Video vault preps for release

A PROJECT designed to create an online repository for digital media, Ultraviolet is being readied for launch.

Ultraviolet is the brainchild of a group of media and electronics firms, and it envisages a future where any media purchased by the consumer can be held in a cloud. At its base in an open standard, currently still being developed, which shares the name Ultraviolet.

Members of the group include industry players Adobe, Panasonic, Best Buy, Comcast, HP, Intel, IBM and production houses Paramount, Fox and NBC. The mix of studios, hardware and equipment vendors suggests cross-branded uses for Ultraviolet, perhaps extending to digital devices that act as media cloud hubs.

Security-wise, Verisign along for the ride, as is the RIAA, surprisingly enough, two factors that might possibly reassure the music and movie companies.

All told, sixty companies are involved, and the group said that shortly its logo, shown below, will start appearing on DVD and Blu-ray formats in both physical stores and virtual ones.

It added that logo is "designed to give consumers a consistent, easy and 'just works' experience - no matter who makes it or where it's purchased."

The group is expected to announce its official launch later today, whenever it gets around to that.

And here we thought that Ultraviolet was the name of a waif-like, probably heroin addicted, evanscently hip starlet that pop art icon Andy Warhol promoted about 40 years ago. µ