Trying to Add Portability to Movie Files

At the Consumer Electronics Show, a big high-tech gathering that will begin Wednesday in Las Vegas, Hollywood studios and consumer electronics makers plan to lay out some steps they are taking to simplify the digital future — and perhaps stem the worrying decline in home entertainment sales. Hollywood and its high-tech partners are deeply concerned that their customers will rebel against some of the limitations taking shape as video moves away from physical discs. Consumers, the industry believes, could balk at buying digital movies and TV shows until they can bring their collections with them wherever they go — by and large the same freedom people have with DVDs. In the last year and a half, a broad alliance of high-tech companies and Hollywood studios has been trying to address this problem through an organization called the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, or DECE. Five of the six major Hollywood studios (Warner Brothers, NBC Universal, Sony, Paramount and Fox, but not Walt Disney) are involved, with Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Comcast, Intel and Best Buy. The group is setting out to create a common digital standard that would let consumers buy or rent a digital video once and then play it on any device. It might sound technical, but it could be crucial to persuading consumers to buy all the splashy new Internet-connected gear that tech companies will demonstrate at C.E.S., like HDTVs and set-top boxes that can download TV shows and films. Under the proposed system, proof of digital purchases would be stored online in a so-called rights locker, and consumers would be permitted to play the movies they bought or rented on any DECE-compatible device.