Did the UMD had any redeeming features or was it shit from day one?

Did the UMD had any redeeming features or was it shit from day one?
What could had Sony done to promote its adoption?

Still is the most cyberpunk media imaginable

Supposedly is one of the most robust storages, capable of storing data far longer than CDs and DVDs.
The thing is, Sony never released blank UMDs nor a way to burn/copy UMDs, and they could only be used on the PSP; so it made no sense at all.
Sony basically gimped it's own product because "piracy."

The plastic casing that stored the disc was shit but it has pretty good storage. All the moving parts weren’t the best, such as the slot having to open and the disc spinning, but it was good for the time and pretty reliable.

Discs made sense in the day, but technology made huge leaps in it's lifespan, which is still going on thanks to timeless design and CFW, so of course some things will feel dated, and UMDs are one such technology. UMDs being widely adopted would've stagnated progress. They are shit now, but they did their job well enough, which was to let you play games when digital media wasn't economical.

To be fair, its not like you could fit games on PSP compatible memory sticks early in the PSP's lifetime.

This was likely their solution to that issue at the time.

>they could only be used on the PSP
hey... There were movies on umd for the psp but nobody at sony ever had the idea of putting out a umd video player to use at home? Or a portable video player without the games? Seems that was the logical next step.

You are thinking of MiniDiscs

Enjoy watching 480x272 video on a TV. Higher resolutions would take more storage, which was limited on these already.

Maybe it would make sense for music, but I haven't heard of music UMDs, and MiniDisc was a thing.

This kind of spinning media is no good for handhelds.

Both developed by Sony, they're literally two different versions of the same thing.

yeah but minidiscs look way more cyberpunk than UMDs

Bump

>Having a problem with 480x272 Master race resolution

Im so mad Im shaking rn

UMDs had up to 1.8 GB of storage. Enough for 480 and 720 albeit kinda crappy, but enough for the era.
They could easily have made an update with more storage later on.

They were very cheap and storage dense for the time.

Back then even a 128MB memory card was $40+ compared to the 1.8GB for $3-4 of UMDs

These were pretty much small DVDs, so I guess making them double layer wouldn't be hard. Don't know if they could even make old drives support dual layer discs.

Also, with MPEG 2, you wouldn't be really able to fit 720p video on these disks and hold a full length movie.

Bluray in UMD format. Could easily store tens of GB, more than enough for 1080p at decent quality.
But at this point Sony seems to be allergic to money. So probably not.

sony had plans for hosting umds on cases similar to the minidisc ones. having an a side and a b side could also help increasing storage.

In a time when flash memory was still expensive and had low density, UMD was the way to go for affordable portable game media.
Nothing, it didn't need nor wanted to. The same way Microsoft doesn't need nor want to promote adoption of its DVD/Blu-Ray game packaging format, the same way Sony itself doesn't need nor want to do so for its DVD/Blu-Ray game packaging format, and so on.

Did you never learn the difference between flash memory and optical media? Why would you compare the two?

Sony messed up again with proprietary hardware with the VITA. That has less attention than the PSP.

No.
>They were tiny,
>no capacity,
>loud and rattly
>useless if the shitty case came apart

dont know what youre on about. I got my memory stick before the second psp came out and Its got a dozen or so games on it right now.

Fuck off, retard.

I compared the two because they needed a cheap, large storage medium for games.


UMD offered that but because it used moving parts ate battery life like a bitch and everyone went digital once flash memory reached affordable levels.