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Fox Proposes "Digital Bridge" for UHD Content

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20th Century Fox Home Entertainment president Mike Dunn proposes what he believes is a simpler means for customers to access and manage media content-- a Blu-ray player with enough storage for content in HD and even 4k/UHD resolutions.

Mike DunnDescribed as a "Digital Bridge," such a device would not only store content downloaded from the cloud on terabytes of HDD space, but also make movies and TV shows available to any device in the home.

“Consumers would have the ability to copy their physical discs and store and manage their entire digital library in one centralized location... in the living room,” Dunn says in his keynote at the CEA Industry Forum 2013.

To bring about such a device on 2014 the company plans to launch an "Innovation Lab" because, as Dunn puts it, “like baseball, everyone’s batting average would be higher if the mound was pushed back a few feet. Sometimes [the studios] have to swing when the ball is on top of us.”

The estimated time of arrival for the Digital Bridge? Christmas 2015. "We want a strong presentation with plenty of "sauce" if you are going to really sell the experience," Dunn continues. "We want to load these products up to deliver big, fat files that give consumers fully flavored, deep experiences. That’s what we want.”

Of course, one might wonder what Hollywood has been waiting for all this time, seeing how the technology for such devices has been, arguably, long avaialble in any number of STBs, game consoles and miniature PCs. Then again, better late than never?

Go CEA Industry Forum 2013