"HP's policy is that we'll enable all DRM (digital rights management)", said Phil McKinney, CTO of HP's Personal Systems Group, "but there's a limit to the burden that consumers will accept. Part of our job is helping the studios understand the consumers' sensitivity to wanting to enjoy the content over multiple devices. The industry still needs to address the issue of multiple DRMs, and the conflicts that some of these DRM systems cause when they're aggregated onto single devices. Some of the DRM systems out there and being proposed are not consumer friendly."

A new clip and email feature being shown at CES by Sling Media, now owned by Echostar (Dish TV), exemplified the competing interests. While watching live TV, a user seeing something they find interesting or funny can easily make a short recording of what they just saw, and email it to friends and family. "Our take is not to do it clandestinely," said Jason Hirschhorn, President of Sling Media Entertainment Group. "We're trying to make clipping and sharing a legitimate business. Yes, there will be limits set by the media companies of how long a clip can be."

"One of our goals is creating engagement with our content, and distributing clips as a way of highlighting our shows is something we'd be supportive of," said Bruce Campbell, President of Digital Media with Discovery Communications, which owns 14 cable networks in the U.S. and over 100 worldwide. "It's a period of experimentation. But the question we'd have to ask as we look at it as a long term proposition is where are the boundaries and how does that become a business model?"

"There are three full ecosystems -- media companies, online service providers or networks, and device manufacturers -- that have to be in collaboration to make this seamless," said Kate Purmal, GM and SVP of Digital Content Solutions Division, SanDisk. "The DVD does a beautiful job of allowing you to acquire a piece of content and play it wherever you want, which is not the case with DRM on today's portable media players. The problem with DRM is it locks the rights to playback to the player, and the minute you make things removable that model breaks. So we're building intelligence to put the DRM in the card -- we're focused on moving DRM from the playback device into the storage medium." SanDisk's new Take TV product utilizes "sneaker net" to watch video files stored on a PC, by copying the files to a flash drive, and then moving (by walking) the flash device over to a cradle located near the TV. "Sneaker net is alive and well, and it's easier than wireless networking."

For moving content from the Internet to the TV, the ability to easily search and navigate is another key issue, said Ian Blaine, CEO of thePlatform, a company recently acquired by Comcast that specializes in moving traditional broadcast content to the Internet. "One of the biggest challenges coming up is finding content. As a consumer, it's kind of broken if you have to look at different silos and lean way forward to find content from the plethora of Internet sources," he said.

Consumers are not going to change from the model of using the remote control, said McKinney. HP is introducing a digital media receiver that's a standalone plug and play device that works without a PC, and connects to any TV set. "It's not always just about plugging in earbuds and listening with your own personal iPod," he said. "How do you have more of a group experience in the home, and make it simple?"

"Computers may not be so easy to use," said Washington Post columnist Rob Pegoraro, moderator of the panel. "But neither are audio-video systems. It's interesting that a computer company is saying their job is to make sure a user doesn't have to touch a computer to watch Internet video on TV."

"It's very easy to make things complex, and it's very hard to make things simple," said McKinney. "Computers by definition are harder than CE devices."

The session ended with a question from the audience about why video piracy is so prevalent on the Internet. "We're beyond the why, it's how do you contain it," said Campbell from Discovery.

"We're being trained to expect free video on the Internet," said Blaine, "and DRM isn't going to stop that. You can easily pirate a DVD today."

"I believe ultimately DRM is dead," said Hirschhorn. "It's not like the old days when piracy meant a warehouse in New Jersey with 1500 VCRs -- now, anyone with a hundred dollar tuner card can do it."