Disney's Keychest DVD Terminator Technology

Walt Disney Co. is working on technology that would enable people to pay a one-time fee to get permanent access to movies or TV shows across multiple platform devices, eliminating the need to buy them multiple times, according to the Wall Street Journal. The project, code-named Keychest, would let viewers watch movies from any internet connected device. Content would not be actually downloaded but would reside in a cloud computing style service, with a cable company, internet service provider, or phone company. When the content is purchased, a user would be given an access key. You could watch the same movie on your iPhone, home computer, or digital TV screen.

Disney is said to be in talks with various unnamed technology partners. You can bet that the companies signed on to the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) consortium are not among them. The initiative, which includes 5 major movie studios, has been working on a parallel technology for over a year. DECE is being spearheaded by the chief technology officer of Sony Pictures Entertainment and numbers tech companies like Comcast Corp. and Intel Corp. among its members. Instead of licensing compatible devices to work with existing digital content formats, DECE wants to create brand new standards and formats that would in turn be licensed to new devices.

Disney insists that DECE will be compatible with Keychest technology, according to the WSJ article, and the whole thing will be transparent to the user, but who knows. Deciding on the new technology may be critical for the movie industry, as DVD sales, have fallen by up to 25% at some studios. The sales were once a financial backbone for Hollywood, but no more; as a matter of fact, Disneys movie studio reported its first operating loss this year since 2005.