CES: Sony Pictures embraces DivX
San Diego-based DivX announced this morning that Sony Pictures has agreed to let online video stores and services distribute its movies with DivX's DRM, an alternative to the electronic locks developed by Microsoft, Apple and Intertrust, a company partly owned by (wait for it ... ) Sony.
It's the first major studio landed by DivX, which has been wooing Hollywood for years with little to show for it. But time and recent history may be on DivX's side here. Like the MP3 format for music, which the major record labels shunned for a decade before accepting, DivX's compressed video format has gained wide support among consumer-electronics companies and (ahem) unauthorized sources of movies. The difference -- and this works in Hollywood's favor -- is that DivX's format can be copy-protected with DRM, while MP3 cannot.
The DivX DRM is proprietary and not interoperable with other DRM systems, but, like Microsoft (and unlike Apple), DivX licenses it widely to software and hardware companies. As a result, the world is awash in PCs and devices that speak DivX. According to the company, more than 100 million consumer-electronics devices that support DivX, many of them living-room and portable DVD players, have been sold.
DivX's approach offers the easiest and least expensive way for people to move the downloaded movies they rent or buy off their computers and onto their TV screens (short of connecting a computer directly to a TV in the living room, which is a bit too geeky for most people at this point). Once equipped with the free DivX software for the PC and an inexpensive DivX-certified DVD player, a consumer can burn a downloaded movie onto a conventional blank DVD and watch it on TV.
The only extra hoop to jump through is a one-time registration process for each DVD player in the home. Compared with Hollywood's preferred approach to DVD burning, which requires consumers to buy new DVD recorders and does not work with rentals, DivX's method is breathtakingly simple.
So what's not for a studio to love? Proprietary formats, for one thing. And even at 100 million and growing, the penetration of DivX-certified devices pales in comparison with the billions of disc players that support only CSS, Hollywood's preferred DRM for DVDs. But for Sony Pictures, DivX-certified gear has made its way into enough homes now to be worth supporting. It may not be the solution, but at least now it's one of them.
As a footnote, it's intriguing that Sony Pictures would be the first to support DivX's proprietary DRM, given how hard some executives at the studio are trying to rally support around a new, interoperable rights-management system based in part on Intertrust's intellectual property. Sony is, after all, a company that has long preferred its own prioprietary formats even to industry standards or popular formats developed by competitors -- witness how long it took Sony Electronics to support MP3 and Windows Media in its music players.
-- Jon Healey
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A correction, Jon: MP3 files can be copy protected, too, but we choose not to do so. MP3 is simply an audio format, and any format can contain conditional access technologies. The medium is the message, however, and the message behind MP3 is unconditional access, so MP3 files have always been associated with a lack of digital rights management. This is not an inherent feature of the MP3 format; It is a choice those who employ it have made.
Posted by: Jim Griffin | January 08, 2008 at 09:07 AM
D'ohhh! Right you are, Jim, and thanks. The difference isn't the format, it's the infrastructure (and expectations) built up around it.
Posted by: jon healey | January 08, 2008 at 10:14 AM
> MP3 files can be copy protected, too
No, not really. "MP3" is a defacto standard. If you added DRM to a "MP3" file, you'd break the defacto standard. Many devices display a MP3 logo and consumers know what that means. If you started selling DRM protected files on the internet and you'd be foolish to call them "MP3" files since the millions of devices out there with MP3 logos on the box would not be able to play them. You'd have to start all over, creating your own brand for your new DRM protected files, but nobody would call them "MP3" files.
DivX on the other hand has DRM built-in from the start. Everyone of those 100+ million devices that display the DivX logo has been certified to play DivX DRM files. This means retailers CAN start selling DRM protected files on the internet and rightfully call them "DivX" files. Consumers could buy those files and they will play just fine on any device with an official DivX logo. The DivX brand promise includes a DRM system. The MP3 brand promise does not.
Posted by: William Frantz | January 23, 2008 at 12:25 AM