Future of Movies May Be All About the Download: Copyrights Are Among Hurdles to Huge Database, Tech Figures Say
By Brad Hem, Houston Chronicle
Mar. 11–AUSTIN — Just last month, the consumer electronics industry was buzzing that Blu-ray had finally beaten out HD DVD as the next-generation way to watch movies at home.
That battle is barely over, and already innovators are looking past Blu-ray to achieving a large-scale, readily accessible database of downloadable movies.
“You can see Blu-ray going the way of the CD,” Jim Carlton, marketing director at Logitech — a maker of computer mice, remote controls and other wireless and home entertainment devices — said Monday at the annual South by Southwest Interactive conference.
“There’s no reason why you couldn’t have a single device with a complete library of every movie ever made,” Carlton said, although he bemoaned an “abstraction layer” of other issues that gets in the way. “And that abstraction layer tends to be somewhat litigious, let’s say.”
Regulatory and copyright issues are bigger obstacles to innovation than software or hardware challenges, said Carlton and other technology executives who comprised a panel on the future of tying together various consumer electronics devices.
Another challenge will be getting a movie device to communicate with others and building a high-capacity network to quickly share large amounts of data, which video consumes.
Developing software that allows cell phones, computers, televisions, digital video recorders, music players and other devices to talk to each other and share data is the top challenge in the consumer electronics industry today, the panelists said.
DVR pioneer TiVo and TV-anywhere product Slingbox are means to the eventual end, said panelist Jim Louderback, chief executive of Revision3 Corp., an Internet television network.
“TiVo was great because it freed you from time,” Louderback said. “Slingbox frees us from space. The devices have to enable that.”
Network service providers such as AT&T and Comcast need to work more closely with the electronics companies developing the software, said David Burks, marketing director at Seagate Technologies, a maker of hard drives and other high-tech storage devices.
The panelists also warned of the perils of innovation. The battle between Blu-ray and HD DVD left many consumers with machines that appear destined to join Sony Betamax VCRs and Sega Dreamcast game consoles in the annals of discarded formats. “There’s a danger in being an early adopter,” said Ted Malone, vice president of marketing at Sling Media, which created the Slingbox.
brad.hem@chron.com
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