Playing catch-up

March 16, 2012
For an informed view on connected entertainment in the UK & Ireland, visit Cue Entertainment 

It has taken a while to convince the Hollywood studios that online delivery of video to the consumer is secure. For most of this century they dismissed as impossible the idea that entertainment content could pass through the public pipe of the open internet and arrive in homes intact and not stolen. Now, content from the cloud sits alongside once-dominant Blu-ray and DVD media as companies such as Lovefilm and Netflix lead the swing to digital delivery.

Discs are far from dead, of course, as Netflix Founder and CEO Reed Hastings discovered when he tried to rebrand the DVD rental arm of the US business. He almost doubled the charges for the 14 million subscribers that chose both streaming and disc delivery and lost more than three-quarters of a million customers in the process.

Rent or buy, each delivery platform has its advantages and while “permanence” is the USP of packaged media, “convenience” is the label most often attached to content delivered over the internet.

Director-General Mark Thompson BBC says that users streamed programmes 2 billion times over the BBC iPlayer last year, a number that is “growing like Topsy” following the agreement with Sky and as the number of connected devices increases. Speaking to the Royal Television Society on Mar.14, he described the iPlayer as the most successful and most intensively used catch-up service in the world.

Nevertheless, much of the BBC’s output is never seen or heard of again after the seven-day window, the Director-General said: “We want to change that, and have started to talk to our partners, including the independent sector and PACT, about a proposal we will submit formally to the BBC Trust later this year. For reasons that escape me, we call it Project Barcelona.”

What makes this worthy of note is that it proposes a download-to-own digital copy service, with a “relatively modest” charge payable for unlimited future access. Thompson said, “It’s the exact analogy of going into a High Street shop to buy a DVD or, before that, a VHS cassette. For decades, the British public have understood the distinction between watching ‘Dad’s Army’ on BBC One and then going out to buy a permanent copy of it. Barcelona is the digital equivalent of doing the second.”

The BBC aims ultimately to let the audience have access to all of its programmes on this basis and, over time, to load more and more of our archive into the window, he said: “If Barcelona gains the support of the UK’s producers and, of course, the approval of the BBC Trust, it potentially adds an important new source of revenue for producers and rights holders. It could also mark an important step in broadcast’s journey from a transitory medium into a growing body of outstanding and valuable content that is always available and persists forever.”

Project Barcelona might be a logical response to the era of UltraViolet, Blinkbox and iTunes but it raises questions about existing channels up to and including retail sales of previously transmitted titles from “Fawlty Towers” to Downton Abbey”. As described, it sounds like a plan to cut out the middleman and retail BBC content direct to the public. Thompson’s successor should expect a rough ride.

The distribution and marketing of video home entertainment, however, is not only about selling content to the consumer. Ready to Air, a UK firm that specialises in B2B content delivery, brings immediate and secure access to buyers, reviewers and distributors of packaged TV content. It allows pre-authorised users to watch future releases on almost any Mac or PC prior to replication of DVD or Blu-ray discs. Devised in conjunction with Channel 4, it eliminates the need for dozens of expensive check-discs to be produced ahead of release dates. It also allows content owners to see exactly who watches previews and for how long.

4DVD Marketing & Sales Manager Karla Berry says that production deadlines mean that often there is little time between receipt of the masters and manufacture of the DVDs. “If buyers are unsure about the number of units they might sell, they can simply log-on to Ready to Air and have a look at the title. It gives them far more confidence in what they are buying instead of basing their decision on the distributor’s view that ‘It’s fantastic!’ with a preview copy turning up in the post days later. If buyers wonder whether to take a title and want to see a clip, they can be viewing it within 10 minutes and make an immediate decision.”

Berry says that Ready to Air generates retailer feedback as well, which does not always happen with DVD mailings: “With margins squeezed, buyers are under pressure to make the right decisions, on the right product. Ready to Air provides the information needed to make that decision. Giving access to key retail buyers means that they can preview a title before it reaches the stores.”

Ready to Air Director John Harrington says that security technology is in place to ensure that content is not captured or stolen. “Not so long ago, if you said ‘internet’ to studio bosses they didn’t want anything to do with it but that is gradually changing. Turner, for example, is incredibly security-conscious. Last year we delivered ‘Falling Skies’ for them, which was on our system even before the US transmission date.”

Berry says that whoever signs up provides an email and a contact address. They go to the site to sign up content owners still have to approve them. Even if they find the web address, they can’t just sign up and gain access to content. Each one of the rights holders has to approve them. So far, 16 organisations provide access in the UK, with others in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Harrington says, “We have not had any reported incidents of anybody abusing the system. You have to strike a balance for site users and we think we have been successful with that. People trust the measures we have in place.”

Although Harrington is cagey about the extent of content protection, one very visible deterrent is embedded in every frame of video: the registered email address of the user: “People using our site are professionals and if we find them doing something they shouldn’t, we take them off the system. If you are a TV reviewer, that is pretty much the end of your career at that point, so it is self-policing.”

As confidence in the system has grown, so has the number of clients. Momentum, Fox, Warner and ITV have signed up, as have content owners such as Aardman. With growth in the user base for content preview comes a new streaming video service: live on-line press conferences, targeted at the video home entertainment industry but available to all.

Says Harrington: “Newsmakers and journalists no longer need to be in the same room or even on the same continent. The service not only saves costs but also helps to eradicate carbon emissions.”