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Group Forms To Extend UltraViolet To Downloads

Los Angeles – Twentieth Century
Fox and Warner Brothers have teamed up with SanDisk and Western Digital to
extend the UltraViolet digital content locker system beyond streaming services
to include locally stored video downloads that can be played back on home and
mobile devices in up to 1080p resolution.

The joint initiative, called
Project Phenix, will create and license solutions to secure premium
copyright-protected content for download to local and portable hard drives and
to flash-memory products such as USB flash drives, SD cards and solid-state
disk drives (SSDs), the companies said. Once content is downloaded, it will be
accessible online or offline on any enabled device such as a smartphone,
tablet, laptop, game console, network-connected TV, or connected Blu-ray
player.

The content will be made
available for purchase via digital download, digital files bundled with
physical discs, kiosks in retail stores, or other means of secure digital
delivery, the companies said.

The downloads will render content
up to 10 times faster than over-the-top streaming services, said Mike Dunn,
president of Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.

Through the newly formed Secure
Content Storage Association (SCSA), Dunn continued, “we will accelerate the
development of products that will make it easy for the consumer to download,
store and play back their high definition digital movies and TV shows, in full
1080p, on any SCSA-optimized device at home and on the go.”

The SCSA solution, added Western
Digital CTO Bert Hesselink, will let consumers “store high-definition purchased
content, including copies of certain DVD content, in a secure, consumer-owned
digital home library on a hard drive along with their personal photos, music
and videos.”

Content from the user’s library
will be viewable inside a home on a TV, PC or tablet, “or when owners are on
the move, with a portable library copy providing mobile viewing even when a
reliable Internet connection is not available, such as a plane, car, train or
remote location,” Hesselink explained

The SCSA expects to make its
solutions widely available for license this year. Companies interested in
learning more about the SCSA can contact:

[email protected]

.

The move will mean that consumers
won’t be limited to buying DVD or Blu-ray Discs that carry UltraViolet codes
that enable streaming access to the physical-media titles through the Warner
Bros.-owned Flixster service. Flixster enables streaming playback of
UltraViolet through PCs and smartphones and through select Panasonic and
Samsung TVs.

Studios expect that at least 100
titles will be released on Blu-ray this year with UltraViolet rights, joining
20 titles available in 2011.

For its part, Amazon earlier this
year

announced
its intentions

to offer UltraViolet downloads from an undisclosed studio,
but the company didn’t provide details.

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