third Party) For Sony PSP™ / NTSC which is available from LikSang, a site that features lots of items similar to this for those that aren't afraid to crack open the case on their gaming system to do some modifications).
The PSP doesn't (at least currently) provide an official Sony provided method to output to TV. There's also no way to use the UMDs on a DVD player or a pc.
I can't understand why (except for fears of loss of control of protected content) at this point we haven't seen standalone UMD players or UMD drives for pc's. Without the ability to play UMD movies on bigger screens, I just don't see why I should buy anything in that format versus getting full-blown DVDs, which come with more extras, and can be converted over to play on memory stick over on the PSP if you want to go through the effort and time it would take.
Anyway, I have to say it seems that Sony has missed a big opportunity here, at least up to this point.
Expanding a bit on the fears of loss of control over protected content, Sony has shown themselves, especially with the news of their Copy Controlled CDs in the last few weeks, to be a company that is overly fearful of loss of control over their content. They have created their own special formats (such as the UMD, and their own alternatives to MP3 and other music formats) that don't work with other hardware or companies products. Almost all because they don't want to let users have free reign over what they can do with the content they are paying for.
It's been obvious for a while that we are stuck in a long term war between creators of intellectual property and users of same. Sony, Microsoft and others are fighting to protect intellectual content, while users are demanding more ways, and more flexible ways of using the content. Companies like Google are facing lawsuits over their plans to scan books and other materials to help make more content available to us, and help make the content searchable so that everyone will have easy access to everything.
Until the content controllers, such as Sony, learn that users are customers that deserve to be treated as someone that should willingly wish to give the companies their money, I expect things will never change. As is, I think companies like Sony do much more to make their customers seem like mis-users of their products, and people that are to be scorned as non-buyers of products. We are supposedly only renters of content which remains completely under the control of the original creator, or at least the rights holder that has provided the material to us.
As I've noted in the past, I am absolutely in favor of content creators getting fair and just compensation for their work. I'm also in favor of companies that provide the content to end users making their fair share along the way. But I believe that customers of such content should be entitled to the most flexible methods of use that they can have. Customers shouldn't be forced to pay full-price all over again for rights to get say a song in MP3 format just because the song was only ever previously available on good old vinyl.
I know that the content providers can't be expected to anticipate all of the varying formats that will come in the future, and all of the players that might use those varying formats, but I also know that most of the creators of the media players are already paying license fees and charging users the same. Charge us a reasonable fee for upgrading to a portable license if you wish, and you might find that users like me pay those fees (if reasonable and small enough) very willingly, instead of scorning the providers as greedy money-grubbers that are just trying to suck more money from our wallets and purses.
I swear that Sony is missing the boat with their UMD format for movies and videos.
My comments on the Playstation community site are included, and expanded upon a bit here.
I swear that someone is asleep at the switch at Sony.
I was sitting at the eye doctor's yesterday, waiting for my time with the doctor and playing SOCOM Fireteam Bravo. Typically I tend to forget that I can take my PSP along to a place like the Doctor's office and keep myself entertained with it while waiting, though I've seen some comments from others mentioning that in the past, as well as some TV news reports talking about the popularity of the PSP as well as the Nintendo Gameboy series for just those purposes.
While waiting at the eye doctor's, one of the employees that worked in the place came over and said she was very curious about the PSP having noticed I was playing it. She said she was very interested in getting one to watch movies on, but had passed for now because she wasn't sure she'd get enough use out of it if it was purchased for only that purpose.
Since she mentioned the desire to watch movies, I mentioned that I could have been watching the movie Office Space, since I had just gotten that one the other day. One of the two, count them two, UMD formatted movies I have. Spiderman 2 being the other UMD movie that I have, and that one only because it came with the PSP when I got it. And even though I really enjoy Office Space, I thought long and hard about buying it in the UMD format and yet again almost passed on it because I had already gotten it in DVD format.
I went on to tell the nice lady that personally I have avoided buying UMD movies because they just don't make much sense to me. If I buy something in UMD format, I can't watch it on anything but the PSP (though a respondent in the thread started over on the PSP forum site at Sony did respond with a tip to check out the following item: TV Adapter Kit (PSP2TV) (Third Party) For Sony PSP™ / NTSC which is available from LikSang, a site that features lots of items similar to this for those that aren't afraid to crack open the case on their gaming system to do some modifications).
The PSP doesn't (at least currently) provide an official Sony provided method to output to TV. There's also no way to use the UMDs on a DVD player or a pc.
I can't understand why (except for fears of loss of control of protected content) at this point we haven't seen standalone UMD players or UMD drives for pc's. Without the ability to play UMD movies on bigger screens, I just don't see why I should buy anything in that format versus getting full-blown DVDs, which come with more extras, and can be converted over to play on memory stick over on the PSP if you want to go through the effort and time it would take.
Anyway, I have to say it seems that Sony has missed a big opportunity here, at least up to this point.
Expanding a bit on the fears of loss of control over protected content, Sony has shown themselves, especially with the news of their Copy Controlled CDs in the last few weeks, to be a company that is overly fearful of loss of control over their content. They have created their own special formats (such as the UMD, and their own alternatives to MP3 and other music formats) that don't work with other hardware or companies products. Almost all because they don't want to let users have free reign over what they can do with the content they are paying for.
It's been obvious for a while that we are stuck in a long term war between creators of intellectual property and users of same. Sony, Microsoft and others are fighting to protect intellectual content, while users are demanding more ways, and more flexible ways of using the content. Companies like Google are facing lawsuits over their plans to scan books and other materials to help make more content available to us, and help make the content searchable so that everyone will have easy access to everything.
Until the content controllers, such as Sony, learn that users are customers that deserve to be treated as someone that should willingly wish to give the companies their money, I expect things will never change. As is, I think companies like Sony do much more to make their customers seem like mis-users of their products, and people that are to be scorned as non-buyers of products. We are supposedly only renters of content which remains completely under the control of the original creator, or at least the rights holder that has provided the material to us.
As I've noted in the past, I am absolutely in favor of content creators getting fair and just compensation for their work. I'm also in favor of companies that provide the content to end users making their fair share along the way. But I believe that customers of such content should be entitled to the most flexible methods of use that they can have. Customers shouldn't be forced to pay full-price all over again for rights to get say a song in MP3 format just because the song was only ever previously available on good old vinyl.
I know that the content providers can't be expected to anticipate all of the varying formats that will come in the future, and all of the players that might use those varying formats, but I also know that most of the creators of the media players are already paying license fees and charging users the same. Charge us a reasonable fee for upgrading to a portable license if you wish, and you might find that users like me pay those fees (if reasonable and small enough) very willingly, instead of scorning the providers as greedy money-grubbers that are just trying to suck more money from our wallets and purses.