Was in WHSmiths earlier and wandered into the CD/DVD/Video section and first thing that caught my eye was these things that looked like DVD cases, but smaller. Upon closer inspection they tunred out to be "UMD Video" and were all films (like Triple X 3, Kill Bill 2, etc) Of course there was no disc inside but the space for it was smaller than for a normal size DVD, as was the case.

So I get home and look it up on Google/Wikipedia and it looks like UMD is a new media type developed by Sony for the PSP. Stores upto 1.8gb of data - 2hrs DVD quality video / 4hrs "normal" quality video, and apart from PSP games there are quite a few films out on UMD, but only if liscenced(sp) or owned by Sony it appears.....

Also looks like they (the UMD's) are 60mm discs like Minidiscs, and also like Minidiscs come in a cartridge with a floppy-like sliding thing.

So I take it you can only use these in the PSP, and can't take the disc out of the cartridge and use in a normal DVD player or DVD-ROM drive? I know you can get mini CD's and DVD's (but these are 80mm aren't they?)

 

click me

 

So there is no UMD writing software (or burners) and UMD's only work in PSP's and noting else? (And likewise nothing other than UMD or mem-stick will work in a PSP)

Not really a "Universal Media Disc" then is it

 

who's to say they wont be used in other sony devices or other makes in the near future? i can see em using em in the ps3 maybe

 

But currently I mean... Bit pretentious calling em "Universal Media Disc" when they can only be used in PSP's

 

yeah but you can hardly change the name of them in the future can you