Disney's Keychest - If Only It Were an Original Idea
Christopher Carter
Walt Disney Company has been developing a technology, as announced in Wednesday's WSJ, called Keychest. Keychest assigns the rights, or as they call it, a key, to a digital work (in their case a movie) to the consumer who purchases this digital "key" instead of receiving a physical disc to take home for playback. This "key" enables the consumer to access the content from any device for which the device service provider is a Keychest program participant (e.g. Verizon Wireless). Brilliant idea in a world where, until recently, one had pay for a separate version of the content for each device on which they wished to play the material, whether it be a DVD player, now a Blueray DVD Player or mobile phone. If only it were an original idea. A few years back I was introduced to an early stage venture, named Ardtully Technologies, who had developed this exact platform - perhaps one of the first SaaS models for digital media distribution - and who was actively promoting this concept to anyone in the media, entertainment and technology world who would listen. They participated in the Coral Consortium (a group trying to create an open technology framework for interoperability of DRM technologies to simplify digital content playback among devices) with the major technology and music companies, but the first revenue generating application of the service was with small video companies. A consortium formed about a year ago, called the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), lead by Mitch Singer, CTO of Sony's SPE, was based on the same paradigm. (BTW, Sony was a member of Coral and was well aware of Ardtully's proposed technology and ecosystem) Its a great concept for consumers as it provides access to owned content from anywhere in the world on registered devices. It also eliminates the need for consumers to be versed in technical jargon like DRM, Codecs and interoperability. Haven't consumers struggled enough in trying to understand the difference between LCD and Plasma TVs, which technology provides the best picture and will work best in their home? The TV has conditioned consumers to process entertainment tasks in two steps - I turn it on, I select a channel, I pop a beer. Ok, three steps. But you get the point. Anything more than two steps causes glaucoma. HDMI Vs Component Video is another example - but I digress. Also, imagine the cost savings for the Entertainment industry if the amount of physical media to be distributed is greatly reduced. An ecosystem of this nature certainly puts another nail in the coffin of the Blockbusters of the world.
My point is simple. Great idea, but let's give some love to the guys who busted their butts and spent their own money building the original "cloud" platform and ecosystem that Disney's Keychest and Sony's DECE are promoting as the next wave of digital content distribution. Had they invested in Ardtully three or four years ago they would be delivering movies to mobile phones, DVR and DVD players right now. Hats off to you, Michael Lamb and Gene Krzywinski!