Do We Need A Portable Media Format?

One of the contracts Apple is signing with select studios allows for the addition of a "portable media file" to DVDs.

This is a smaller "pre-ripped" file designed to be quickly copied to iPods and iPhones and other digital media devices, allowing them to play the content legitimately.

But do we really need such a thing?

Do we even want such a thing?

On the face of it, such a move would make it appear that the studios are beginning to listen to their customers, recognizing the fact that they want to use the content they've purchased on all of the devices they own. And not just the home DVD player.

But the flip side of this is, despite that recognition, content owners still seem to be sitting on the "you'll have as much freedom as we give you" side of the fence.

Instead of giving us full and unrestricted access to our content, we get a reduced-size, reduced-quality FairPlay-encrypted version that will probably only work on specific players and devices. Probably not a problem if you have an iPod, but it could be one if you have a Zune or Sansa or Zen.

Heresy on an Apple blog, I know, but true nonetheless.

Adding these files could also lead to yet another format war. In fact, the initial signs of this are already apparent, as Sony recently announced that they're planing on shipping Blu-Ray DVDs with PSP-compatible digital files. Are they going to put a FairPlay version on their discs too?

Doubtful.

And will everyone license Apple's technology?

Also doubtful.

Which leads us to another flaw in the plan, as these "portable" files have to be added to the DVDs. Added.

That's fine for new releases, but what about the thousands upon thousands of DVDs that have already been mastered? And that we already own? Or are we expected to buy new "digital" versions of our DVDs, in yet another format upgrade? Or downgrade, as the case may be.

So what's the solution?

Pretty much the same one we have with CDs. Allow users to rip their own movies with iTunes.

Now, I know that one advantage that portable files have over ripping is speed. I can easily copy a portable file off a DVD in a few minutes, while ripping can take thirty or forty with today's solutions.

But is that the best we can do? I can see, for example, some smart guy at Apple designing a solution to run the conversion through a graphics card coprocessor or use Intel's multiple cores and vector processing instructions to speed things up.

Still, does it really matter? On my home DSL line it can take two or three hours to download a movie from iTunes. If I'm willing to take that long, then thirty minutes is nothing. Or if need be, I can just pop the disc in before I go to bed and then in the morning sync it to my pod. Easy. Simple.

One other condition that the studios would approve of would be to let iTunes FairPlay encode the DVDs we rip such that they're tied to our iTunes account, just like the ones we download. And iTunes could certainly control size and compression levels, should that be an issue.

The downside, of course, is that if they were to allow this we're not going to be repurchasing portable digital versions of films we already own. But if they add files to future DVDs we're not going to be doing that anyway. And as for existing DVDs, well, many of us already have a solution or two.

So why not make it easy for us?

The studios need to learn that giving consumers flexibility in using their products makes them more valuable, not less. If I know that I can watch a film at home, or on my notebook, or on my iPhone when I'm out and on the go, then I'm much more likely to buy it than I am if I know I can only watch it plopped down on my couch.

And it's self reinforcing. More content that can be used in more places means I'll buy more devices on which to watch them, which in turn means I'm more likely to buy new content to feed them.

So let us use the content we buy.

Let us use the content we already own.

Give us value.

Give us flexibility.

Make it fair.

And the majority of us will be fair in return.