ECMA International has accepted Sony's Universal Media Disc (UMD), which debuted earlier this year in the PlayStation Portable (PSP), as an international standard. The UMD, which has a storage capacity of 1.8GB and resembles a small DVD enclosed in a plastic case, is currently used by Sony to store PSP video games and movies. However, now that UMD has been accepted as a standard, we'll likely see the format move to other devices, including PCs, which could open up a new market for UMD-based media for PSPs. Currently, a wide range of movie companies support UMD, as well--certainly more than I had expected--but this week's news could lead to even more UMD-based movie releases in the future.
This is great news. Hopefully Micro$oft won't try to squash widespread acceptance of this format.
widespread acceptance of the format?
uh.. yeah.. I see them everywhere.. question: is anyone buying them?
only about a million psp's sold in US..
"Current manufacturing lines are stretched to the max - Bob Hurley, with Sony DADC, says that Sony is churning out 200,000 UMDs a day and future capacity is expected to be 500,000 per day. 'Tiger Woods Golf is my personal favorite [game], but video has been surprisingly good to us,' says Hurley. In a few years Sony expect videos to be more than 60 percent of all UMD sales, with an expected 130 million UMDs being sold in 2008."
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