Media nirvana, buy once use in any format

According to the New York Times a group called DECE (Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem) is planning an announcement at CES about their plans to make content (Movies specifically) available in any format you choose once you’ve bought a single license to own it.  So you buy it once on DVD, and get the right to make copies, download it for mobile or even in a hotel suite if you choose and you only pay once…sounds too good to be true doesn’t it?

This might actually work though, there are big, big names signed up including Microsoft and all the biggest film studios (there is a notable exception) are signed on and at CES the group will announce that membership has grown and includes vendors like Tesco and Best Buy along with Netflix and some other big names.

This could work.

The way it will work might cause problems though, but that’s just detail surely?  The mechanics basically requires an online vault that stores your license for content and it checked against every time you want to use some kind of content….Ok this is all gong to go down to the mechanics isn’t it?  Hopefully with the whole life cycle (except the consumer?) represented in the chain we’ll see something workable.  Or we might see another DRM.

But this could work.  I’m sceptical but I’d love to be proved wrong, I’d really like the distributor to take over the burden of remuxing, transcoding, covnerting and the admin I have to do around content.

The big names not at the table, Apple and Disney.

[via TiPB]