Web3, Blockchain, Eluvio and the future of streaming

The movie viewing experience has entered an unprecedented and exciting new era of fully immersive entertainment with the arrival of a ground-breaking live NFT and Web3 offering from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Extended Edition. This Web3 movie event is powered by Eluvio, a developer of blockchain-based 4K streaming and ticketing technology and the self-described “blockchain home of crypto content.”

Recently, Web3 has been the subject of much speculation about how its decentralized nature will enable users to buy and trade pieces of intellectual property without having to involve middlemen. However, a new Web3 entertainment ecosystem that facilitates organic user engagement and marketing could benefit not only independent content creators, but also larger legacy media companies such as Warner Bros. The new Lord of the Rings pack developed in collaboration with Eluvio provides a fascinating example of what is possible in this new Web3 world.

No stranger to NFT

Eluvio has been innovating content for major media companies for a while now. It has built an impressive resume of high-profile, inventive entertainment initiatives such as MaskVerse, which provide opportunities for fans of The masked singer and crypto enthusiasts to “buy, sell and trade unique digital collectibles – Mask NFTs – for their own collections and/or to unlock a variety of benefits.”

Eluvio’s MaskVerse Masked Singer Web3 Experience

Another high-profile project, Dollyverse, a partnership between best-selling author James Patterson and music legend Dolly Parton for the new book they co-wrote, Run, Rose, Run, includes a special selection of certified Dolly NFT collectibles. Among them are limited edition NFTs Run, Rose, Run accompanying music album and a limited run of Dolly-inspired NFT artwork.

Take content ownership, distribution and user experience to the next level

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Extended Edition is Eluvio’s most ambitious and comprehensive offering to date. It is a “multimedia living NFT” that allows fans to engage with the film via two dynamic menu experience options: Mystery Edition and Epic Edition. Both editions allow users to watch a 4K UHD extended version of the film, discover hidden AR collectibles, access more than 8 hours of special features and explore themed navigation menus based on locations from the film – all while shopping and owning the entire film. experience from a common marketplace.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring movieverse of experience options

Eluvio CEO Michelle Munson emphasizes several key points to differentiate Eluvio’s Web3 NFT projects and this new offering from the ways blockchain technology has been used in the past. She also emphasizes how these implementations are fully accessible and secure for consumers who may not otherwise be familiar with NFTs and blockchain technologies.

“The first and most important thing here is that all the core digital assets – including all 4K streaming video – are not only closed, but served and owned specifically on the blockchain,” says Munson. “It means ownership is transferred directly from the publisher to the fan. This opens up a new type of direct relationship that has never existed before: It allows the fan to be a direct owner of the experience and in this case trade it in with other fans.”

Munson also highlights the potential ways these offerings can evolve toward even greater interactivity and direct fan engagement. She says fans can be a partial owner of new works “and potentially even become creators of new derivative works” through features built into the Content Blockchain and Content Fabric protocol, core technologies developed at Eluvio since the company was founded in 2018. “This is quite different from the way you think about traditional streaming in terms of workflows, pipelines and content distribution.”

With this new system, Munson notes that there is no traditional CDN involved in distribution. “The protocol itself replaces the need for a CDN and takes on all the functions of the transcoding and packet stack,” she says. “It also takes care of content security and rights management, including DRM. The protocol is built to be componentized, dynamic, scalable, and also to allow, most importantly, the medium to be built as needed from the components. And it works over an open network of nodes. So all the nodes are running the same software, and the media, the visuals, the interactive experience application – all come in as is. And then the experiences are served to the customers, without any customized customers. And everything is directly through the browser.”

Eluvio’s ingredient pipeline

Munson says that the “living experience” of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Extended Edition is a direct result of the dynamic nature of the Content Fabric protocol. “Objects can evolve into new versions with new components,” she notes. “That means you can change built-in components, such as the built-in AR.” Items like the Gandalf Staff and Stone will be updated and expanded over time, along with “what’s offered to the tab in terms of bonus footage, the audio, etc. These can be added or updated even without changing the resource that the user owns on the blockchain,” she continues .” It would be like having an organic transformation of your own streaming movie library that happens on demand, over time, and with the publisher being able to lean into the creative side to decide that — even with things like gamification. So if you were an Epic Edition owner, you can get the new additions to this living cinematic experience. And this is exactly what Warner is doing with this.”

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