Too Little, Too Late
Like Blu-Ray, I think this effort at a standard download format for online video is a day late and a dollar short? Why? Well, there's recognition even from the advocates:
"The market desperately needs this, but in some senses it is already moving past it toward rental of content over ownership," said Danielle Levitas, an analyst at IDC. Ms. Levitas also said DECE's progress had been slower than she expected: "I wanted to see devices in the market already announced by C.E.S."
We just picked up an XBox this fall, and I signed up for Netflix not long after that - for a flat monthly fee, I can stream a whole bunch of content whenever I feel like it. Apple just bought a streaming outfit (LaLa), so it seem slike they know where things are headed, too.
There are a small number of movies/TV shows that I want to own persistently - video simply isn't like music; most things I watch, I have no interest in seeing them again. Even for the things I do want to see again, streaming mostly solves that problem. Maybe if these guys had a standard right now, and a slew of hardware supporting it, this would have a chance of catching on - but I have my doubts even then. Blu-Ray seems to be very slow to pick up, because DVD's are good enough, everyone has a player, and streaming is coming online. Where does this initiative fit, exactly?
Technorati Tags: video download, streaming, drm
