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August 08, 2011
CEO Jeffrey Bewkes confirmed to analysts on Warner's 3 August second-quarter earnings call that Time Warner will make Horrible Bosses and The Green Lantern the studio's first UltraViolet-enabled releases in the fourth quarter of this year. That will likely make them the first studio films released with the UltraViolet (UV) rights package-a physical copy on Blu-ray Disc (BD) and/or DVD, plus a digital rights 'token' - the right to stream or download the film to any of 12 devices registered to up to six family members.
Bewkes said that 'the vast majority' of future Warner releases would be UV-enabled, and described Warner's May acquisition of the Flixter movie info site as 'a key part of our plan to drive usage of UltraViolet.' Flixster will be upgraded to be integrated with UltraViolet, providing an interface - presumably both on PCs and portable devices - through which consumers can set up UltraViolet accounts, manage their digital collections, watch video either streamed from Flixster or downloaded to the device, search out new content, and share recommendations.
The UltraViolet organization was set up by the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) consortium of five major studios (all but Disney), leading consumer electronics companies, and major bricks-and-mortar, e-commerce and digital retailers (all but Apple's iTunes Store). Its role will be limited to licensing the technology and operating the digital-rights electronic clearing house that will authorize users' devices and authenticate their requests for streams, downloads and inter-device copying.
The actual storage and delivery of streams and downloads is expected to be provided by retailer and service-provider members of the consortium: bricks-and-mortar retailers like Best Buy and Blockbuster, digital retailers like Microsoft and VUDU, streaming services like Netflix and Lovefilm, and pay TV operators like Comcast and Cox. But none have yet announced a rollout of a UV service. Wal-mart began July 12 offering non-UV Digital Copies of some films it sells on disc, playable through its own VUDU digital retail/rental service on PCs and some 80-plus VUDU-enabled BD players, HDTVs and other devices. Studios have been offering Digital Copies on selected titles for several years now, redeemable either in iTunes or as Windows Media files. Amazon launched its Disc+ on Demand initiative, giving customers who purchase DVDs or BDs a digital version of the file at no additional cost, in late 2009. And of course Apple added downloadable film and TV content to the iTunes Store more than five years ago.
UltraViolet is designed to go one better than those proprietary, closed-ecosystem digital copies, by allowing a movie bought from any UV-compliant service to play on any UV-compliant device. But somebody had to go first, and it made little sense for any of the potential service providers to set up UV cloud storage and delivery services, or device manufacturers to pay UV licensing fees, until there is content available. Hence Warner has decided to prime the pump by releasing UV titles and providing streaming and downloading services through Flixster.
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