sony umd design flaw?

[socialdrone]

ive heard grumblings that stores might not be accepting any used psp games for cash or trade. they are under the beliefe that games for portable systems get rather abused. that because a portion of the umd disk is allways vulnerable, they will easilly get scratched... or become encrusted with a variety of substances.

from what ive seen and heard there is no easy way to go about resurfacing the disk without destroying its casing.



what do you think about this?

[djb1986]

They take used GBA games, so I don't see why they wouldn't take PSP. And Sony will probably sell replacement UMD protectors.

[atomiX]

ive heard grumblings that stores might not be accepting any used psp games for cash or trade. they are under the beliefe that games for portable systems get rather abused. that because a portion of the umd disk is allways vulnerable, they will easilly get scratched... or become encrusted with a variety of substances.

from what ive seen and heard there is no easy way to go about resurfacing the disk without destroying its casing.



what do you think about this?

i don't know about store policies but i do agree that the UMD disk could have been improved. even putting up a small aluminium flap over the open spot like a floppy disk would have been a great idea. it would have maybe required a small redesign in the loading mechanism but would have been much safer. if a small piece of abrasive material should fall inside the case without being detected, i suppose it could scratch the disk as soon as it starts spinning.

[Greatsaintlouis]

The decision to omit any sort of protective device on the UMD discs is ridiculous - Sony's minidiscs have a small metallic shutter on them, so I don't see what would have been so hard to put it on what's essentially a data Hi-MD in a funky case. Plus, have you seen Sony's line of portable MD players? The things are tiny - there's no reason why a mechanism to operate the shutter couldn't have been implemented.

Plus, I love the fact that you have to put your greasy thumb on the disc's surface to pop it out of the case.

[LeGIt]

Did anyone actually expect longevity with anything Branded as a PlayStation though? If you did, you're a fool! We could really use a video/some pics of some dirt destroying a UMD for the fun of it :D I'd buy a UMD just to see it die ;0

[sayin999]

funny you should say that, i was walking today and decided to go to a local gamestop where i ended up picking up a new copy of hl2 collectors edition, and noticed in the used portable section of the class case there were alredy 5 used psp games. Im shock that there are already used games avaliable, whats even funnyer was i overheard them talking and said that they were still selling returned psps with dead pixals as new.

[Zilog Jones]

Ah, so that's were they're going!

On the subjects of UMDs, I think they're the stupidest design ever. Actually, why didn't they just use Hi-MDs anyway? OK, they probably did that to stop illegal copies, but they could have made it so the PSP only plays pre-recorded discs and not magneto-optical recordable ones... then again there would inevitably be mod-chips...

[Hawanja]

Well, since the Psp takes memory cards, wouldn't it be easier just to dump a game and copy it onto a 1 gig flash card and play it that way?

I don't have a Psp yet so I don't know if this is even possible.

[Yakumo]

Did anyone actually expect longevity with anything Branded as a PlayStation though? If you did, you're a fool! We could really use a video/some pics of some dirt destroying a UMD for the fun of it :D I'd buy a UMD just to see it die ;0

I might buy a junk PS2 from hard Off for 2000 yen just so I can smack the shit out of it on Retro Core :p May do a Saturn as well if I can bring myself to do it :funkinmu:

Yakumo

[Taemos]

Ah, so that's were they're going!

On the subjects of UMDs, I think they're the stupidest design ever. Actually, why didn't they just use Hi-MDs anyway? OK, they probably did that to stop illegal copies, but they could have made it so the PSP only plays pre-recorded discs and not magneto-optical recordable ones... then again there would inevitably be mod-chips...

I don't think they did it to stop piracy. A Hi-MD would've been the way to go, in my opinion. Do you know how rare an MD reader (data-wise) is? I don't think they've been produced for years, much less one that will read Hi-MDs (which just came out last year, if I'm not mistaken).

Sorry for the probably poor quality of the post - it's still early in the morning.

[Zilog Jones]

Well most (if not all) Hi-MD Walkmans have digital inputs of some sort and USB inputs - surely someone can work out how to write any data onto them?

AFAIK, when using SonicStage to put music onto the discs, it encodes audio on the PC, therefore it must be sending some sort of binary data to the Walkman.

[cahaz]

I might buy a junk PS2 from hard Off for 2000 yen just so I can smack the shit out of it on Retro Core :p May do a Saturn as well if I can bring myself to do it :funkinmu:

Yakumo

it's sad that i can't download your episodes. :smt009

Anyway, The UMD is flawed indeed, but i'm sur some thrid parties will invent something to protect it (like a windows or something? or to repair it.. Flaws are a good thing to make some cash, sometimes.

[Taemos]

Well most (if not all) Hi-MD Walkmans have digital inputs of some sort and USB inputs - surely someone can work out how to write any data onto them?

AFAIK, when using SonicStage to put music onto the discs, it encodes audio on the PC, therefore it must be sending some sort of binary data to the Walkman.

You're probably right. I'm not exactly a hardware expert :).

[Johnny]

I might buy a junk PS2 from hard Off for 2000 yen just so I can smack the shit out of it on Retro Core :p May do a Saturn as well if I can bring myself to do it :funkinmu:

Yakumo

I know you don't like Sony (can't blame you :-D ) but you should get a PS2. There's a lot of good games for it. Don't think the PS2 is just GTA series and games like that.

If i could i would buy a Xbox, and many other consoles. Remember, the games are more important than the system.

[Greatsaintlouis]

I don't think they did it to stop piracy. A Hi-MD would've been the way to go, in my opinion. Do you know how rare an MD reader (data-wise) is? I don't think they've been produced for years, much less one that will read Hi-MDs (which just came out last year, if I'm not mistaken).

There used to be a PC drive that took Minidiscs as a storage medium, but if I recall it is so old that it doesn't even support 80-minute MDs. The only recent use of either MD or Hi-MD that has been outside of music was for DV camcorders. Plus, the players and software are locked down tighter than a nun's ass with all of the copyright management hooks Sony has in place, so it would be a formidable format for pirates indeed.

Well most (if not all) Hi-MD Walkmans have digital inputs of some sort and USB inputs - surely someone can work out how to write any data onto them?
AFAIK, when using SonicStage to put music onto the discs, it encodes audio on the PC, therefore it must be sending some sort of binary data to the Walkman.

The Walkman digital and USB inputs are geared towards music data, either from SonicStage (USB) or a stereo's digital out - I think you'd have to actually change the Walkman's firmware to have it treat incoming data as anything else. And SonicStage encodes audio to Sony's own Atrac music format - just another lossy compression technique (albeit a better one than MP3). If you wanted to hack any sort of data storage with a MD/Hi-MD player, it would have to be with a program outside of something like SonicStage. People have done it before with various MP3 players, so it's definately possible. The only problem again is that Sony has DRM'ed the thing all to hell, so it'll be tough to break into the inner workings of the technology.

[LeGIt]

I might buy a junk PS2 from hard Off for 2000 yen just so I can smack the shit out of it on Retro Core :p

Yakumo

I'd give you the 2000yen to do so ;) Especially if you screamed Japanese profanity whilst doing it!

[AntiPasta]

May do a Saturn as well if I can bring myself to do it :funkinmu:

Don't. "Certain people" will hunt you down and eat your lungs :ayashi
And Legit, don't be so f*ing biased, it's getting old.

[Greatsaintlouis]

And Legit, don't be so f*ing biased, it's getting old.

Indeed, and not just on Legit's end as well. We're looking less and less like a haven for conniseurs of fine and rare gaming paraphernalia and more like every other gaming board out there.

Aside from the leetspeak and messages all in caps, you'd be hard pressed to tell this place from GameFAQS in recent days with some of the topics we've had.

[Yakumo]

Indeed, and not just on Legit's end as well. We're looking less and less like a haven for conniseurs of fine and rare gaming paraphernalia and more like every other gaming board out there.

Aside from the leetspeak and messages all in caps, you'd be hard pressed to tell this place from GameFAQS in recent days with some of the topics we've had.

come on, it's not that bad. At least there's no slagging matches between members here.

Yakumo

[XerdoPwerko]

what does "slagging" mean?

I myself still find this board rather superior to pretty much everywhere else I've been to. I'm not that hardcore a collector, but I sure do like a lot of games and reading about games, and collecting games I like, and knowing about games I will never be able to collect... so I learn a lot from you guys instead.