Farewell to UMD…
Yahoo! News reports that the UMD could soon go the way of the Betamax.
Disappointing sales have slowed the flow of movies on the proprietary Universal Media Disc to a mere trickle. At least two major studios have completely stopped releasing movies on UMD, while others are either toying with the idea or drastically cutting back.
And retailers also are cutting the amount of shelf space they’ve been devoting to UMD movies, amid talk that Wal-Mart is about to dump the category entirely.
There are lots of probable reasons for why UMD is selling so poorly, and the article touches on a couple of them. First, there is the seeming glut of titles. While launch titles are a good thing, there were so many on the market so fast that they outstripped consumers’ abilities to keep up. Second, there’s the fact that there is no way to hook the PSP into a television to play it on a larger screen – which ties into the release of the video iPod, which can play movies through your regular television.
I think there are two things that are being ignored, however. First is the price mark. The only thing most UMD releases have to offer is portability (provided you’ve already shelled out for a PSP). Beyond that, their features are limited compared to DVD’s and their convenience is crippled by being bound to a single handheld device. Yet every UMD I have seen has been priced in a range comparable to full DVD releases, so buying a DVD and a UMD of the same movie effectively doubles the price. Suddenly, I find myself paying $45 for House of Flying Daggers rather than $20 – 25. Or, rather, somebody finds themselves paying $45 – I own neither a PSP nor a copy of House of Flying Daggers.
Which brings us to the second major complication – DRM and copy protection. Sony’s Benjamin Feingold does the convulsive backhanded-swipe at his customers (who, as the MPAA and RIAA have told us, are all thieves) by saying, “I think a lot of people are ripping content and sticking it onto the device rather than purchasing.” This may be true. After all, if I legitimately purchase the device and the content, fair use should grant me the ability to put that content onto the device without having to purchase the content all over again. But not only are my DVD’s DRM-encrypted, Sony has gone to great lengths to make certain that UMD’s aren’t used for piracy. This means no blank UMD’s to record onto (although the technology is there) and no devices capable of reading unencrypted UMD’s.
This not only flies in the face of fair use, it limits the ability of independent artists to get their work before the public. Independent filmmakers might dig the idea of having UMD copies of their films when they go to festivals. Imagine handing a UMD to anybody in a suit who was carrying a PSP. Imagine being able to sell your content online to customers looking for something other than Sahara for their portable viewing pleasure. But in their quest to deny users their own Fair Use rights, Sony has also closed this new venue to all but the most powerful Hollywood studios.
If Sony wants to save the UMD format, they need compatibility with full-size televisions, competitive prices that recognize the actual comparative value of the product, recordability to follow fair use guidelines and an architecture that allows independent artists access. Without any of that, their fancy discs won’t even make for good coasters.