Latitude

Contributing editor: Ian Schulte.

The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem

The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) LLC is a cross-industry initiative developing the next generation digital media experience based on open, licensable specifications and designed to create a viable, global digital marketplace.

This new digital media specification and logo program will enable consumers to purchase digital video content from a choice of online retailers and play it on a variety of devices and platforms from different manufacturers.

Press Release: “Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) Announces Key Milestones”

Dozens of companies, from consumer electronics manufacturers to content distributors, have banded together to form the DECE. Essentially, they propose a “rights locker,” or virtual library, which will ensure that users’ content is accessible from and interoperable across all their devices.

The DECE includes:

• Network hardware manufacturers (Cisco)
• Computers / television /mobile device manufacturers (Sony, Samsung, HP)
• Content producers  (Fox, Warner Bros.)
• A/V Encoding Companies (Dolby, DTS, DivX)
• Big box retailers (Best Buy)
• Cable companies / Content distributors (Comcast, Netflix)

Complete list of participating companies in DECE’s press release.

The hope is to increase sales and to minimize motivation for piracy by improving the user experience, via comprehensive device-content interoperability.

Consumers would have to register the devices on which they want to play content, similar to Apple’s approach with iTunes, but there would be fewer restrictions. “The same buy once, play everywhere attribute: There is no product in the marketplace today that offers it,” says DECE’s President, Mitch Singer.

Businessweek, “Digital Content Wherever You Want It”

Access is King

We think this venture holds a great deal of promise. In an earlier post on pay-worthy digital content models, we highlighted the importance of interoperability in improving the overall user experience:

Based on recent studies with music access, Latitude found that more than half of both free (streaming, sharing, etc.) and paid music listeners deemed access from multiple devices to be a pay-worthy feature.

Header image courtesy of cleevillasor’s flickr, (cc) some rights reserved.