If you thought buying a movie on a DVD or Blu-ray disc or online was simple, straight-forward and took care of your viewing needs, think again.

Project Phenix (still a working title!), revealed by the four backers, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, SanDisk and Western Digital, will give consumers "an easier and faster way to organise, store and move their high definition digital movies and TV shows - including new releases in up to full 1080p quality - across multiple devices."

In addition to local storage, the content will also be backed up via the UltraViolet industry standard as well as other cloud-based services.

The project is being developed by the newly-formed Secure Content Storage Association (SCSA). This coalition will create and license solutions that secure high definition and other premium copyright-protected content on local and portable hard drives, and flash memory products such as USB flash drives, SD cards and solid state disk drives.

Once content is downloaded to a hard drive or flash memory product, it could then be accessed, online or offline, on any SCSA-enabled device such as a connected TV, laptop, Blu-ray player, tablet, mobile phone or game console.

The optimised content is to be made easily available for purchase via digital download, digital files bundled with physical media, kiosks in retail stores, or other means of secure digital delivery.

The SCSA's solutions will be designed to work with the industry-backed UltraViolet ecosystem and aimed to complement other next-generation high definition content protection technologies already in the market such as Intel Insider. The SCSA expects to make its solutions widely available for license this year.

Story filed 01.03.12