EMA Kicks-off Digital Supply Chain Focused Working Groups For 2017, Announces Avails Event

28 Feb, 2017

In February, the Entertainment Merchants Association kicked off three working groups focused on reducing operational costs, improving efficiency and reliability of the digital supply chain for video content.

Specific groups include: 1) avails and rights management, 2) content ratings for international distribution, and 3) display and media manifest metadata.

Each of the groups held working sessions in February to confirm members, define initiatives and meeting schedules. Some of the projects initiated include: collecting and reconciling data about ratings systems in use by retailers worldwide, developing television use cases and best practices for the media manifest specification, developing an avails specification to support subscription video on demand (SVOD) and providing support for the adoption of v1.7 of the EMA Avails Specification.

The EMA March 21 will host digital video retailers and rights management-focused service providers at a session in Los Angeles dedicated to addressing challenges in managing and processing avails data.

The event will include a working session among retailers with topics to include avails data quality, rights communication for SVOD and updates to the EMA Avails Spec in version 1.7. Following the working session, service providers with avails related offerings will present their solutions to retailers for feedback.

For information, contact Steven Apple at sapple@entmerch.org.

On March 9, the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA) will host the Smart Content Summit in Los Angeles. At the event, EMA’s Digital Media Industry Evangelist, Eric Hanson, will be participating as presenter and panelist in the popular Metadata Madness Luncheon focused on how data and new AI technologies are transforming the entertainment supply chain.

Now in its third year, the Smart Content Summit provides an update on best practices, industry data initiatives and the tools used to make content more identifiable, accessible and useable.