Digital Media Distribution Opportunities for the Film Industry

Digital Media Distribution Opportunities for the Film Industry

Technology advancements such as those in Windows Media 9 Series are enabling new distribution opportunities for the film industry including online, on CDs and DVDs and in theaters.

Growing Options for Viewing Films:
The PC as an entertainment hub is fast becoming a reality with increased processing power combined with a fast broadband connection, connectivity to a variety of displays, and increases in the compression/decompression of high-end audio and video. These new capabilities open up an opportunity and a challenge to film distributors: how to target this new digital entertainment gateway with digital movies and video but not lose control of the content in the process. Already today some estimates say there are as many as 500,000 digital movies being exchanged illegally over the web. How can technology help to bridge the gap between what consumers want (find, acquire, playback and share movies online) and what the film industry wants (secure content, business models that work, a great consumer experience)? Advancements in digital media technology are opening up new distribution opportunities for the film industry. In order to take advantage of these new opportunities the film industry requires the ability to secure valuable assets, deliver them to customers and ensure a high quality playback experience on par with other playback options such as watching a DVD in a home theater or a pay-per-view movie on cable. Technology such as Windows Media 9 Series is being developed to meet those requirements and open up new distribution options. This whitepaper discusses key features in Windows Media and how they are enabling three distribution channels for the film industry: the Internet, CDs and DVDs, and digital media enabled theaters.

Internet Distribution:
The advancements in Internet digital media distribution have happened so quickly. The first generation of streaming came online around 1994 with the first upsurge in Internet usage. This experience was audio only and bad quality audio at that. But the potential was realized by technology pioneers and teams of developers worked to get higher quality into the small file sizes needed to be able to transport the data in a stream in real-time to the user.The second generation of streaming is what we’re familiar with now. Good audio quality in reasonable file size and acceptable video quality when played back in a small window. The second generation of digital media streaming also introduced digital rights management, the ability to secure content and associate it with licenses that authorized the playback. The third generation of digital media on the Internet is where Microsoft is now focusing development efforts. This new technology will meet the requirements of the film industry in the following areas:

Security – The third generation will include more robust digital rights management solutions to secure the delivery of digital media.

Quality – The consumer needs to have a high quality experience, similar to what they’re used to getting when watching movies at home on TV both in the video quality and in the quality of the delivery.

Improved economics – With technology providers like Microsoft focusing on creating digital rights management technology to secure the content and building the technology to deliver a high quality consumer experience, the film industry can focus their efforts on creating business models for distributing content online. Windows Media 9 Series was built around these requirements and includes some new features that directly impact these areas.

No More Buffering Delays:
A new feature in Windows Media 9 Series called Fast Streaming delivers an "instant-on " streaming experience for broadband users, effectively eliminating the buffering delays that consumers experience with streaming video today and offering a more TV-like viewing experience with the ability to quickly channel surf around video content on the web. This also eliminates the buffering users get when an ad is inserted into a video stream. Fast Streaming also automatically optimizes the delivery of streaming audio and video to take advantage of the full bandwidth available to the user, which vastly reduces or eliminates the impact of congestion on the Web for broadband users.

High Quality Audio and Video:
Codec improvement is an ongoing process. The new Windows Media 9 Series audio and video codecs improve quality approximately 20% without increasing the file size. This means online film providers can either increase their current quality levels or decrease their current bandwidth costs by switching to the new codecs. Combining Fast Streaming with the new audio and video codecs brings a greatly improved online video experience to consumers and makes online distribution of films via video on demand services even more attractive to consumers and film distributors.