We missed something that our audience would have thought was a significant event back in early April and that was the emergence after 2.5 years of talk and blather of the rather late, Microsoft DRM platform, PlayReady.
Microsoft put out two press releases and pretty much no-one picked up on them, one was that PacketVideo would include support for PlayReady in its devices (remember it designs software stacks for mobile video and satellite radio devices) and that AT&T would use PlayReady to enable content to be shared across AT&T’s TV, broadband and wireless services.
This was always known, because Microsoft had always intended PlayReady to support its Mediaroom IPTV software and would upgrade AT&T to that at some point. This means that in the near future AT&T U-Verse set tops will be able to copy content to an AT&T handset which has PlayReady and also will feel it is safe to let U-Verse content onto PCs. Now all that Microsoft has to do is push some PlayReady handsets at AT&T which it likes. The most probable way of doing this is not for WinMo handsets to go to AT&T but for new Nokia devices, which are finally getting recognition at AT&T Mobility, to be taken on board by AT&T. Nokia is committed to supporting PlayReady (in Ovi). In fact, how long before AT&T is sporting devices which offer all Ovi content and also all Zune Marketplace and Xbox Live content (perhaps not counting the games).
PlayReady was always going to be the DRM version which allowed all this because it can allow domain linking of devices ‘ one family can register a number of devices as part of their home or family domain and allow free copying between them ‘ assuming the right content owner and operator rules.
Now whether or not the PlayReady DRM breaches any of the existing DRM patents held by such companies as Intertrust, or whether its settlement deal with Microsoft has been extended to include such capabilities ‘ we can only speculate about at this point. We feel our friends at Intertrust would have mentioned it if that were so, so perhaps there is more of the never ending litigation in the wind over DRM.
PacketVideo showed PlayReady as a reference implementation in 2007, and has now built it into its CORE rich media framework which it says it has shipped in more than 320 different devices worldwide on mobile platforms as diverse as Android, Linux and Symbian OS. So now future devices built on these platforms will have the option to include support for PlayReady content beginning later in 2009.
Microsoft says that six companies have already been approved as PlayReady Service Providers including BuyDRM, CDNetworks, Entriq, ExtendMedia, Ipercast and iStreamPlanet and companies which have announced they are incorporating PlayReady into their offerings include Axinom GmbH, Cloakware, the Irdeto subsidiary; CoreMedia the established German OMA DRM specialist; US encoder maker Envivio; SafeNet; Twofour Digital and TXT Polymedia.
Microsoft PlayReady now supports MPEG Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), AAC+, Enhanced AAC+, H.264, Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Windows Media Video (WMV).