DECE Taps ‘UltraViolet’ As Digital Content Management System Brand

The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) pegged “UltraViolet” as the brand name for its cloud-based digital content management system, the consortium’s top executive told Consumer Electronics Daily. “I liked UltraViolet because it was outside the visible spectrum,” Mitch Singer, DECE president and chief technology officer at Sony Pictures Entertainment, told us. “Wherever you go, it’s always there.”

Singer connected the dots to the consortium’s digital rights locker that will enable consumers to aggregate content across devices, platforms and providers, he said. “We want to follow consumers around. It doesn’t matter where you are. The content you own rights to is always with you.” The group is dropping the name DECE as the next step in coming to market, he said. The UltraViolet logo is a cube with the “UV” mirrored above a “VU.” The logo will appear on compliant packaging, services and products, he said.

Singer downplayed possible negative associations that consumers might make with the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays. “In our initial testing some people referred to it,” he said, “but it was a very small minority that brought it up.” He said the consumer market has many successful brands that some might argue have negative connotations. “Monster, Canon, and Rampage, and to some extent, even a Yahoo could be perceived as negative,” he said. UltraViolet was the one that emerged from 3,000 initial names selected by branding company Lexicon, which also devised the brand names BlackBerry and Pentium, he said.

UltraViolet also said LG and Marvell Semiconductor have joined the consortium of 55 companies supporting the system. The group’s hope is that UltraViolet becomes synonymous with digital rights locker, Singer said. When the service launches next year, consumers will be able to go to UVVU.com to open a free UltraViolet account or at any of the participating service providers, he said. Once they've created an account, they can access and manage all of their UltraViolet entertainment, regardless of where it was purchased, he said. “We think most consumers will want to go through the retailer,” Singer said, noting that application programming interfaces will be available to third-party services so they can build their own UV site.

UltraViolet will juggle trying to create a familiar brand with maintaining the look and feel of its partners’ sites. “We know we need to build in familiarity and consistency for consumers regardless of where they shop, but we also know retailers and service providers have to brand their own experience,” Singer said. “We're going to be dancing that fine line between making sure there’s consistency and predictability and allowing companies to brand their own experience.”

When consumers access their accounts, it’s likely they could see various retailers listed as sites where they've purchased content. When asked why retailers would want to participate in a shared information model, Singer said, “Digital content distribution today isn’t the growth business we were hoping for in 2006. Something is wrong with the way consumers buy digital content today. It’s not working.” He said digital content currently accounts for 4 percent of total home entertainment revenue. By enabling interoperability across service providers, he said, significant growth happens, citing growth in text messaging revenue after interoperability was put in place in the wireless industry. Projections called for text messaging revenue to increase four-fold when interoperability hit the market, Singer said. Instead, they shot up 30 times, and he anticipates similar growth for digital content based on access and interoperability.

Although signing up for account is free, various business models will emerge, Singer said. As an example, he said, a cable provider might offer subscribers views into their digital bookcase as a service that’s designed to reduce churn. “That has value,” he said, which could be a free value-add or a subscription-based feature. “It will be totally up to individual retailers how they want to offer services to consumers,” he said. He compared the model to automated teller machines: Some banks don’t charge a fee, and some do. “We're building a framework that allows all sorts of different business models to come into play, and it’s up to the individual services how they want to do this,” Singer said. “That said, ATMs are probably a multi-billion-dollar business today,” he said. “If services can bring in additional revenue by offering convenience, that’s a good thing.” Another example might be a consumer purchasing a tablet at Best Buy, he said. An offer might be to personalize a tablet with a consumer’s purchased content from their digital rights locker, he said. That might be a perk offered for free to members of a loyalty club or it could incur a nominal charge of, say, $10, he said. “That kind of service is totally up to Best Buy,” he said.

Users will be able to share family accounts, although the consortium hasn’t decided yet how many users will be able to be on a single account. Users will define what family is to them, Singer said. “We built the trust model in, so you define who your family is. We're comfortable with families sharing content,” he said. “If you give your user name and password to someone you don’t trust, they can go in and have full account privileges.” Subscribers can download content in HD, SD or portable definition sizes, Singer said, and they can burn purchased content to disc or SD card.

Device manufacturers benefit from reduced backend costs with UltraViolet, Singer said. With DVD and Blu-ray discs, content providers and device makers create product according to standards. UltraViolet applies the same kind of interoperability assurance to digital downloads whether the content will be experienced on a connected TV, a smartphone, tablet, PC or a game player, he said. “That’s simply not done with digital content today,” he said. “If a device maker wants to build a device, you need to deal with the service.” One TV digital download service, he said, has to store 22 different formats. With UltraViolet, he said, device manufacturers “know exactly how to build devices to play content."

Singer noted that UltraViolet is meant to complement Blu-ray discs, not replace them. “Blu-ray is the best way to bring high-def video into the home,” he said. “It'll be a long time before digital downloads are 50 gigs. We want consumers to be able to buy Blu-ray discs, put an UltraViolet token into their rights locker and get all the digital flexibility along with it,” he said. He compared Blu-ray with high-resolution audio discs Super Audio CD and DVD-Audio and the fact that consumers ended up choosing MP3 as the preferred format for flexibility. “How cool would it have been if I had bought an SACD and got the MP3 of it at the same time? That’s what we're doing here,” he said. “UltraViolet is meant to be compatible with Blu-ray."

Technical specifications and licensing terms for companies who want to offer UltraViolet content, services and devices are expected this year, Singer said. He said the video content is the original focus of UltraViolet but he expects the content to expand to include music, music videos, e-books and games.