A handful of major entertainment industry players -- including NBC Universal, Paramount Pictures, the RIAA, Sony, Warner Bros., Fox, Dolby and Lionsgate -- teamed up to back an initiative to develop a "buy once, play anywhere" standard for music and video sales.

Conspicuously absent from the group is Disney and Apple -- both of which are married to iTunes and the proprietary format used for music and video sales on iTunes.

The new consortium, called Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, is working toward a uniform standard that can be used across multiple platforms to buy videos and music that can be played on different devices.

Source:→ Wired