I attended the full day seminar on the new UltraViolet technology earlier this week. UltraViolet is the recently launched “Digital Entertainment Cloud” service that allows a user to essentially ‘pay once, watch many’ across a wide range of devices, with the content being sourced from a protected cloud environment – physical media is no longer required.
While this report on the seminar is primarily intended for those on my team and in my firm that could not make the date, I will include a brief introduction to level-set my audience.
The UltraViolet Premise
The purpose is to offer a Digital Collection of consumer content (you can think of this as a “DVD for the Internet”), allowing the user to enjoy a universal viewing experience not limited by where you bought the content, the format of the content (or even whether physical or virtual), the type of device (as long as it supports a UV Player) or where the user is located [fine print: UV does allow local laws to be enforced via a geographies module, so not all features or content may be available in all territories].
I strongly recommend a visit to the UV FAQ site here – which is kept current on roughly a monthly basis. Even knowledgable members of this audience will find useful bits there: history, features, technical details, what-ifs to cover business cases [will my UV file still work even if the vendor that sold it to me goes out of business?} {the answer is yes BTW}, and many other useful bits.
For those that want a more detailed set of technical information, including the publicly available CFF (Common File Format) download specification, UV ecosystem and Role information, licensing info, etc. please visit the UV Business site here
The UV Academy Seminar
Firstly, a thanks to both the organizers and presenters: this seminar did not have a lot of lead time, and took place in a nice venue with breakfast and lunch provided – which helped the audience (mostly industry professionals) to digest a rather enormous helping of information in a short time. Many of the presentations were aided with excellent graphics or video which greatly enhanced the understanding of a complex subject. The full list of presenters and sponsors is here.
We began with an update on current status, noting that basically the UV rollout is still in early stages – currently “Phase 1” where UV content is only available online in streaming formats. Essentially, legacy streaming providers that have signed up to be part of the UV ecosystem (known as LASPs – Locker Access Streaming Provider) [come on, you must expect any new geeky infrastructure to have at least 376 new acronyms… 🙂 ] – will be able to stream content that the user has added to his/her “UV Cloud”. The availability, quality, etc of the stream will be the same as you currently get from that same provider.
Phase 2, the ability to download and store locally a UV file (in CFF – Common File Format) will roll out later this summer. One of the challenges in marketing is to communicate to users that UV is a phased rollout – what you get today will become greatly enhanced in the future.
A panel discussion followed this intro, the topic being “Preparing and Planning an UltraViolet Title Launch”. This was a good look ‘under the hood’ into just how many steps are required to effect a commercial release of a film or TV episode onto the UV platform. Although there are a LOT of moving parts (and often the legal and licensing issues are greater than the technical bits!) the system has been designed to simplify as much as possible. QA and Testing is a large part of the process, and it was stressed that prior planning well in advance of release was critical to success. (Hmmm, never heard that before…)
We then heard a short dissertation on DRM (Digital Rights Management) – as it exists within the UV ecosystem. This is a potentially brain-numbing topic, expertly and lightly presented by Jim Taylor, CTO of the DECE (the consortium that brought you UV). I am personally very familiar with this type of technology, and it’s always a pleasure to see a complex subject rendered into byte sized chunks that don’t overwhelm our brains. [Although having this early in the day when we still had significant amounts of coffee in the bloodstream probably helped…] The real issue here is that UV must accommodate multiple DRM schemes in order to interoperate on a truly wide array of consumer devices, from phones all the way up to web-connected Blu-ray players feeding 65″ flatscreens. Jim gave us an understanding of DRM domains, and how authentication tokens are used to allow a single license that a user has for a movie to populate multiple DRM schemas and thereby allow the user access as required. Currently 2 of the 5 anticipated DRM schemes are enabled, with testing going on for the others. [The current crop of 5 DRM technologies include: Widevine, Marlin, OMA, Playready, FlashAccess]
Jason Kramer of Vital Findings (a consumer research company) gave us a great insight into the ‘mind of a real UV consumer’ with some humorous and interesting videos. We learned to never underestimate the storage capacity of a pink backpack (approximately 500GB – as in 100 DVDs); that young children like to skate on DVDs on the living room carpet (a good reason for UV, so when they wear out the DVDs mom can still download the content without buying it again…) – now come on, be honest, find me a software use case QA person that would have thought THAT one up… and on and on. It showed us that it’s really important to do this kind of research. You have NO IDEA how many ways your users will find to play with your new toy…
A panel discussion then helped us all understand the real power of metadata in the overall UV ecosystem. We are all getting a better understanding of how metadata interoperates with our content, our habits, our advertising, etc. – but seldom has a single environment been designed from the ground up to make such end-to-end use of extensive metadata of all types. Metadata in the UV universe facilitates three interdependent functions: helping the user find and enjoy content through recommendation and search functions; managing the distribution of the content and reporting back to DMRs (Digital Media Retailers) and Content Providers; and the all-important Big Data information vacuum cleaner: here’s an opportunity for actual customer libraries of content choices to be mined. To be precise, there are a huge amount of business rules in place about what kind of ‘little data’ is shared by whom to whom and for what purpose – and this is still a very fluid area… but in general, this UV ecosystem offers the potential of a win-win Big Data scenario. The user – based on actual content in their library – can help drive recommendations with a precision lacking in other data models; while content providers and others in the supply chain can learn about the user to the extent that is either appropriate or ‘opted in’. One area that will need refinement is what plagues other ‘content providers’ that offer recommendations (Amazon, Netflix, etc.) – different family members that share an account (a feature of UltraViolet) confuse recommendation engines badly… One can imagine easily the difficulty of sorting ‘dad’ vs ‘mom’ vs ‘6yr old kid’ when all the movies in a single account holder’s library are commingled… This is an area ripe for refinement.
The next panel delved into the current perceptions of “cloud content provisioning” in general as well as UltraViolet in particular. PWC’s Consumer Sentiment Workshops’ findings were discussed by representatives from participating studios (Fox/Warner/Universal). As might be expected, consumers have equated cloud storage of content with the two words that strike terror into the hearts of any studio executive: Free & Forever… So, just like in Washington, where any savvy politician will tell you that there is ‘no free lunch – only alternatively funded lunch’ – the UV supporters have to educate and subtlety re-phrase consumer’s expectations. So ‘Free & Forever’ needs to be recast to ‘No Additional Cost & 35 Dog Years’… There are actually numerous issues here: streaming is a bit different from download, no one has really tested such a widespread multi-format cloud provisioning system that has an extended design lifetime, etc. etc. Not to mention that many of the byzantine contracts already in place for content distribution never imagined a platform such as UltraViolet, so it will take time to sort out all the ramifications of what looks simple on the surface.
The User Experience (UX for those cognizetti who love acronyms) received a detailed discussion from a wide-ranging panel headed by Chuck Parker, one of our new masters of the Second Screen. This is a difficult and complex topic – even the UI (User Interface) is simpler – the UI is the actual ‘face’ of the application or interface: the buttons, graphics, etc. connected via a set of instructions to the underlying application; the UX is the emotion that the user feels and walks away with WHILE and AFTER the experience of using the UI. It’s harder to measure, and harder yet to refine. It’s a discipline that involves a creative, artistic and sometime almost mystic mix of hardware, software and ergonometric design. Color, shape, context, texture, all play a part. And UV has, in one sense, an even harder task in creating a unified and ‘branded’ experience: at least companies like Apple (whose UX have attracted a cult following that most religions wish they had) have control over both hardware and software. UltraViolet, by the very nature of ‘riding on top’ of existing hardware (and even software) has only the thinnest of UI’s that they can call their own. Out of this UV still needs to craft a ubiquitous UX that will ‘brand’ itself and instill a level of consumer confidence (Ok, I know where I am – this is the cool player that let’s me get to all my movies no matter where/what/how/when) with the environment. Not a trivial task…
The day finished with a panel on the current marketing efforts of UltraViolet. Most of the studios were represented on the panel, with many clearly articulated plans brought forth. The large challenge of simultaneously bringing in large numbers of new users, yet communicating that UV is still very much a work in progress – and will be for several years yet – was exposed. The good news is that each marketing executive was enthusiastic about their plans to do two things: collaborate together to ensure a unified message no matter which studio or content provider was marketing on behalf of UV (this is a bigger deal than many think: silos were invented by movie studios, didn’t you know that?? – and it’s never easy for multi-billion dollar companies to collaborate in this highly regulated era – but in this case, since the marketing of UV can in no way be construed to be ‘price-collaborative’ it’s a greener field; and all the participants agreed that a continued effort to bring as much content into the UV system as soon as practical was in everyone’s best interest. The current method of signing up users (typically by first purchasing a physical media, such as Blu-ray – which in turn gives a coupon that is redeemed for UV access to that same title) may well flip: in a few years, or even less, users may purchase online, and then receive a coupon to redeem at a local store for a ‘hard copy’ of the same movie on a disk should they desire that.
In summary, a lot of information was delivered in a relatively short time, and our general attention was held well. UV has a lot of promise. It certainly has its challenges, most notably the lack of Disney and Apple at the table so far, but both those companies have had substantial changes internally since the original decision was taken to not join the UV consortium. Time will tell. The current technology appears to be supportive of the endeavor, the upcoming CFF download format will notably enhance the offering, and the number of titles (a weakness in the beginning) is growing weekly.
Watch this space: I write frequently on changes and new technologies in the entertainment sector, and will undoubtedly have more to say on UltraViolet in the future.
Parasam 