HDGiants Files Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

Bummer… Way ahead of its time and kinda like the “Apple Newton”.  Let’s hope that Scott lands on his feet, surrounds himself with a good team, and get’s rev 2.0 headed in a better direction.  The concept of a localized content broker/agent can not go away and should pop at some point in the form of inside sales (affliate) or outside (Brokers/agents).  Overlay that on the distributed architecture of ASP’s and now cloud computing and you have the future BM, supply chain and distribution architecture for digital media….  Hmmmmm… with that said, is this really a paradigm problem, failed execution or something else more complex….

I have heard from a user that he is unable to play his MusicGiants DRM purchases. Does anyone know if HD plans to maintain its DRM servers or make other accommodations? I’ve left messages with Scott but understandably he’s a little preoccupied right now.

We wish him and the team the best, by the way - a real advocate for the channel.

Guess that content distribution in whatever form ever is only doable by the big boys. One or two more implosions and the big labels will simply refuse to talk to startups.
I wonder however why he ammassed such enormous amounts of dept? Did he promised the labels some min. annual revenue or so? Hard to believe that this loss was just caused by suboptimal operation or other too high fix costs.

Anyhow, sad story, cause it was a huge idea.

Unfortunately it sends the message to users: do not buy DRM-protected content from a small company.

I loved Scott’s vision from the moment I heard about MusicGiants”.  Let’s face it, if your gear sounds worse than compressed music, you don’t lose a thing.  That said, if your products/systems can reproduce sound such that playing compressed audio reveals its flaws, these guys are the only download content providers who got it.

Personally, I hope they can figure things out and exit 11.  No matter who you are to this industry, a manufacturer of entry level stuff, hi-end specialty producer, trunk slammer who never learned about sound or a veteran custom installer who started in HiFi - companies like HDGiants focused attention on raising the bar and not diluting the experience.  Especially in these economic times, raising the bar is about the most important thing one can do when trying to differentiate themselves from the pack. 

perhaps as Ray Casey noted, high-resolution downloads are simply ahead of their time.  Don’t blink too long

@Julie not sure that I accept that as a sound premise/conclusion.  To stretch the analogy that is like saying do not purchase an insurance policy from a small agent or do not use a local ASP/ISP for hosting applications when you have the likes of MSFT, IBM and Network Solutions.  It would be nice to see this industry retrograde back to a time where local mom and pop video stores (or coffee shops) existed.  Seems like it was not such a problem to create a seemingly easy to tap into supply chain that allowed numerous small business players in the market, each adding it’s own unique value to a sales/marketing.  To take that one step further,  If you could turn those local ASP/ISP (and it’s servers/hdd/resourses) into a digital content distribution model, have them add value, like content management and special bundles, back up services, archive, tech support and other value added services for the digital arena, then it seems like part of the vision of HDGiants could have really taken off (but where does that leave the monopoly cable companes?).  to make this a reality All we need is a standard DRM across OS’s/players and then we would have one big superhighway of content that has regional/geographic and demographic flare, while at the same time creating a cottage industry of service providers and enlighting consumers to a push model that can play content across multiple form factors with loss of quality, loss of media or limitations as to what device you can peruse and use the content on.  We would also have an extended services industry for specialised content aggregating and distribution…  Anyway.  Just a thought.  Seems strange that you can have a globally managed business community of ccertificate authorities, and states (like Florida) that allow for all kinds of eform/edocument infrastructures in place, and the content providers cannot come up with a simple way to manage the unconstrained distribution of digital content complete with certificates for inscriptions/authentication/authorization with confidence, governance, compliance and control…  what the hey?  Must have something to do with MONEY and CONTROL.  Always does   This whole thing smells and awful lot like the games AT&T;played with long haul telco and the legal battle MCI had to fight to make it right…

LOL… re my post, should read “Without loss of quality”  or need to pay a toll each time you want to use it, change the form factor, restore to a new device, or deed to someone in an estate   man HDGiants really was onto something and they are getting stuck “by the man”.. What would the Big Leboski thunk of all this?