In 2006, Verimatrix celebrated surpassing its 1 millionth screen protected by our VCAS revenue security solutions, which was a significant milestone for our young, start-up company.

Just this month, I am proud to say we hit another major milestone that reflects as much on the entire digital video industry, as it does on Verimatrix. We celebrated reaching 500+ pay-TV operator customers and securing more than 20 million screens. (For additional milestones, read about our global number one ranking in Content Protection/DRM in MRG’s IPTV Market Leader report – for 5 1/2 consecutive  years!)

A large part of our tremendous growth has been due to the pay-TV planets colliding. Back in 2006, virtually all of our customers were delivering green field IPTV services over managed networks. Fast forward six years, our heritage in IP-based security techniques has placed Verimatrix in the center of this collision.

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I’m constantly being asked what differentiates Verimatrix.  In truth, it’s many things: our talented team, our commitment to excellence, our ability to “think outside the box.”  But one theme cuts across all of these different assets, and that’s our continuing dedication to innovation.  Innovation isn’t just an abstract goal here at Verimatrix; it’s something that pervades our work days (and nights) and is always at the very forefront of our minds.

How can we provide our customers with the most innovative solutions for securing and enhancing revenue for multi-network digital TV services on the market today?

This month, Verimatrix has been recognized for our innovation by two separate entities, both distinguished in their own right.

During CES 2012, our MultiRights solution won the Content Protection category at the prestigious 2012 TV Innovation Awards.  Very exciting news, especially considering the source of the award.  Now in its third year and administered by IMS Research, the 2012 TV Innovation Awards are one of the premier endorsements of innovation in television. The awards recognize the most forward-thinking companies that are creating products and services to change the way people watch television.  We are thrilled that Verimatrix was honored as one of these companies.

We feel that this commitment to innovation has also contributed to our sustained market leadership in software-based security. In December, MRG released its bi-annual IPTV Market Leaders Report that named Verimatrix in the top position. This marks the 11th consecutive time that we have maintained our market share in IPTV, representing 5 ½ years of Verimatrix global leadership.

Not a bad way to ring in the New Year!  We are thrilled kick off 2012 on such a high note and look forward to continuing our relentless innovation in multi-network and multi-screen content protection and revenue security. Our philosophy is that if we offer our customers innovative solutions for securing and enhancing revenue on their multi-network digital TV services, we help them to market leadership positions in their own business. Their success becomes our success.

Bill Rosenblatt, founder of GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies, provides his perspective on the new white paper we recently launched together, “Content Security Requirements for Multi-Screen Video Services.”

On his Copyright and Technology blog, he describes the objective of this paper as an effort “to gather actual security requirements from major content owners and describe them in a single document. The intent is to help pay-TV operators and other video service providers that are looking to launch multi-screen video services, so that they know what to expect and avoid any unpleasant surprises with regard to security requirements when licensing content to offer through their services.”

Bill summarizes one of the major findings while developing these content security guidelines. “Life for pay-TV operators used to be relatively simple: adopt a conditional access (CA) technology that was equally effective in thwarting signal theft as it was in thwarting content piracy. Economic and security goals were aligned between operators and copyright owners.  Now life is considerably more complicated, as operators have to support home networks and branch out into mobile services. Content security requirements are more complicated as well.”

Click here to read the entire post from Bill’s Copyright and Technology blog. Download the paper and let us know if you agree with the content security guidelines for multi-screen video services.

As a content and revenue security specialist for digital TV, and as our customers plan for and roll out multi-network and multi-screen video services, we are being constantly asked about the protection requirements that will apply to specific types of content and different device types. With the number of devices hitting the market and the rapid evolution of licensing policies in response to technological developments, the answers to these types of questions can be a moving target. The claims and counterclaims by those in our industry about “approval” and the significance of various threats add to the noise level.

To help navigate this landscape and to better serve our customers and the market, we helped develop a paper that will serve as a content licensing and security guide for video service providers planning multi-network, multi-screen services. We teamed with Bill Rosenblatt, founder of GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies, who has been steeped in digital rights and content management technologies for many years and has served as technical expert in litigation and public policy initiatives related to digital copyright.

Basically, he has the studio relationships, technical and legal chops and objective perspective to summarize available information and draw conclusions that are valuable to service providers.

We believe this is the most comprehensive guide available today on how the approach to multi-screen and TV Everywhere types of services relate to traditional licensing and security rules. In general, we found that practical security requirements for over-the-top (OTT) services and portable devices are becoming more analogous to traditional video delivery as the industry matures, meaning the requirements are becoming more stringent. (more…)

In June, I wrote about the early release window (ERW) experiment, and the great debate surrounding the viability of premium Video on Demand (VoD) content.  With the end of 2011 drawing near, now is good a time to review the year’s development on that topic.

At this point, it seems we should move beyond the enabling regulations and technical obstacles surrounding premium VoD¹ and instead concern ourselves with market dynamics – who might be the big winners and losers.

Despite some changing dynamics in content licensing and security (see the new Verimatrix white paper on this topic), technology is not the long pole in the tent any more, but rather licensing terms and subscriber adoption – at least for early adopters. And we are clearly still in the experimental phase of verifying if a home theater movie experience in a similar release window as theatrical release provides a viable business upside.

There are still a significant number of unknowns, but continued experiments provide some interesting insights. (more…)

2011 has been a very busy year at Verimatrix, full of challenges, opportunities, milestones and recognition, including multiple award nominations and wins. One such nod was for our CEO and Chief Visionary, Tom Munro, who was shortlisted for a Euro50 Award in the Technology Leader category for his contributions to the pay-TV industry as a whole. Although Tom didn’t walk away with the trophy, he was recognized alongside other industry visionaries at the Awards gala in London, where we were delighted to host a great mix of partners and customers at our table.

As part of its Awards coverage, Digital TV Europe asked Tom to reflect on his accomplishments in 2011, and provide his vision for 2012. Here is an excerpt of the interview.

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Earlier this week, we received two pieces of good news regarding the 2011 Euro50, the definitive “who’s who” of the year’s most influential people in the broadband and pay-TV industries:

#1.  Our CEO, Tom Munro, was shortlisted in the Technology Leader category for his contributions to the pay-TV industry as a whole.

#2.  Mario Pino, Marketing Launch Director for our customer Etisalat, was shortlisted in the Marketer of the Year category.

We are enormously gratified to receive this recognition; 2011 has been an incredibly productive and successful year on many fronts for us here at Verimatrix.  As our CEO, Tom is the visionary responsible for Verimatrix’s technical and commercial momentum in multi-network revenue security.  With a growing list of multi-screen deployments around the globe, this momentum is hard to ignore.

And we would also like to extend our sincerest congratulations to Mario.  It is an honor to be recognized alongside a partner, especially one as hard-working and innovative as Mario.  It’s Mario’s job to ensure that Etisalat lives up to its marketing message of ‘Get ready to be amazed’. Since Etisalat developed its vision as a leader in digital media delivery network over any network, any screen, at any time, the progress has been exponential.

In 2011 alone Mario played an instrumental role in launching the IPTV 2.0 service called eLife TV, Etisalat xGames, as well eLife OnWeb and eLife OnDemand on LG Smart TVs and LG Smart Upgraders. More information about these deployments can be found on Mario’s blog. He has achieved many accomplishments this year, and we wish him continued success in 2012.

Congratulations, Tom and Mario!

It was a pleasure to host our EMEA Autumn Summit this year near our new Munich office during Oktoberfest. Our customers and ecosystem partners attended the 2-day workshop to network with our combined European-based team and senior executives, as well as gain a full understanding of the direction of our VCAS security architecture.

We laid out our product roadmap to show how we are meeting the needs of both our DVB and IPTV customers that are broadening their services to hybrid DVB-IP and multi-screen delivery. We haven’t received an RFP in the last 12 months that didn’t include some multi-network, multi-screen component. Even if customers are not ready to make that type of network transition now, they certainly want to understand their future options.

The Summit also provided a valuable forum to exchange views with experts and industry peers on the state of revenue security, potential threats and the piracy scene, and what’s next in the pay-TV marketplace.

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Why am I sitting at the Schiphol airport cafe again? You guessed it – I lived through another successful IBC. No this time I’m not indulging on the famous Dutch poffertjes, but I did buy some old Dutch cheese. Yes Gouda, which my wife loves. Did you know thatGoudais a beautiful medieval Dutch city with traditional cheese making? If not, go and visit next time. I also bought tulip bulbs so that my daughters may watch Mother Nature perform miracles.

So what was the topic of this year’s biggest digital TV conference? Well, actually, I was disappointed because it was multi-screen or any screen or something along those lines. But why is it disappointing you ask? Because we have been promoting this concept for years! And specifically securing premium pay TV content to all screens that subscribers find useful. In reality, I am really quite pleased that the industry finally caught up with our innovative security approach.

Let me offer you my observation about at least one of the less obvious challenges related to delivering rich combinations of TV services to all these connected TVs and portable platforms.  The challenge is reproducing many aspects of the live TV experience in a scalable fashion. Therefore, we are firm believers that, as this market matures, Internet TV services will naturally need a combined solution for both on-demand and live consumption.

None of the critical adaptive bitrate streaming protocols out there, specifically Smooth Streaming and HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), have been defined in a way that makes it easy to support tens of thousands of concurrent subscribers watching a major live event such as the soccer World Cup in real time.

When compared to the well-honed DVB broadcast technologies, some of the key issues of practical concern, like managing semi-synchronized key changes and addressing revenue leakage through re-broadcasting of various kinds, are not yet developed to scale in a streaming environment.

Addressing these kinds of issues takes Internet TV to the commercial level necessary to truly reproduce the pay-TV service paradigm–and associated revenue models – with which we are all familiar. This is where our experience from the IPTV and DVB worlds comes in really handy; where content is distributed to millions of subscribers while managing device entitlement, device security and frequent real-time rights changes.

If this makes you wonder if your current or planned multi-screen service scales beyond just a proof of concept or a friendly trial, give us a call. We are happy to show you how our VCAS for Internet solves this problem without installing a large number of servers in your head-end.

And don’t forget to stop by an old-fashioned cheese farm while visiting Gouda.

Steve Christian was recently featured on the increasingly popular Pay OTT TV Blog from Tvinici, which was highlighted at IBC 2011. 

Content security is one of the most complex issues associated with OTT TV.

We have asked Steve Christian, VP Marketing at Verimatrix, to give us the DRM / Conditional Access perspective of OTT TV (Verimatrix provides software-based security solutions for service providers).

Steve, What do you think are the main reasons behind pay TV operators expanding into the Over-the-Top Space?

A key driver is to be able to cover the bases of additional screens in the home, which from a defensive perspective would gather eyeballs of competitive or niche services. From a more positive standpoint this raises the competitive bar for other pay-TV operators in the same franchise area or region. Another reason is to be able to expand the geographic reach of the operator’s service brand beyond the existing subscriber pool, potentially to a worldwide audience.

What are the greatest challenges associated with content protection in the pay-OTT space?

The greatest challenge is awareness of content protection issues at a high level, and the details of how this must be supported at fine grain level.

To read the complete Q&A, please visit the Pay OTT Blog.