Not all of Sonys formats failed.

[Johnnytoxic]

The 3½-inch floppy disk.

Sony are like 50 / 50 when it comes to formats suceeding. I think there due a win now with umd and minidisc

 

["andy"]

UMD movies where a failure but the UMD disc isnt . what else could you use on a PSP for games

 

[Sirrel Squirrel]

In post production everything goes onto Sony tapes (Digibeta, HDCam etc) so they won on that side

 

[Phemo]

UMD movies where a failure but the UMD disc isnt . what else could you use on a PSP for games

Yeah exactly - I use a similar agument when people mention Blu-ray. It may fail as a movie format, but it's still going to be the media that PS3 games are on, regardless of what happens.

 

[Bobbler]

The 3½-inch floppy disk.

Sony are like 50 / 50 when it comes to formats suceeding. I think there due a win now with umd and minidisc

Aye they get the odd one right, they just seem so intent on doing the opposite of what everyone else wants to do. Dont get me wrong, some are great ideas, people just dont seem to always take them though

SACD vs DVDA
Sony Surround thing vs DTS
Atrac3 vs MP3

andy - your comment makes no sense. Its hardly a "success" when its only used on a Sony product. They need to make money in licensing the media format to other companies to make it a success. Like CD or DVD or VHS which now everyone uses regardless of manufacturer of the product line and hence the inventors get a license fee for every disk or unit bearing the DVD mark AFAIK
UMD is soley used in a Sony device and manufactured by Sony. Its only successful in that people buy the disks for their PSPs. No one else does.

 

[deSade]

DVDA

 

[ElRazur]

Sony Surround thing vs DTS
Atrac3 vs MP3

.

Sony dynamic sound studio iirc....It was said to be better than dts and atrac was also superior to mp3 isnt?

 

[chimaera]

MiniDisk was a minor success for a brief period of time until MP3 players took off.

UMD is a variant of MiniDisk which has failed miserably, the movie disks flopped big time, whilst the PSP suffers from serious loading time problems due to its use of disks rather than solid state memory.

As has been said, just because the PSP has been popular doesn't mean the game storage method hasn't flopped, which it has big time.

Don't even get me started on Atrac3, i had an early Sony player and it suffered hugely from data corruption in the format conversion from CD.

 

[Bobbler]

Sony dynamic sound studio iirc....It was said to be better than dts and atrac was also superior to mp3 isnt?

El mate, re-read my post. I didnt say they're worse, they where not successful technologies in the market of setting standards.
Difference being, you make a product - it gets adopted as the standard. See DVD/CD/VHS as fine examples. Their 3.5" floppy was one of those as is SPDIF (or optical as we know it)

Atrac3 features only in Sony products AFAIK, but its sounds better at lower bps than MP3 IMO.
SDSS (or whatever its acronymn is ) is also a Sony only function, where as DTS or DD has been adopted as the standard as every home cinema amp from any manufacturer is included. If Sony missed out those two on their latest amps I dont think they would sell to any but those with an all Sony setup for them.

 

[Joebob]

Its hardly a "success" when its only used on a Sony product.

Was the UMD originally designed to be used as an licensed product by other manufacturers then? i.e. a Phillips UMD film player being released etc. If not then it's abit of a moot point as it will have only ever of been intended to be used on Sony products, i.e. the PSP!

 

["andy"]

it was only ever intended for use on psp i think

some psp games use allot of space so it wasnt possible for them to use solid state memorys

they couldnt use cd/dvd because its blatantly too big. the only option was to make a new format that was small enough for a handheld and held enough data for games with fancy textures and sounds etc

seriosuly what other option could they of chosen ?

 

[S@njay]

I might be wrong, but did sony invent DDR memory which was first used in the playstation 2?

Without such bold companies taking big risks on new technologies we would be stuck in the stone age!

 

[mmj_uk]

I was just thinking the same, to say we had all these Sony bashing threads stating that Sony were not innovative?!?

 

[Flibster]

Why doesn't the PS3 handle UMD's then?

 

[Werewolf]

because it would be a waste of time/money/space to use them?

seriously though, a media format can only really be classed as a sucess in the consumer market if it's actually used.

Minidisk was a partial sucess - it sold, but in limited quantities and was only really supported by Sony.
UMD is looking like a massive failure - it's getting less and less support from content companies other than Sony*, will almost certainly never be used on anything but the PSP (or it's sucessor). Even Sony seem to have a meh approach to the format.
Betamax - suceeded in the pro market where price/size is not a problem, but technical specs are vitally important. Failed miserably in the consumer market where it was expensive, bulky, and very poorly supported by content providers.

Re DDR, i very much doubt Sony invented it, as they are not a chip fabrication/design company and it requires a very specialised knowledge/skill/equipment base to design chips these days (hence why Sony went to another company for the cell).
I beleive it was one of the memory companies, who probably sold Sony the chips (or made some to their rough specification).

*I don't think amny companies have any plans to release more films on it, and many probably lost a lot of money.

 

[Joebob]

Minidisk was a partial sucess - it sold, but in limited quantities and was only really supported by Sony.

Crap - it was supported by a lot more companies than Sony, with players being made by the usual bunch like Sharp, JVC etc and Discs being produced by all the usual Memorex, TDK etc it was the sudden and unexpected rise of the MP3 which killed it off as it was actually gaining momentum in sales before the likes of Napster came along.

UMD is looking like a massive failure - it's getting less and less support from content companies other than Sony*, will almost certainly never be used on anything but the PSP (or it's sucessor). Even Sony seem to have a meh approach to the format.

Still not sure what you're on about here - it's not made to play back in anything but a PSP and that's exactly what it does with quite a decent games catalogue out already and the biggest release lineup for the PSP due out this year since launch it's looking quite healthy - maybe not for films but it's still out there doing the business.

Betamax - suceeded in the pro market where price/size is not a problem, but technical specs are vitally important. Failed miserably in the consumer market where it was expensive, bulky, and very poorly supported by content providers.

Bulky? the cassettes are actually smaller than VHS - the only reason VHS won through was because of slightly better marketing and the fact that the cassettes were cheaper to mass produce for VHS. Incidentally, did you know that BD is cheaper to mass produce than HD-DVD?

 

[wannabedamned]

Edited

Anyways, My View.

UMD is no way a flop. PSP is a hit is it not? Hense the format that goes with it is too.

UMD was designed for the PSP, Sony are the primary backers, But there are many more companies producing UMD media for the PSP.

*edit* Lol, I more or less said what Joebob said. Whoops

 

[Kreeeee]

UMD is no way a flop. PSP is a hit is it not? Hense the format that goes with it is too.

No, where are sony making money from licensing fees? IT is a commercial failure. Just like N64 carts are not considered a commercial success but then N64 carts weren't intended as a general media format for movies etc.

Incidentally, did you know that BD is cheaper to mass produce than HD-DVD?

You got a link for that as I've seen in an awful lot of your posts that you spread a huge amount of misinformation about. Not what I expect for someone your age.

 

[james.miller]

successful:
betamax (profession use)
various camcorder formats
3.5" floppy disk as we know it today

crashed:
minidisc
betamax (consumer market)
sacd
umd

they are, afaik, sony owned formats.

the rest are not sony exclusives. the compat disc is a joint venture with phillips. Phillips actually developed it first, sony added error correction and other technologies to make the format more robust. spdif stands for sony/phillips Digital Interface Format.

its worth noting also that the 3.5" floppy had a bad start. it was first supported by Hewlett Packard in 1983. it was almost wiped out untill late 1984 when apple choose to support them with ther new macintosh computers. the rest is history.

 

[Sclodion]

Incidentally, did you know that BD is cheaper to mass produce than HD-DVD?

I'd be very very interested to know your source for making this kind of comment.

The latest quote I had to tender for priced Blueray production about 2x higher than HD-DVD for movie title mastering. It will drop though.

The cost of mastering is much higher for BD too as the tools are immature vs HD DVD which just uses DVD authoring tools.