A New Dawn for DRM? DECE Promises Buy-Once-Play-Anywhere Video Downloads

Posted 01/13/2009 at 12:30pm | by Will Smith

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Odds are you’re carrying at least one or two devices that double as a portable media player. We’d also bet that if you’ve spent any time at all trying to watch video on such a device—be it a cell phone, personal media player, smartphone, laptop, or pretty much any other device that’s not a DVD player—you’ve experienced compatibility problems. Right now, you need a thorough understanding of the codec, resolution, and container capabilities of all your devices in order to perform an advanced task like ripping a video for use on an alternate player or streaming content from your PC to, say, your Xbox 360 (by the way, we show you exactly how to do that here).

If you’re a savvy user, these issues can be mastered. But what about the other 90 percent of people? What about all the folks who buy DVDs and can’t figure out how to convert them to an iPhone-friendly format? That’s where the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem—DECE for short—comes in. DECE was formed in the summer of 2008 with the sole purpose of creating a standard that allows you to purchase a movie once and play it on all your devices. It sounds simple, but it’s actually an incredibly complex problem, both politically and technically. We’re excited because DECE says it’s going to base its standard on the experience every customer should have instead of profit streams and rights management. “We want to give normal consumers the flexibility to stream content remotely, make copies of content on multiple devices, and even burn physical media,” says Mitch Singer, DECE president.

The promise is this: You purchase a movie, whether it’s a download to your PC, a DVD or Blu-ray disc, or something you buy on your cell phone. Then, based on that purchase, you unlock the ability to download the same content in different, but similar formats for playback on all the other devices in your home. If you buy a DVD, you’ll be able to download other standard-definition versions to stream to your living room as well as versions suitable for portable devices, like the PSP or iPhone. The unifying idea behind DECE is that buying digital content should be as simple as buying DVDs. You never need wonder whether the DVD you bought will work in your player, it just works.

"I think what you’re talking about is scalability. The nice thing about disruptive technologies is that it really enables a massive [number of] users to do what previously only highly skilled users could do, and that’s where technology is starting to drive today," says Singer. "The question for us at DECE is: can you take all the technology that’s out there today and repackage it in a way to that gives consumers the flexibility that early adopters enjoy?"

DECE is in the very early stages today. While the promise is exciting, the partner companies—including Microsoft, Intel, Paramount, NBC Universal, Comcast, Samsung, and HP, to name just a few—have barely begun work on the technical nuts and bolts; the eventual format doesn’t even have a name yet. While the DECE has widespread industry support there are some heavy hitters absent from the group, notably Apple. With a large user base shackled to the iTunes Store by hardware and DRM, Apple has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. We’ll keep you updated on DECE news as we hear more from the nascent organization.