A big team of massive players from the technology, movie, and distribution industries have joined to launch a standardized system for buying movies that makes more sense than today's current patchwork of competing services and technologies can provide, on paper anyway.

The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem – Sony Pictures, Microsoft, Warner Bros, Cisco, Adobe, and others (full list below) – plans to launch a digital movie locker system called Ultraviolet that lets the purchaser of movies in any format store their purchases for later viewing on a variety of devices, according to what Sony Pictures Entertainment chief technology officer and president of the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) Mitch Singer explained in a statement (.pdf).

The fundamental concept at work here is simple: Whenever you buy a movie on DVD, Blu-ray, or as a download, you'll get a "token" representing your ownership of that movie, which a number of services and devices will be able to access – even if the new device or service had nothing to do with the original sale.

I and others have long maintained that one reason people don't want to buy digital content is that they don't know if it will work with whatever hardware they buy next. For instance, if a Rhapsody music subscriber spent three years customizing playlists and song ratings, they would lose all of it if they tried to switch to a new music service. One big database could solve that problem – and that's essentially what the studios are trying here, by creating a standard token of movie ownership.

As a result, if you purchase a movie from Netflix, CinemaNow, Comcast or another partner, it should be possible for you to view that film ten years from now on a handheld Toshiba movie projector. Or if you assemble a collection of carefully-rated films and preferences in a movie subscription service, you should be able to switch to another one seamlessly without losing your stuff – a change that would reduce the barrier to entry of such services considerably.

This consortium was inspired by the automated teller machine – a meme that has been floating around the entertainment industry for years, because it demonstrates a level of cooperation and commerce between banks that allowed them to increase profits by allowing each other's customers to use their ATMs.

A four-letter acronym, talk of cooperation around standards, promises of interoperability between competing devices and services... if all of this sounds a bit familiar, it could be because the music industry is littered with similar attempts, from the ultimately doomed SDMI (Secure Digital Music Initiative) consortium in the early days to the successful Vevo collaboration of late (although one expert says music labels need to cooperate even more).

With Ultraviolet, the movie industry faces the same issues that still plagues the music industry: how to get competing mega-corporations to put aside their differences and cooperate so that their consumers can buy stuff that works across a number of platforms, without a lot of hassle.

In this case, neither Apple, which controls the iOS ecosystem that extends from the computer to the television, phone and tablet, nor Disney, which controls an important and growing catalog of films, has signed on to Ultraviolet. So in the beginning anyway, Apple devices may not be able to access Ultraviolet movie lockers – and even if Apple approves an Ultraviolet app in return for a cut of revenue, Disney's films won't be storable there unless something changes.

The AP points out that Disney is working on its own system for this, called KeyChest. If previously hard-fought video battles such as Beta vs. VHS and Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD are any indication, the winner will be whichever team not only the pornography industry sides with, but the side with the most heavy-hitters. Sony, Netflix and others supported Blu-ray in the last fight, while Toshiba and Microsoft backed the losing format HD-DVD. This time around, they're all on the same team, with Apple and possibly Disney setting up as the market's alternative. This will be exciting to watch – and hopefully, we'll get fairly-priced movies that don't evaporate when you switch machines out of the deal.

Here are Ultraviolet's members, listed alphabetically. As you can see, it's quite an extensive list: Adobe, Alcatel-Lucent, Ascent Media, Best Buy, Blueprint, BT, CableLabs, Catch Media, CinemaNow, Cineplex Entertainment, Cisco, Comcast, Cox Communications, CSG Systems, Deluxe, DivX, Dolby, DTS, ExtendMedia, Fox Entertainment, Hewlett-Packard, Huawei Technologies, IBM, Intel, Irdeto, LG Electronics, Liberty Global, Lionsgate, LOVEFiLM, Marvell Semiconductor, Microsoft, MOD Systems, Motorola, Nagravision, NBC Universal, NDS Group, Netflix, Neustar, Nokia, Panasonic, Paramount Pictures, Philips, RIAA, Red Bee Media, Rovi, Saffron Digital, Samsung, Secure Path, Sonic Solutions, Sony, Switch Communications, Tesco, Thomson, Toshiba, Verimatrix, VeriSign, Warner Brothers, Widevine Technologies and Zoran.

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