UltraViolet DRM system by Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE)

Move over, DVD-CSS, there's a new video encryption system in town that promises to let users watch movies on nearly any device. Almost all of the major movie studios and a handful of tech companies have gathered to form the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), an organization that hopes to set a standard for video encryption that would allow users to take content from device to device without sacrificing DRM. The group hopes to lay out its plans during this week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, but it could face some of the same old obstacles.

The idea behind DECE is the same idea behind the push to drop DRM, except that DECE would preserve the DRM part. Both sides want users to be able to use their content on more devices and be more flexible with where and when things can be watched; DECE would merely employ a DRM system that would allow any device to authenticate against a cloud-based Digital Rights Locker whenever a user wants to watch a video on a new device. In theory, this would free the user from being locked down to a single device where he or she bought the content from, but still allow the content providers to control who is watching the content at any given time.

The group announced this week that it has decided upon key milestones for the project, which include an agreement on a common file format, vendor selection for the Digital Rights Locker (Neustar), and the approval of DRM solutions that will be DECE-compatible (Adobe Flash Access, CMLA-OMA V2, The Marlin DRM Open Standard, Microsoft PlayReady, and Widevine). "Compatibility with multiple DRMs will ensure that content can be played back via streaming or download on a wide variety of services and devices," wrote the group in its announcement.

The DECE group was originally made up of Warner Bros., NBC Universal, Sony Paramount, and Fox when it was first formed in 2008, as well as Intel, Microsoft, Best Buy, and Cisco. It has also announced this week that there are 21 new members, including some major names like Adobe, Cox Communications, DivX, and (notably) Netflix. Clearly missing from the list, of course, is Apple, a key player in the rapidly growing world of digital distribution—though it's still possible that Apple may one day join the group, the company has long been fiercely loyal to its own DRM scheme (FairPlay) and refuses to license it out, allegedly for fear of making it easier to crack.

Similarly unsurprising is the lack of Disney's participation; Disney not only has a friendly relationship with Apple, it's also working on its own portable authentication format called KeyChest. Without these players, DECE is unlikely to get the major boost it needs to really break into the mainstream. (DECE said that full technical specs would be available to vendors in the first half of 2010 and that devices that are DECE-compatible may be available to consumers in 2011; it's a reasonable assumption that iPods and iPhones won't be part of that initial launch.) Still, with Netflix on board, it has a chance of survival—there are plenty of Netflix subscribers in the world who would love to take their video out of the browser and onto something more portable. And, with DVD sales tanking like they are, the movie industry can use any help it can get when it comes to home video use.