M+E Daily
HITS To Deliver Universal Media ID Update to Hollywood IT Executives
Story Highlights
by Lyndsey Schaefer
The Hollywood IT Summit (HITS) this Friday at Pepperdine University’s Malibu campus will provide an update on industry adoption of a Universal Media ID for media and entertainment applications. A variety of panelists from studios and distribution partners will share their views on the progress of this important industry-wide initiative to enable the adoption of new business models and workflow processes through the digital distribution of content.
“Working together with DEG, EIDR, and the Hollywood IT Society (also known as HITS) has been extremely beneficial,” explains Geoff Murillo, manager of client services, entertainment media archives for Warner Bros. Technical Operations. “It’s brought the awareness and sense of community and a healthy conversation to accomplish the same goal. We’re excited for EIDR to be a part of our workflow and we hope to ramp up quickly in 2012 and get more partners involved.”
Murillo, one of the HITS event’s scheduled panelists, says that Warner is currently building title integration for feature film content, and is working to build out proof of concept with Microsoft. From there, Warner intends to have its digital distribution titles registered with EIDR so the studio can share those identifiers to tie together assets with metadata.
Kip Welch, vice president of business development for Motion Pictures Laboratories, and president of the EIDR, adds that a unique ID is already an integral component of many systems. Welch shares that EIDR has started in studio operations around digital and retail distribution, with the introduction of UltraViolet giving the effort a push. Since the formation of the EIDR (the Entertainment Identifier Registry) in late 2010, studios and cable companies like Comcast have joined; Welch says that the organization is now reaching out to other partners in VOD infrastructure to encourage their support.
“Groups came together and decided to work on the same effort, and that was key to getting participants from the different parts of Hollywood pushing on the same thing,” Welch says. “It’s all about continuing to think of ways to get it rolled out into different ecosystems.”
