http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/content_provider/film/disopwhitepaper.aspx#Top
With the digital media advancing, new oppurtunities for distribution in the film industry are opening up. To be able to take full advantage of these oppurtunities the film industry will need to be able to secure assets and deliver them to customers, all the while ensuring high quality.
Windows Media 9
This is being developed to meet the requirements of the new ditribution.
Internet distribution
With advancements in the internets digital media happening so quickly, Microsoft are focusing on developing within the digital media of the internet to meet the requirements of the film industry in the following areas.
Security – The third generation will include better 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 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.
Film Distribution
This year CES Mircosoft said that some of the leading DVD manafacturers will be supporting windows mediaaudio on their DVD players. Toshiba and panasonic are just some of the companies that have agreed.
Advantages
- Windows Media on a DVD is that the increased compression efficiency means the DVDs can hold more movies, up to 4 on a single DVD, and still provide a high quality playback experience.
- Many PCs including PCs shipping with Windows XP are capable of playing back DVDs which broaden the DVD viewing options. Alternatively some film distributors are selling single movies on a CD.
- A two hour movie encoded at 750 kilobit per second easily fits onto a standard CD offering an inexpensive movie distribution option. Digital rights management works on CDs and DVDs too.
Theater Experiences
Technology is helping new theaters to overcome the challenges affecting cinema profits today e.g.
High Distribution Costs – The cost of sending films out to theaters across the country and around the world is fixed today based on the cost of the film prints themselves, anywhere from $1200-2000 per theater.
No Security – Distributors have little control over a film once it leaves their facilities. They have to hope that it’s delivered safely to the appropriate theaters and doesn’t fall into the wrong hands or is damaged along the way.
Degradation Issues – As a movie is screened it becomes progressively more scratched and dirty, eventually demanding a replacement print.
Limited Programming Flexibility – Currently theater owners are only set up to receive 35 mm films. Since the cost of film production is so high there’s little content beyond major independent and studio movies that can afford to take advantage of a theater screening.
Inflexible Advertising – Advertisers love advertising in theaters because they have a captive audience. But today’s theater advertising is limited to slide shows and rarely a filmed ad. But again, given the costs of film distribution not many advertisers can afford to send a 35 mm reel to each theater and even if many advertisers did so, the theater owners aren’t equipped to switch from one ad reel to the next.
Integrated Digital Rights Management – Digital theater content will be secured before it ever leaves the content owners facility. DRM will enable tracking and license serving so theaters and content owners know exactly when and where the content is accessed.
Digital Preservation – The one thousandth time a digital movie is screened provides the same quality as the first time. There is no breakdown in the digital file as there is with film.
With Digital distribution all the porblems will be overcome, films will be traded digitally saving hours of time and thousands of pounds on each film, it will also allow their to be blocks against piracy and give clearer images to its viewers.
Conclusions
Technology is changing the rules of the film industry. With the growing interest from consumers to get movies and video content in different ways with different options, filmmakers and distributors are turning to technology to meet their demands. New technology like Windows Media 9 Series strives to achieve higher quality, greater efficiency, and greater audience reach all while driving down costs. All of these benefits open up new distribution opportunities to the film industry.
Windows Media 9 insight
Windows Media Video is a compressed video file format developed by Microsoft. Microsoft have said that WMV 9 provides a compression ratio twice as good as MPEG-4 and they also claim it to be more efficent than WMV 8, although a test in January 2005 shwoed this to be not the case. Windows Media Video Screen allows you to capture live screen content, or convert video from thrid-party screen-capture programs into WMV 9 files.
Criticism
WMV has been the subject of numerous complaints from users and the press. Users dislike the digital rights management system which is sometimes attached to WMV files. The loss of the ability to restore licenses for WMV files in the Windows Media Player 11 was not positively received. In addition, the Microsoft Zune does not support the standard Windows Media DRM system, rendering protected WMV files unplayable.
From having read some articles on WMV and research it on wikipedia i can say that it seems it will have its ups and downs. The fact that quality is increased and piracy is reduced means that both viewer and producer are gaining from this technologies, but with digital rights managments set in place it seems the producers are more concerned on their profits the entertaining the public.
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