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elctrnx_lyf
This is certainly a new idea. But the number of customers who are willing to ...
Sheetal.Pandey
I guess consumer would prefer to keep it online and then when he wants he can ...
Android gets support for SD card movies
Rick Merritt
12/6/2010 10:21 AM EST
SAN JOSE, Calif. – Mo-DV has released a version of its Universal Player and digital rights management technology to allow copy protected content on SD cards to play on Android devices. The Campbell, Calif.-based software developer expects to release a version for the RIM Blackberry by the end of the year and has started work on Windows Phone 7.
The news comes just days after Google announced it has acquired Widevine Technologies Inc., a developer of DRM technology used for protecting streaming media.
Mo-DV was founded in 2002 to enable copy protection for any content distributed via USB drives and SD cards to a broad array of client devices including public kiosks. It is initially focused on movies with support so far from Sony and Paramount studios which have in total released less than 50 titles for the company's proprietary DRM.
Supporting Android "was actually quite difficult because ours is a software-only decoder and we had to write a lot of the code in assembly" to deal with Android's mix of Java and native code, said Eric Hamilton, chief technology officer for Mo-DV.
The software supports video at 24 frames/second at the 854 x 480 pixel resolution available on some of the latest Android smartphones. The company already supports Symbian and versions 5 and 6 of Windows Mobile and aims to support Java and Brew feature phones in the future.
Mo-DV is working with partners to enable kiosks that can download movies to USB drives and SD cards using its DRM. They expect to field trial systems before April.
The company's DRM ties security to the serial number of individual flash chips so systems don't need to authenticate rights to a networked server. "Sony and Paramount liked that," said Jessica Fullmer, chief executive of Mo-DV.
The company charges OEMs a per-unit royalty for the software of 60 cents or more depending on volumes. USB drives for Windows PCs with content-protected movies have been available using the format for two years from a handful of retailers and PC maker Dell.
The company has taken in $4.5 million in angel funding to date. It is seeking partnerships with other Hollywood studios and ultimately aims to expand into protected content in health care, education and publishing.
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selinz
12/6/2010 1:58 PM EST
It's hard to get fired up about more DRM junk. Will it be a cool thing? Doubtful. Now we see digital copies shipped with Blue-ray's and the digital downloads end up being very inexpensive. With Netflix and other services available on phones as part of the home service, who cares?
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chanj
12/6/2010 3:01 PM EST
The advantage of Mo-DV is the use of serial number on individual flash memory as a security mechanism. What if the flash memory is toasted?
On the other hands, as the society moves to mobile computing, would consumer be rather keep the movies online or carrying them on a flash drive? What's your opinion on it?
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Sheetal.Pandey
12/7/2010 4:25 PM EST
I guess consumer would prefer to keep it online and then when he wants he can view it. Like how many movies can he carry on flash drive??? Unless he is on travel and bandwidth is a problem then probably carrying on flash drive would be useful...
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elctrnx_lyf
12/8/2010 2:51 PM EST
This is certainly a new idea. But the number of customers who are willing to really wait and download movies into the USB drives may be really less. And don't forget the movies are always avaliable online for free even though it's not legal. But if many studio's can tie up with the Mo-DV and the movies are available very low cost we might see this as a potential technolgy to replace all the movie rental stores such as block buster.
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