SyncTV, a San Jose, CA-based startup,
announced on
Monday a private beta test of its subscription on-demand download service for
television shows in DVD or better quality. SyncTV is a spinoff of Pioneer
Electronics. Its technology uses the
Marlin DRM
spec for connected consumer devices; Pioneer is a member of the Marlin
consortium.
This is the first Marlin implementation available in the United States.
The only other Marlin deployment in production is an
IPTV trial in
Japan involving Hitachi, Panasonic, Sharp, Sony, and Toshiba. A mobile
trial with Telefonica Moviles de Espana was to launch in the second quarter of
this year but has not yet.
SyncTV's initial offering works with Windows, Mac OS, and Linux computers; in
the future, it will work with TV sets and portable video players. The
latter devices, of course, represent the future opportunity for Pioneer.
SyncTV users pay monthly fees for each channel they want to subscribe to; right
now the only announced channel for the beta test is Showtime (programs from the
Showtime premium cable network).
Rights available to content through the SyncTV system include the ability to
download subscription content to up to five devices and to transfer it to up to
10 portables. The latter capability is only theoretical at the moment,
because Marlin-compatible portable devices will not be on the market until next
year, when Sony has indicated that it will release them.
Marlin represents the "media player" axis of consumer electronics vendors --
as opposed to OMA DRM, which represents the "mobile handset" axis. Just as
there is overlap between the companies in those axes as well as their products,
there is a spec called
OMArlin
that provides interoperability between the two DRMs. The intent of Marlin is to
provide a DRM that can interoperate among products from all participating
vendors, so that (for example) a user can switch from a Pioneer to a Sony
digital TV and still get access to her content on the same terms as before.
Meanwhile, beta testers of the SyncTV service can get TV content via a
business model similar to that offered by most cable operators, and with
potentially higher quality, including HD and Dolby 5.1 where available.
The service has yet to announce content availability beyond Showtime, so it's
too early to tell whether SyncTV will be a worthwhile content service or merely
a technical curiosity for DRM industry watchers.
IE 7
Firefox 2.0
