Rights Locker in the Cloud
These are the notes from a session at Digital Hollywood in Santa Monica.
SPEAKERS
Rich Berger – Sr. VP of Global Digital Strategy and Operations for Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Mick Bass – VP Alliance Development – Ascent Media - http://www.ascentmedia.com/
Scott Fierstein – Sr. Director at Microsoft
Jerry Brandt from Samsung
Tim Dodd – VP Media and Entertainment at Neustar
Brad Hunt – President of Digital Media Directions – moderator
- New ecosystem being built called Ultraviolet
- Motion picture is going through a tough time because of the decline of Home Video.
- Trying to recover this lost revenue. Currently home video is down 14% over one year.
- Currently it is a significant decline. Studios want to build a new way to deliver content. The development of this Ultraviolet system is going to bring people back to buying content and bring them back into digital distribution.
- What is Ultraviolet? - http://uvvu.com/
- DECE is also called Ultraviolet
- Lots of diff choice for consumers where they can buy content
- Different platform works on different devices
- Make a tech decision before buying content
- DVDs were really successful
- We need to unlock the content and make an open market
- Device makers are part of this conversation
- We are writing the specs right now
- Anyone can publish Ultraviolet content and device makers are working to provide machines that play Ultraviolet content
- We have a branded experience. When you buy Ultraviolet you will know that it will play on your Ultraviolet equipment across the board
- We wanted to capture the simplicity that DVDs provide.
- We are going to leverage the power of the cloud
- The Digital Rights Locker is being tested right now
- You can buy a BlueRay and then watch the digital version of this on any of your Ultraviolet devices
- It is all about interoperability
- It is about enabling a digital supply chain
- They use a common file format and it makes the encoding process easier
- Ultraviolet also enables how people use the content once they buy it
- This allows for Make, Manage, and Move of content
- What does MSFT think about UltraViolet?
- Microsoft brought a lot to the table
- Came with an open mind
- We didn’t come in with a bunch of legacies
- Most companies saw a company to create something really new
- This was a joint venture for us
- It is like building the entire aviation industry all at once
- The opportunities that this presents is amazing
- Zune does their own encoding – we use the product to differentiate ourselves
- UltraViolet commoditize the products – UltraViolet also defines what you can do with the product.
- Buy once and play anywhere --- this is UltraViolet
- v1 is about sell through – future versions will do things like ebooks
- Zune will not have to do the encoding anymore – zero encoding costs anymore as the studios will be delivering the finished product
- If the consumer wins – everyone wins. – Samsung
- UltraViolet adds value to physical. You can start with on online purchase and go to physical and you can also buy physical and then go to digital.
- The physical product is still a valuable product for the end user
- Standard non leading edge people are tending to be less comfortable with digital to start with
- People still relate to package media
- UltraViolet will be able to talk socially and tell your friends what you recently purchased
- Are there plans to support rental? or Rent to Own?
- You will be able to do this right off the bat
- Disney and Apple are missing from the consortium – why is that?
- Disney is doing something called Key Chest
- ** NOTE *** This session had the most Q&A out of all the sessions I have been to
- Consumers can specify whether or not they want to share their information. – consumers will have to opt-in. Retailers won’t be able to see what a consumer paid for a piece of content – they will only be able to see what is in the consumers catalog.