The methods of multimedia storage should be considered in line with the copyright management.
[+] Audio and video are the mainstream of the mobile device market.
With the steady decline of storage costs and the increase of the storage medium capacity each year, a trend has been shaped, leading to much smaller size and larger capacity. As a result, many handheld terminal devices begin to offer built-in memory expansion slots or micro drives.
In the meantime, the development of the wired (mainly ADSL and Cable) and wireless (mainly 3G and WLAN) broadband has enabled real-time transmission of bandwidth demanding files and contents to users' terminals.
Nevertheless, technology alone is not enough to change the specification of product. The most important driving force behind all this is manufacturers' expectation on consumers' demand for mobile audio and video services and the consequent changes in their strategies.
The most typical example is the built-in camera, which is now a must-have function of every handset, although it is only for taking static photos. Today, no consumer would ask: "can this handset take pictures?" any more. Instead, they would ask: "how many pixels does this handset have?" With the increase of the number of pixel, the storage capacity has to increase, too.
By June of this year, the amount of sold global MP3 handsets has surpassed that of sold MP3 players. In addition to proving the "MP3-and-nothing-else" trend among handset consumers, it also implies that the MP3 player is the next victim of the handset.
Now that the handset allows playing music, will they be able to play movies next? With the advent of the 3G era, each handset will have two basic functions: making video calls and playing streaming media. They will be expensive in the beginning, but as the market grows, everybody will be able to afford such handset sooner or later.
[+] Video phones and PMPs will play different contents.
For most people, the largest question concerning the 3G mobile video function is: who will be interested in watching a 2-hour movie on such a small screen? Also, there is the problem of power supply and the GB-grade size of current movies.
In my opinion, those who want large screens and satisfactory effects had better go to the cinema; those who could put up with small screens could watch TV or DVDs on PCs. Watching video programs in outdoor (mobile) situations is either entirely an action of time killing or for something that one cannot miss (e.g. live broadcasts). The programs will not be very long.
In that case, a proper format of content would be streaming media, which enables playing simultaneously with downloading through broadband. As the content will not be stored in the mobile device after playing, content providers could rest at ease with the copyright protection issue.
Hardly will anyone download a movie from a PC to his/her handset to watch it outdoor. If they do have such a requirement, a better option would be to buy a portable DVD player, which is larger and offers better movie quality, or a PMP (Portable Media Player), which is a fad in today's market.
Using hard drives as their storage media, PMPs have relatively bigger a size. However, they present better effects with their large screens. SONY PSP, for example, is a product designed mainly for gaming. It uses a special kind of disk called UMD (read only) as its storage medium and additional memory slots to allow MP4 movie storage.
As a mobile audio and video device, whatever terminal it is, the critical role of the content can be seen. One that has no content to present will have little value and would hardly be appealing to consumers.
[+] The hard nut of the copyright management
What content providers are afraid of the most is another MP3 tragedy. Apple's online music stores have very low profit margins for the music files they sell. They depend entirely on iPOD for their income. Most iPOD buyers use the product to play MP3 music they get from unknown sources.
Now that PSP has adopted the special UMD format, it must have a way to prevent illegal copying. Since SONY has its own film studio, it does introduce UMD-based movies, such as Spider-Man II. Nevertheless, there are not many such movies, and only SONY does not sufficient to support the UMD format.
For games, a special format would be OK as long as there are enough game developers that support such format. For movies, however, it's another thing. If a consumer buys a PSP to watch movies, he/she will have to face the question of "how many movies support the UMD format?"
That is a dilemma. Currently, PMPs are mainly hard drive-based. Consumers can download movies without considering their copyrights (in fact, some manufacturers have already developed PMPs that enable the copyright protection). PSPs enable full protection, but have to face the challenge of content shortage.
Predictably, there will be copyright protection mechanisms on such portable audio and video media players and content providers that support such mechanisms too. However, that will not stop illegal contents from flowing throughout the Internet for free download just like MP3 contents do. No content provider is bigger than the Internet.
Concerning copyright management, I have a new idea. Currently the products are certified and authorized through hardware and software. Is it possible to do the certification through the GSM or WLAN network of the telecom operators and charge fees for movies through telecom bills? Maybe integrating wireless modules could generate new applications.
2005/07/03 - By Digitalwall.com - Way to
China Internet/Telecom )
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