It is no secret that the NAS market is robust and growing. However, what do consumers think they're getting when they buy a few terabytes of storage? I've read many articles on this topic, and projections I've read recently indicate that there will be somewhere between 27GB and 65GB of storage in the average consumer's house by 2014, and growing thereafter. Most things I've seen state that this storage will be used for a combination of consumer generated content and commercial content.

Regarding the commercial content side of that prediction, inasmuch as there is no legitimate distribution channel for video content that does not include content protection, either conditional access or DRM, how can that NAS fulfill the consumer expectation of assembling an in-home video library that includes commercial content?

The answer is DRM, deployed in a manner that does not interfere with the consumer experience. Fortunately, there is no shortage of technologies available that address all aspects of what that 2014 home server needs to do, and DRM is no exception.

The Marlin DRM technology provides a Hollywood-approved means of collecting, distributing and taking on-the-go all manner of commercial entertainment content. Now is the time for the storage industry to realize its destiny by embracing, adopting and deploying the Marlin technology, together with the right collection of other technologies, to provide a rich consumer experience in interacting with the content they are expecting.