Digital Home Thoughts: Sony Intros Memory Stick Movies as Target KO's UMDs

"After getting off to a strong start in the wake of the American PSP launch last March, the Universal Media Disc (UMD) appears to be on its last legs. Sales of movies on the PSP's once-hot proprietary format have slowed to a trickle, causing several major movie studios to cease supporting it. In March, the Hollywood Reporter ran an article claiming that the home-entertainment divisions of Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures have "completely stopped" releasing films on the format, and other studios have been cutting back their release slates. This week, speculation turned into reality when Target decided to discontinue stocking UMDs entirely. At virtually the same time, Sony announced the forthcoming release of a pair of Memory Stick Entertainment Packs (MSEP). The packages will come in 1GB (MSX-M1GSTEP) and 2GB (MEX-M2GSEP) Memory Stick Duos for about $60 and $100--the standard retail price for both items."

While all us PSP owners have pretty much learned to convert DVDs to the PSP-compatible MPEG-4 files via third-party applications, it looks like Sony has officially learned that UMDs are a dead format and Memory Stick Duo, the PSP's storage format, is the one that will carry them through. I certainly don't think they expect us to drop $60-100 every time we want to watch a DVD so I am guessing they will also be a special movie store soon enough. There is some talk in this article about automatic unlocking of the MPEG-4 files as well as conversion of file formats, but I think I am going to wait to see what other customers' experiences are before dropping that much money on the memory cards.