Peter Griffin: End in sight for UMD movies

When Sony last year launched the PSP, its impressive handheld gaming gadget, the PlayStation-in-your-hand, it was a revolution for more than gaming. Here was a device that not only gave you high-quality games on the move, but let you watch movies on its lush colour display.

The PSP games and movies come on small UMDs (universal media disks), a format which, Sony said, had major implications for the entertainment industry as more people watched movies on mobile devices.

It seemed like Sony was on to something. The movie studios piled in, creating UMD versions of their newest DVD releases. Titles like Spiderman 2 and Steamboy looked stunning on the PSP. It seemed that after a series of debacles and missed opportunities, Sony had a real winner on its hands.

But, while Sony has sold millions of the devices, it seems the movie element of the equation is about to die an ungracious death.

Universal and Paramount studios have stopped new UMD releases, and Fox and Buena Vista are considering major cutbacks of new UMD titles. As a senior Universal executive told the Hollywood Reporter last week: "It's awful. Sales are near zilch. It's another Sony bomb, like Blu-Ray."

Now it's claimed Walmart is disappointed with low sales and is clearing shelf space to make way for bigger sellers. The UMD movie trend seems to be over before it really began. But why?

There are a couple of reasons. The first is that, though watching a movie on the PSP's small screen is a pleasant experience, there are few movies you'd want to watch again and again on the PSP. I discovered this recently when I was preparing to undertake a long flight and wanted to pick up a UMD movie for the trip. I popped into Real Groovy to see what titles were on offer. Of the 30 or so movies for sale, there weren't any I could say I'd repeatedly watch on the PSP's small screen. I left Real Groovy empty-handed.

Replay value is important when you're shelling out between $25 and $35 for a movie, and the UMD format isn't suited to repeat views.

The second thing hurting the viability of UMD is the fact that Sony allows no means of connecting the PSP to your television set so you can enjoy the picture on a large screen.

If Sony had generously included such a connector you could then use the PSP as a DVD player, buying one copy of a movie on UMD and playing it either on the PSP or your regular TV.

Sony obviously didn't do this because it wants to clip the ticket twice, forcing you to buy DVDs and UMDs. But its tight-fisted approach may well have killed the chances of UMD taking off. That's a shame because the success of video iPod downloads shows that people are willing to watch content on small screens.

The PSP beats the video iPod in terms of viewing enjoyment, but the technology has been hamstrung by the over-protective attitude of its creator. Only a drop in the price of UMD disks and the addition of an S-Video port on future PSP devices will save Sony's otherwise well-executed idea of playing high-quality movies in the palm of your hand.