Hollywood moved a step closer toward making universal video a reality.
Get to know the name UltraViolet. By next year you'll be able to play all the movies and shows you download over almost any device -- from TVs to smartphones to tablets to PCs to Blu-ray players. You'll also be able to burn them onto DVDs and share them with family and friends.
Most significantly, making the vision happen has involved an historic collaboration among the major media and technology companies -- all united by common threats faced by piracy and a languishing home video market.
Plans have been under way since 2008, but on Monday, an actual name, logo and prototype for a website were revealed.
Among the stakeholders are five of the major Hollywood studios, cable companies like Comcast, technology companies such as Microsoft, big-ticket retailer Best Buy and online rental giant Netflix.
Some 58 organizations have committed to establishing a common file format and dismantling the barriers that prevent sharing digital content through a consortium called the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, or DECE.
In fact, that was the original name. For good reason, after extensive testing the participants have re-christened the brand.
“We’re banishing DECE from eveybody’s vocabulary,” Mitch Singer, DECE president and chief technology officer of Sony Pictures Entertainment, told TheWrap. “We tested a bunch of names and UltraViolet just popped. When we asked consumers, people just associated that name with the best, the fastest, superior. It’s outside the visible color spectrum, which means it’s all around. But just like the product it’s ubiquitous and always with you.”
The newly announced website will serve as a digital rights locker, allowing users to store and access their content -- it's not intended to become viewers' main entry point to watching and sharing their films.
Instead, the consortium hopes that users will sign up for their accounts through retailers' websites, like Best Buy or Comcast's Fancast. Content that is UltraViolet-compatible will bear the program’s logo.
“Our hope is that consumers go through retailers to manage their UltraViolet accounts, and we want retailers to maintain that close relationship with consumers,” Singer said. “This will be the back end, but, of course, people can go to our site directly.”
On Monday, the group also announced that it had attracted a trio of new members to the party; LG, LOVEFiLM, and Marvell Semiconductor. Yet, there are still two important holdouts -- Disney and Apple.
In the case of Disney, the studio has been developing KeyChest, it’s own attempt to make movie downloads more accessible. Though Apple has been rumored to be signing on, Disney created its rights locker before drumming up any media partners. DECE took the opposite approach; assembling its consortium before creating the technology.
Still it is Apple’s lack of participation in the consortium and the apparent absence of such popular devices as iPhones and iPads in UltraViolet’s rollout that have drawn scrutiny from tech circles.
