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UltraViolet gets Hollywood support

All it took was a near-collapse of the movie industry, and the bankruptcies of Hollywood mainstays like MGM, but the major studios look to be catching up to the 21st Century. Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem announced multiple industry partners at CES 2011 to include all of the major Hollywood studios except for lone wolf Disney.

“The most highly skilled users are already downloading content, making copies and watching on any device they want,” said Mitch Singer, the chief technology officer of Sony Pictures, who has been the key executive behind Ultraviolet. “We’re trying to build a business model for everyone around that behavior.”

UltraViolet is a cross-industry cooperation to provide digital rights ownership by consumers in a simple way. It was developed due to the frustrating way every manufacturer seemed to have their own digital rights management (DRM) which didn’t play well with others.

Each consumer will have a “rights locker” that will receive the DRM information at purchase or rental. The content will be streamed or downloaded from the provider in accordance with the rights stored int he locker. The digital content may be transfered between devices or shared without obtaining additional rights.

Digital content providers signed up so far include Best Buy, Comcast, Microsoft, Panasonic, Sony and Toshiba. The content can be shared with up to six friends or family members, and can be transfered or streamed to up to twelve devices. They may also be copied to DVD or flash media for back up.

The studios and distributors retain the right to decide where and how to sel their content with UltraViolet technology, but the retailers will set the prices. Digital copies of movies and TV shows may be purchased or rented with computers, Internet-connected televisions, and with Blu-ray Discs. The estimated cost will be $11 or $12.

The coalition has been hard at work obtaining partnerships with phone, tablet, HDTV, Blu-ray player, video game console and computer manufacturers. Software will need to be implemented on any device to support UltraViolet DRM technology.

The CES 2011 announcement was for content availability from the major motion picture studios. Hardware and retail availability will come later this year. The studios wanted to provide the content now so there are no hurdles to getting the hardware and retail market up and running.

There were hints that UV technology would allow for ripping of DVDs for storage on local hard drives, and possibly in the cloud, with an UltraViolet license. UV-branded Blu-ray and DVD discs would come with a digital “copy-in-the-cloud” for streaming ro downloading. The stored content would be subject to the same terms as downloaded or steamed content.

Notably absent from this major consortium are Disney and Apple. (Apple CEO Steve Jobs is the largest share-holder of Disney.) These companies always went their own way, but they do it incredibly successfully so time will tell if they come to support UltraViolet in the future. Disney has been developing their own system for cloud-based rights management called Keychest. Just like they ad their own layer of encryption on DVDs and Blu-ray Discs, Disney will certainly try to do their own thing here.

Unless Apple joins the group, iPhones, iPods and iPads – and maybe even OS X – won’t have access to the UV ecosystem. The die hard Apple fans will justify why they rent movies from iTunes while the rest of the world enjoys lifetime ownership of their collection.

Boxee embedded in HDTV

ViewSonic is the first manufacturer to announce an HDTV with Boxee software built in. The new TV is powered by the Intel Atom CE4100 processor, and runs Boxee as an app.

There’s not much to report besides that. It doesn’t appear that this is a new implementation of Boxee adding support for ATSC over-the-air and QAM cable tuners. It is just a TV with a Boxee app. But the fewer boxes we have, the better off, so that’s something.

ViewSonic press release below
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Time Warner Cable Video-On-Demand coming to HDTVs

At CES 2011, Sony announced that their new Bravia HDTVs will have access to Time Warner Cable Video-On-Demand without a cable receiver. This is a most unusual development for a cable operator to provide their content over IP services, but it makes sense considering they make a lot of money renting movies, and they have secured rental windows for their service making new releases available 28 days before rental kiosks.

There isn’t a lot of detail about this partnership yet, but I am assuming this will only be provided to Time Warner Cable subscribers – at least initially. They don’t want to give away their strong VOD leverage to satellite subscribers. It also makes sense that they would want to gain VOD sales from subscribers without cable receivers. Certainly they understand a lot of people are giving up their DVRs in favor of IP services like Hulu and Netflix.

Following Sony’s announcement, Samsung also announced partnerships with both Time Warner Cable and Comcast to bring VOD to their HDTVs and Galaxy Tab. The Galaxy Tab features sound similar to the Xfinity Remote for iPad, and should include seamless sharing of video back and forth between the TV and tablet.

There is more information from Samsung than from Sony concerning their partnership. It is confirmed the cable VOD will be available to cable subscribers. They also announced a cool feature that allows content recorded on a DVR (presumably the Samsung DVR) to be played on a Samsung HDTV in the home connected to the local network.

These are very exciting announcements. The converged home is closer and more affordable than we know.

Samsung press releases below
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VUDU to stream 3D movies

VUDU has announced 3D content will become available for streaming beginning next week. Initially the title selection will be limited, but it will grow over time.

3D titles will be available in SD (480p), HD (720p) and HDX (1080p) resolutions at the same bandwidth as the 2D movies. This suggests side-by-side 3D, so the horizontal resolution should be halved. This is the same way DirecTV, Time Warner Cable and Comcast deliver 3D content.

Rentals in 3D will cost $1 more, and purchases $2 more. The first titles available will be from Disney: Bolt, Meet the Robinsons, and Chicken Little.

To watch 3D movies from VUDU, you will have to have 3D compatible equipment, a 3DTV and 3D glasses. VUDU tries to detect if the device is 3D capable. This only works if the device is a TV. Otherwise, you’ll receive a warning on the purchase confirmation screen that the title requires a 3D television (and glasses) to watch it.



VUDU has long abandoned selling their own set-top box, but it is surprising that their own branded device will not immediately support 3D. These devices are 3D-ready for VUDU:

• FUNAI (Magnavox and Sylvania) HDTVs and Blu-ray Players
• LG HDTVs and Blu-ray Players
• Mitsubishi HDTVs and Blu-ray Players
• Philips HDTVs and Blu-ray Players
• Select 2010 and 2011 Samsung HDTVs, Blu-ray Players and Blu-ray Home Theater Systems with Samsung Apps
• Sony PlayStation 3
• Toshiba HDTVs and Blu-ray Players
• VIZIO VIA HDTVs and Blu-ray Players
• Boxee Box by D-Link and Iomega TV with Boxee

If you are using UI 1.0, go to VUDU Home -> Explore VUDU and you’ll see collection posters across the bottom of the screen. Select 3D.

If you are using UI 2.0, go to VUDU Home -> Collections -> Showcases. Select 3D.

VUDU is becoming more and more impressive. I recently rented an HDX movie through my PlayStation 3 and was very impressed with the load time, picture quality and surround sound. The selection of titles they have is also impressive. They seem to get streaming rights to new releases faster than most other services.

VUDU press release is below
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Cisco bringing internet content to TV

It’s time for CES 2011, and the first major announcement I find compelling is from Cisco. This headline may seem behind the times, after all we’ve just had two years of every company under the sun providing little black boxes ready to stream internet video to your TV. And isn’t Cisco an enterprise networking company anyway?

Well, yeah, but Cisco also owns Scientific Atlantic. If you’ve had a digital cable converter in your home, there’s a good chance it was a Scientific Atlantic box. This gives Cisco a huge advantage over other companies when it comes to living room convergence.

It’s called Cisco Videoscape, and it is an optional software package available to cable operators bringing internet content directly to the TV without additional boxes, remotes or cables.

The announcement was teased in December with this clever video, but the full details were released at CES in Las Vegas, Nevada this week.

More than just internet content on the TV, Videoscape is an alleged unified content service providing seamless integration between the TV, laptop, desktop, tablet and smartphone.

With such a large footprint in the American home, Cisco has the opportunity to really change the way content is consumed in a big way. The only problem is that every cable operator gets to chose if they will support the features, which features, and can customize the GUI. This ability has hamstrung many existing cable receivers available now with ugly, confusing graphic interfaces, and lacking support for external hard drives, and even HDMI output. It’s all up to the individual cable operator, in each region, to implement these features.

But with Dish Network and DirecTV already offering a lot of internet connected features, the pressure is on cable to step up their game and get with the 21st Century.

Logitech Revue promoted by Kevin Bacon

Logitech’s implementation of Google TV, called the Revue, has a very funny ad campaign going on featuring Kevin Bacon. I wouldn’t normally waste your time with it if it wasn’t so funny.

The ad features Kevin Bacon playing the part of the most obsessed Kevin Bacon fan ever, with a house full of Kevin Bacon paraphernalia. He even does a hilarious impression of himself. He uses the Revue to pull up videos of Kevin Bacon online, including YouTube clips and Footloose.

Will I run out and buy a Logitech Revue because of it? Probably not. I’m disappointed with Google TV so far. The concept is great, but the interface is too jumbled, and Google didn’t bother gaining approval from enough content sources.

But it does remind me that Kevin Bacon is a great guy doing a lot of good in the world.