Hollywood studios, technology companies, and cable providers are banding together to create a library of media that will all be available in the cloud. The group is called The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem and they have called this initiative UltraViolet.
The DECE has been working on this for a couple of years now. The group consists of around 60 companies, so it’s easy to see how this could get complicated pretty quickly. We could also see the entire thing deadlocked as these 60 companies, all with separate interests, try to make decisions. They promise to have tech specs and and licensing details by the end of this year, though.
According to the president of Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem LLC, Mitch Singer, UltraViolet will let consumers buy and access digital media through smartphones, Web-connected televisions, tablet computers, PCs and game consoles.
“We’re going to give consumers full flexibility, choice and freedom in where they can access their library of content.” — Mitch Singer
Thinking about the details of how all this would work could make your head hurt, so UltraViolet will handle all the details for you. It boils down to these companies coming to an agreement about a global DRM scheme. This type of Digital Rights Management would be easier to deal with for us as consumers because it would be supported across multiple devices and might provide less headaches and limitations than what we’re used to.
Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Sony, Comcast, Netflix, and Microsoft are all on board. We also have companies like HP, Panasonic, and Nokia. The names we don’t see are Apple and Disney, which could either be a huge plus for UltraViolet or an epic FAIL. What this amounts to is an iTunes competitor and Steve Jobs is having nothing to do with it. Jobs is also Disney’s largest shareholder, which may explain their absence from DECE.
There are a couple of ways this will play out. Without support from Apple, which is probably the largest distributor of digital media on the Internet, UltraViolet will fail. On the other hand, consumers might find the UltraViolet way more convenient, forcing Apple to abandon their solo approach and join the pack. Now, we just have to wait and see if DECE can get it together in make this actually happen.
See Also:
- Studios, Tech Companies Move Closer to Universal Content Access
- With DECE’s UltraViolet, We’re About To See Just How Powerful Apple Really Is
- “UltraViolet” is Short for “Giant Media DRM Cloud Coalition Featuring Everyone Except Apple and Disney”