Hollywood plots a new DRM plan for "HD media ownership"

Have no particular issues with storing and moving HD multimedia contents across your computers and mobile devices? Soon you will have some, and Hollywood has just decided to “help” you with a new DRM scheme that will enable an easy way to “buy, store and playback HD versions of movies and TV shows at home or on-the-go, easily and seamlessly”.

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, SanDisk and Western Digital formed the new Secure Content Storage Association (SCSA), with the sole plan of developing and marketing the DRM scheme under the working title of “Project Phenix”.

Protected by the Project Phenix wings, the SCSA states, users will be able to access “secure high definition and other premium copyright-protected content” on local storage (HDD, SDD) and portable devices (USB pendrives, SD memory cards).

When a user downloads a “secured” content on a local storage unit, the SCSA says, that content will be accessible “on-line and off-line” on any “SCSA-enabled” (ie Hollywood-approved) device like IPTVs, Blu-ray players, tablets, smartphones and game consoles. The new DRM scheme will work together with the UltraViolet (UV) ecosystem, another content protection mechanism designed to let users backup their digital purchased media on a finite number of digital devices.

Needless to say, the Hollywood bandwagon is pretty much excited about the Phenix Project: “Through the SCSA”, Warner Bros. Technical Operations president Darcy Antonellis said, “we will accelerate the development of products that will make it easy for the consumer to download, store and playback their high definition digital movies and TV shows, in full 1080p, on any SCSA-optimized device at home and on the go”. Talking about a real revolution here...