“Dad has a Zune, Mom has an iPod, there’s a Mac and a PC at home and a Roku box; right now, those devices don’t talk to one another,” the insider said. “We intend to blend those worlds.”
That intent is called Keychest and call me jaded but I’m not going to hold my breath. Disney’s plan is to allow you to view purchased content on any device. A lofty dream since most of the Hollywood studios have been quite happy to let you purchase the same content over and over again every time a new format comes along. The company wants to demo the concept as soon as possible.
Several other content producers are already members of the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem. These include Sony, Fox, NBC Universal, Warner Bros., Paramount and Lionsgate. This is a competing system looking to do basically the same thing.
Maybe studios are starting to realize that people don’t want to purchase the same content again and again. It has made them a ton of money though so it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. The real question will come down to DRM. I always does. The studios will want to protect their content and 9 times out of 10 this hurts consumers more than it protects anything. I’m curious how they’re going to allow the sharing of content between almost any device while protecting said content. Until we’re shown a working system, keep those DVD and Blu-ray rippers handy.