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In the build-up to IBC we are putting the spotlight on a handful of products we think are worth special attention at the show. This week it is VideoGuard Connect from NDS, a DRM designed to provide higher levels of service and content protection for Pay TV operators whose multi-screen TV offers are starting to mature in terms of how many viewers they have and the number of channels available, and therefore the value of the service to themselves and would-be pirates. NDS is not the only company focusing on the Pay TV over-the-top (OTT) opportunity at IBC2011, but it has already announced two major customers for this product: BSkyB, which is already using the solution for Sky Go, and DIRECTV. The company says there will be other announcements in the next few months. VideoGuard Connect is designed to help TV operators to seamlessly extend their Pay TV services to connected media devices. It enables the secure ingestion, delivery and consumption of premium content over both managed and OTT networks while maintaining subscription privileges across devices. Using the solution, operators can deploy linear channels, on-demand content and download services on most of the popular multi-screen devices using the open Internet. The rationale for VideoGuard Connect is enabling TV operators to capitalise on the opportunities presented by multi-platform Pay TV. It enables a wider range of business models, such as download rentals, expanded subscription packages and content bundling. Content purchased on the broadcast platform can be made available immediately on the broadband platform and vice-versa thanks to the integration of VideoGuard Connect with the operator’s existing broadcast platform.
As summer draws to a close and we are all geared up for IBC 2011, a renewed focus on technical and commercial standards has emerged. While non-proprietary security standards may seem counter-intuitive (how can an open standard provide the right level of security to deliver high value content?), there are multiple benefits and clear value associated with a multi-vendor DRM scheme. These benefits have no doubt been amplified by recent progress on the fronts of multiple standards – plus the dramatically expanding landscape of multiple screens ideal for consuming video content.
Bill Rosenblatt has just published a new white paper: The New Technologies for Pay TV Content Security.
The 28-page paper describes the current state of the art of techniques for protecting video content delivered over pay television networks such as cable and satellite. The final section of the paper discusses fingerprinting and watermarking as two techniques that complement encryption as ways of finding unauthorized content “in the wild.”
There are basically two ways to sustain the extensive growth of video formats that you must, as a media distributor, serve to your different clients’ target devices : the most common answer is to choose the best in breed most-powerful encoders to prepare all the target formats during the content preparation time (see Panorama article N°1 on this topic), but you can adopt a different approach saying that you want to prepare your contents once and have the distribution part of the overall workflow take care of the repackaging and protection of the contents on the fly.
Server-side repackaging of the streams consists eventually in :
- choosing languages in audio and subtitle tracks available in the original mux (optional)
- transcoding/transrating the video content in different sizes/bitrates from a high quality video file (optional)
- applying a DRM compatible with the output format (optional)
- generating the manifest file corresponding to the target adaptive streaming technology (mandatory)
- remuxing and chunking the video data according to the output protocol requirements (mandatory)
Historically, repackaging was pushed as a quick solution for broadcasters to add iOS streams on top of existing Smooth or Flash streams. In a wider OTT/Adaptive Bitrate perspective, this alternative approach means : less files to manage in the main production workflow, less storage, less bandwidth to populate the origin servers, smaller time to contents’ online availability and easier support for new formats – shortly said, an agile path.
Potentially a risky one, but quite attractive…
Let's examine the available options on the market, to do it on your own platform or in the cloud !
The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) is trying to bring together an amalgam of DRM schemes that will let consumers achieve the long-sought goal of buy once, play everywhere.
When it comes to controlled access and digital rights management (DRM), the sheer number of choices for playing online video has been overwhelming. From Adobe’s Flash Access and Apple's FairPlay to Microsoft’s PlayReady and a host of other proprietary and open source solutions, DRM has often succeeded in further fragmenting an already fragmented consumer electronics landscape.
The need for DRM is apparent, at least in the eyes of the studios and premium content owners, but so is the need for content to be played on any device at any time, at least in the eyes of the consumer who is “purchasing” a piece of digital content. Is there a way to bridge the gap between the content owner’s licensing of a piece of content for playback on a single device and the consumer’s desire to play that content just about wherever and whenever he or she wants?
The answer to that question of balance is about to get a new act in the three-ring circus of premium content creation, distribution, and consumption, as proponents of a new DRM scheme prepare to walk the tightrope again in mid-2011 with an aggregated technology known as UltraViolet.
Three vendors of DRM technology made announcements timed to this week’s huge NAB conference in Las Vegas: AuthenTec, BuyDRM, and Discretix. The common theme among these announcements was support for Microsoft’ PlayReady DRM on the Android and Apple iOS platforms.
Equipped with the Wowza DRM software AddOn, Wowza Media Server 3 provides secure key exchange using the Verimatrix VCAS, and encrypts individual video segments on the fly for HTTP Live Streaming to viewers on a wide range of devices including set-top boxes (STBs), connected TVs, iPhones, iPads, and Android tablets. Options for both registering and tracking individual devices, and managing device entitlements for content viewing make VCAS for Internet TV a significant enhancement over conventional HTTP Live Streaming encryption mechanisms.
Product evolutions include :
- Multi-encapsulation for multi-format streaming
- Generic DRM Interface lets customers use their own DRM system
- Upcoming support for VP8
- Enhanced H.264 rate-control mode
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UltraViolet, the technology that enables consumers to buy a movie once and play it anywhere, is about to become a reality. Warner Home Entertainment Group confirmed Green Lantern will be the first movie released on DVD and Blu-ray to include the long-awaited UltraViolet when it hits retail on Oct. 14. It’s not startling news, since Time Warner’s chairman and chief executive Jeffrey Bewkes had said in August that Green Lantern and Horrible Bosses would be the first two UltraViolet DVD releases. “We believe that this could fundamentally change how people manage and watch their movie collections and it could significantly improve the value proposition of digital ownership,” Bewkes said at the time. “Remember, with UltraViolet, what will happen is, if you go and buy a physical DVD, you will have it in the cloud as you walk out of the store.”
Media server is a dedicated server to deliver audio / video content to users. Explosive growth of online video views has led to a substantial growth of the media server market and sharpening of competitive conditions (Adobe sued Wowza). Adobe Flash Media Server and Wowza Media Server are the main players on this market. Both products are actively developing. Their already impressive feature set is continuously enhanced with new fascinating functionalities. Earlier this year, Wowza announced its new release, Wowza Media Server 3. Wowza and Adobe are moving in the direction of cross-platform video content availability to all user screens. In this post, we’ll share our hands-on experience in testing Wowza 3 and give you an idea of its major functional innovations. First of all, in the new release, Wowza began to introduce new features as add-ons to the basic server. They plan to implement three add-ons: DRM, Transcoding and nDVR. DRM and Transcoding signify an obvious shift in favor of collateral products, and DVR is quite a long expected functionality.
At IBC2011, Vimond Media Solutions will show new enhancements and additions to the Vimond OTT platform, including: - 3D adaptive streaming: a new solution for live and VOD streaming in 3D to web and connected TV - Widevine integration: the Vimond platform will be shown for the first time at IBC2011 with new integration with Google Widevine, enabling multiplatform DRM and adaptive streaming on multiple devices, including connected TVs Website : http://www.vimond.com/
AuthenTec announced the development and immediate availability of the first Microsoft PlayReady-based downloadable digital rights management (DRM) client solution for Android-based phones and tablets and Apple iOS-based devices including iPhone and iPad. AuthenTec’s PlayReady-compatible DRM offering is now part of its Downloadable DRM Fusion Agent announced last week, and the flexibility and security of PlayReady significantly broadens the appeal of this new DRM solution to content owners and distributors.
DRM Fusion Agent is being deployed as a downloadable application that can be distributed by various application stores, significantly increasing the potential to deliver DRM-protected PlayReady content to mobile devices. AuthenTec’s solution works seamlessly on Android- and iOS-based devices with minimal to no action required from end users. It supports file-based PlayReady protection including progressive downloads, and PlayReady-protected adaptive video streaming to support both Smooth Streaming and HTTP Live Streaming. AuthenTec also offers PlayReady servers with content packaging tools to provide an end-to-end PlayReady-based DRM solution.
Akamai Anywhere TV leverages the power of the Akamai HD Network for massively scalable and secure HTTP adaptive bitrate video delivery. With it’s cross-platform, cross-device delivery, Akamai Anywhere TV offers easy workflows to deliver high-quality video experiences to the industry’s most popular platforms including Android, iOS, Flash, Silverlight and devices like Sony PlayStation, XBOX, connected HDTVs and DVD players.
And by offloading manual post-production processes into the media cloud, content owners can easily reach multiple devices. Akamai’s Secure Distribution Platform protects the user experience as well as the content with multi-layered content security including geographic controls, player verification, encryption and full DRM as well as cloud-based site protection against malicious attacks.
Media Excel and Verimatrix bring complementary technologies and expertise areas to address the infrastructure requirements for successful premium video service delivery. Media Excel offers encoder products with an innovative software and hardware design that leverages sophisticated video processing capabilities to deliver an n-Screen multi-format IP video for multi-channel live broadcasting and on-demand applications. Verimatrix integrates its VCAS for Internet TV components within the workflow to secure the keys associated with encrypted content streams and supports a wide variety of authenticated client device delivery options using its ViewRight Web technology.
More info on Media Excel HERO nS encoder here : http://www.mediaexcel.com/products/fileon-demand/hero-ns
BuyDRM announced today that the company has been selected to demonstrate the next generation of content security in the cloud at NAB 2011. This will be the first time that Microsoft PlayReady Content Security technology has been deployed on the Windows Azure platform.
In June, the company will launch Microsoft PlayReady support for AndroidOS and iOS using newly developed mobile DRM technology available via KeyOS. This device licensing platform, deployed on the Windows Azure platform, will support hundreds of millions of end-user devices and provide seamless support for the most popular user platforms on the Internet.
Irdeto turns obfuscation into a dynamic solution via its new ActiveCloak platform
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