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.

Last week, we posted answers to several of the follow up questions that were generated during our recent Light Reading webinar on Multiplatform Content Protection: How to Secure Content Everywhere.

Below are even more answers to questions with themes that pervaded multiple questions and comments during the session.

Feel free to let us know you agree or disagree by leaving a comment below.

Are keys determined by the DEVICE identity or by the USER identity? Do security systems provide for different entitlements for different users of a single device?

The management of key distribution for encrypted video streams is one of the ways to regulate consumption to different subscribers. In order to do that most effectively, operators need to determine the entitlements of those keys both at the user level and the device level. Security systems could provide different entitlements for different devices going to the same user or to provide different entitlements for different users on a single device.

The consumer’s experience is adversely affected by making consumption rules too complicated.  If the value proposition of the service or transactional purchase is too complicated and not intuitive to the consumer, then whole experience is detrimentally affected.  In our experience, we have found that you really want to make the rules as simple as possible but keep entitlement management on a fine grain basis managed on user-by-user and device-by-device basis.

Can HLS support the needed adaptation of streaming rate for the larger screen in addition to smaller screens?

The ability of HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) to scale delivery systems from small form factor devices to large devices is part of what makes it so attractive.  So, yes, it is possible for the device to adapt to the right bit rate to match the resolution of its own screen display as well as to match the stream profile to the available network bandwidth.

Do you see a trend towards IP video home gateway/IP STB among pay TV operators?

We believe that the market is inexorably moving to IP-based video delivery across networks outside the home as well as inside the home. We are working with cable operators that are migrating to so called cable IPTV or DVB-C / IP hybrid networks to take full advantage of the cost and operational efficiencies that are possible.

But the transition necessarily involves stepping stones, and the gateway device is certainly an element of solutions that can help bridge the gap between traditional video network delivery technologies and the IP centric world.

Where do you see gaming consoles in the universe of ‘connected devices’ and video consumption, and DRM protection?

Gaming consoles are very sophisticated and powerful video machines that make great set-top box substitutes. We also think that they could enable viable second or third screens in the home. They are pretty good from a video processing and cost standpoint, so therefore they should be pretty good from a home video services standpoint.

The challenge has always been developing applications for game consoles as they have not been open development environments and it’s been harder for these devices to become rich targets for different kinds of video services.

Access the archived webinar from Light Reading here.

A very broad topic, indeed, but also a very timely and relevant one. With an increased number of tablets and smartphones driving consumer interest in video on the go, consumers are demanding access to preferred content across devices, anywhere and anytime. However, for service providers and content owners to be able to provide these services in a profitable manner, the content must first be secure. In addition, as new revenue models develop, the content protection must offer increased flexibility and the ability to follow complex rules.

We addressed these issues during the webinar and are pleased to note that there was a very productive and stimulating Q&A session at the conclusion of the presentation. Many excellent questions were asked, however, and time constraints did not permit us to answer every question. Therefore, we’ve taken a sampling of the unanswered questions, and provided our answers and guidance below.

Be sure to watch for the second installment of this series, where we’ll be answering more questions from the webinar participants.

How will operators profit from content delivery using adaptive rate streaming of various types of video content? What network operator capabilities, if any, could enhance the end user QoE for such services?

Modern pay-TV operators should embrace novel technologies, such as those utilizing adaptive rate streaming (ARS), which have been designed to effectively scale and solve many remaining IP video issues.  Operators will profit from ARS as long as they increase subscribers’ quality of experience (QoE) and leverage the associated subscriber data.

With ARS, subscribers can enjoy an uninterrupted experience with the highest quality possible, even as they roam from one network environment to another.

In addition to the optimum-quality viewing experience, ARS also scales effectively on global and local networks, makes highly effective use of today’s content distribution networks (CDNs), and ensures that true HD media experiences over the Internet can become a reality. All of this translates to a richer consumer experience, with more personalized choices with regard to content, time and place.

ARS can also provide valuable subscriber intelligence. At Verimatrix, we believe that the more you measure, the more you can impact QoE. While the concept of gathering subscriber usage data is not new, operators need to think about subscriber behavior and usage data more intelligently. This data can be leveraged to generate new revenue streams, increase subscriber loyalty, as well as enhance QoE and subscriber satisfaction.

Technologies like ARS can provide a veritable treasure trove of data that can be analyzed for extremely useful metrics like performance trends and traffic patterns.   These metrics provide a robust foundation for enhancing QoE and turning it into a real competitive advantage.

What are the trends, now and in the next year or two, in stationary viewing vs. mobile (iPhone, iPad, etc.) viewing of video content?

This is a great question.  Without a doubt, the content landscape is rapidly evolving as a result of the increasing role of over-the top (OTT) services. Static information feeds from the Web today are joined by an ever richer vein of mainstream programming delivered directly from its owners – often for free and with minimal advertising interruptions.

While in the past this meant watching low-quality video on a PC monitor, today OTT services can be watched on the big screen connected to game consoles, Internet-enabled TVs, dedicated streaming devices such as Roku, and a variety of mobile devices, including the iPhone and iPad.

Consider these recent statistics (from a recent Nielsen report on smartphone usage), which represent a possible threat to traditional pay TV:

• Penetration of smartphone devices in the U.S. jumped from 23 percent of the market in the last quarter of 2009 to 31 percent in Q4 2010, representing a 35 percent increase
• The number of video viewers rose by 41 percent to 24.7 million over that timeframe
• Users spent an average of 4.2 hours per month consuming video at the end of 2010

Over the next couple of years, I think we can anticipate that this trend will continue. If you are looking for real time statistics, I suggest checking out the BBC Internet Blog, which posts a monthly snapshot of BBC iPlayer performance.  It’s a great resource and very helpful in identifying key trends and issues.

Do you think that ISO/MPEG’s DASH standard will become the dominant adaptive streaming protocol. If not, why not?

Yes, we do think that once it its finalized MPEG DASH is poised for widespread adoption.  In our opinion, device makers will want to preferentially support a single video stream type. That will tend to help the adherence of standard video support in both PC-type browsers and embedded browsers (which have been much more of a challenge in many cases), and starts us down the road of direct HTML page support for connected TVs etc. We think that MPEG DASH will become the obvious choice for embedded devices.

We are closely watching and participating in the standards development that will help enable and secure multiplatform content. For the latest standards developments and insights, read my article in the May 2011 issue of ScreensPlays,”Initiatives Promise Efficiency Gains for Multiscreen Service Operations.”

What questions do you have on this topic?

So, this time I was not sipping coffee at a foreign airport nor feeding my sweet tooth with poffertjes. This year I drove to NAB and it is hard to type while driving 320 miles back from Las Vegas to San Diego. I still can’t find a good app on my Android phone that would take my dictations and convert them to text.

But back to NAB. It seems like tablets were everywhere and if your booth didn’t have one, you were not cool (of course we had one or two as well). And it is all related to over-the-top (OTT) distribution of content, especially video. I can’t help but feel that the direction the industry is going is questionable: from HD video on a large screen TV to a low-bitrate, low-resolution video on a portable device.

I know, I get it, it is all about mobility and “on my time” and “wherever I am.” So it certainly has its benefits and the video quality is improving every day through better implementations of adaptive bit-rate streaming and ever increasing bandwidth.

The content quality is also improving as studios are getting more comfortable to release pay-TV movies and episodes when they are protected by conditional access (CA) or digital rights management (DRM). This was the point of our production-ready OTT demos streaming protected video to iPhones, Android phones, laptops and Macs, and yes, even iPads and Android tables (to make sure we fit right into the NAB buzz!).

Where did the quest for highest quality and best picture disappear? Actually, it did not.

As we discussed with Herve Utheza, president of our partner company RCDb, during a session on “Tapping into the Blu-ray Potential,” OTT is also coming to our living rooms bringing Hollywood content to a device that everybody is familiar with, is simple to use and always brought quality entertainment for the whole family.

Yes, you guessed it; the good ol’ Blu-ray player. It is the most deployed entertainment device (including BD-enabled game consoles) already connected to your living-room large screen TV. And now, when you connect it to your broadband and insert the RCDb-Verimatrix disc (or rather a disc branded with your OTT service), Eureka! You have access to potentially thousands of movie titles, TV episodes and even live content from the comfort of your sofa (and no, it does not serve beer yet – we need to leave some room for phase 2).

And the beauty is that it plays on all BD players with BD-Live 2.0 capability (virtually all recently manufactured players) and it has a standard built-in DRM called Advanced Access Content System (AACS) used to protect all Blu-ray titles today.

A popular device, standardized around the world, capable of delivering high value paid content and already purchased by the consumer. Sounds like a sweet spot to me.

Speaking of sweet spots – if you still don’t know what poffertjes are, let’s meet at IBC 2011 in Amsterdam.

Things have certainly changed in the last six months.

• Cord-cutting may be still a much debated statistic, but is in fact a competitive threat to traditional pay-TV services, particularly with younger generations. This threat grows with the quality of services that can be delivered over unmanaged networks and the variety of devices that can be used to display high quality video services.

• Progressive operators are finding ways to add OTT services to their subscription packages. IMS Research forecasts that in 2016, OTT services delivered via pay-TV set-top boxes will generate $436 million in worldwide operator revenues.

• Innovation among television technology suppliers has far from run its course. New announcements from digital systems vendors appear every day, creating momentum for strong partner ecosystems that can provide operators with the advanced capability they seek, but with options and flexibility for deployment.

We are seeing this support largely for the standard of HTTP Live Streaming (as opposed to the proprietary HTTP Dynamic Streaming from Adobe and Microsoft’s Smooth Streaming) mainly because of its open standards-based approach, including the definition of a standardized stream encryption mechanism for live and on-demand content.

The natural effect of a standards-based protocol and growing technology support is of course a more cost-efficient platform, making HTTP Live Streaming ideal for the kind of large-scale services that these progressive operators want to add to their line up.

However, we recognize that we are still in the early days of developing the business environment for adaptive rate streaming and OTT video services – which is why we are organizing the Capitalizing on OTT Breakfast Forum the morning of March 22 just down from the IP&TV World Forum conference that starts that same day.

We are bringing together industry leaders from Harmonic, RealNetworks, AwoX, Minerva Networks and Heavy Reading to discuss revenue optimization strategies for OTT services to multiple devices.

These companies are far from the only strong contributors to the momentum in this space, but do represent distinct elements of the overall value chain. And as such are able to illustrate very effectively the growing body of both product and expertise that can be brought to bear on this new market.

The point here is not to talk about where the industry is currently positioned in regards to OTT video, but to illustrate a vital and growing phenomenon that will shape the next phase of industry development – the integration of these new delivery mechanisms within an existing managed network service. The presenters will be discussing specific technology decisions operators need to make when building an integrated OTT platform.

With the ability to secure OTT video, operators are also provided a platform to deliver – and more directly monetize – their existing and future premium content.

This event is for broadcasters and network operators that are evaluating adaptive rate streaming technology in order to expand their service umbrella. Not only will you have access to these industry leaders, they will provide a preview and focus of what’s most important at the IP&TV World Forum conference.

Skip the queue the morning of the show and attend our free OTT breakfast forum. You won’t be disappointed. Plus you can enjoy delicious bacon sarnies to start your day!

RealNetworks

Harmonic

Minerva Networks

AwoX

I’d argue the biggest impediment to perfecting these apps is content. The biggest impediment to gaining the rights to content is content security. And who already has access to high-quality content and conditional access (CA) / digital rights management (DRM) systems in place? Digital TV operators. We believe the cable, satellite and IPTV operators that already have the rights to broadcast premium content are in the cat bird seat to offer the best live mobile TV experience.

The demand is clear. According to Sandvine, real-time entertainment, including video streaming, now accounts for about 43% of North American Internet traffic, up from 10% in 2008! And for the first time in history, the number of households paying for TV subscriptions is falling, in part due to the rise of Internet TV and over-the-top (OTT) services.

The technology is finally catching up to this demand when you consider what adaptive rate streaming can now enable.

Now, in this new OTT world, the issue of content rights is complicated. Take companies like Ivi and FilmOn.com for example. They have developed technology that captures over-the-air broadcast signals and streams them to mobile devices – without consent from the networks.

Clearly these broadcasters are not thrilled with the so-called loophole that they found in the U.S. Copyright Act. Both of these companies are already in an embattled legal fight with content owners to see if they have the right to do this. According to some attorneys, the law is on the side of the networks.

We recently launched our ViewRight LIVE app in iTunes, which enables secure distribution of premium pay-TV services via WiFi and mobile wireless networks – of live TV. The app provides subscriber/device registration and device-level authentication. ViewRight LIVE also allows operators to customize and brand their mobile TV channel to match the look and feel of their traditional channels.

So with the content rights, technology infrastructure and now the security available to enable a superior live mobile TV experience, digital TV operators have a tremendous opportunity. I’d say it is better to beat fledging online TV operators in the marketplace rather than the courtroom.

What are your thoughts?

You’ll notice that OTT has been a common theme throughout our blog posts this year – we have tackled issues ranging from the likelihood of traditional TV operators embracing OTT video as a service to how service providers can capitalize on advanced OTT technologies to enable new streams of business to the growing support for HTTP Live Streaming.

In addition to helping operators maximize the effectiveness of their existing bandwidth, ARS also
offers many advantages over previous video delivery techniques over the Internet. For instance, it naturally supports home firewall transparency, and a wide variety of use cases — it can deliver video across a combination of wired and wireless networks, through any combination of home broadband devices and firewall devices.

In our opinion, this is extremely important because the protocols that we’ve been using for IPTV, in particular, don’t have those properties, and as a result they don’t work very well around the home.  In comparison with previous video techniques used on the Internet, such as progressive download, we see both improvements in operational cost savings for the service provider and in the quality of consumer experience.

And the improvements to the quality of the consumer experience are tremendous.  This is so important because user experience is perhaps the most important determinant of success for businesses that rely on video delivery.  People don’t expect their video material to stop and start and for the audio to drop; they expect a very seamless, continuous experience, and they are not very forgiving of delivery issues.  ARS provides that seamless experience even when conditions deteriorate sharply or if sharing of bandwidth occurs.

In partnership with Harmonic, we worked with Ben Schwarz to author a primer talking about the impact of ARS. You will find a high-level technical description that leads to the technology trade-offs of the different flavors of ARS (from Apple, Microsoft and Adobe). It is written as a guide to help operators make sound selection parameters and consider business implications based on those decisions. You can download the primer at www.verimatrix.com/HLS

We think ARS is one of the year’s most significant enabling technologies, and we’re excited to see what’s in store for 2011.  What ARS advancements do you think we will see in 2011?

Sign up for our Authorized Access newsletters to stay informed on the latest news on revenue security, conditional access and digital TV developments.

Anyway, IBC 2010 was exciting especially for us consumers. Large screens, 3D, 20-channel audio, video on any device (sorry no toasters yet), interactivity, personalization, more commercials (sorry, did not mean to be facetious), combination with social networking (c’mon, get off Facebook at least while watching movies).  

All the new technologies are giving us more freedom in what, where, when, on what device and with whom we watch. That should be all good, right? It should also give us access to more content that suits our personalities, family values, sense of humor and so on. Yet more is not necessarily better – personal recommendation engines that have our interests in mind without compromising our privacy are coming to the rescue. At the end of the day, it is really up to all of us to make the right choices when spending our valuable time in front of the tube (in whichever form factor it comes today). 

Alright, philosophy aside, one thing that drew a lot of interest from content and service providers this year was a good old DVD player. You are wondering how could that be, right? OK, it was an off-the-shelf connected Blu-ray player (a.k.a. BD-Live), which allows any service provider to deliver their content to a device that millions of users already own.  No custom integration, no special embedded applications – just an ordinary Blu-ray disc that launches a service provider’s entire VOD library (without competing with the maze of preinstalled applications and widgets).

And of course, even though we are talking about an over-the-top (OTT) delivery here, this is protected content that is perfectly suitable for a paid service. In addition, it is protected by AACS, which is natively implemented by every BD player and loved and trusted by studios (or so they tell me). It is actually pretty surprising with all the talk about standardizing DRM. Here is a device that can play the best HD content and already comes with a multi-vendor DRM system. 

The BD-Live technology also provides support for different business models and usage rules. The fact that this is a two-way connected device also enables service providers to update the look & feel, as well as functionality, online, which guarantees the user is always running the latest version of the service. 

From a security point of view, the dynamic entitlement control, monitoring of suspicious behavior possibly related to piracy attempts, ability to insert a user-specific forensic watermark and online revocation makes this service more secure than shipping traditional Blu-ray discs.

And I almost forgot that the rich metadata, adaptive rate streaming and connection to other related information (e.g., IMDB) and services (e.g., buying a soundtrack at Amazon) makes me wonder why this is not offered by every service provider. 

As you can see, I am very excited about this – mainly because this technology is offered by Verimatrix and our good friends at RCDb. Read more here if you are as excited as I am. 

Hopefully, I saved you a long trip to Amsterdam although I cannot serve you virtual poffertjes (at least not in this decade). 

Let me know what you liked at IBC.

Please visit Videonet’s Official IBC Blog to read more.

And stop by our IBC booth – 4.B84!

We have been vocal in our position of how pay-TV operators should integrate OTT and adaptive rate streaming technologies with existing managed networks to enhance ARPU, subscriber loyalty and lure incremental advertising dollars.

We also believe this fundamentally changes how they view traditional delivery networks and business models.

To be successful long-term, this convergence of technologies must encompass a proactive revenue protection strategy that enables pay-TV operators to cast a much wider net with their service offerings. This shifts the central value proposition for the pay-TV enterprise beyond that of content protection alone, towards the broader perspective of revenue security.

Our VCAS for Internet TV component provides a complete digital TV security solution for OTT services over networks implementing the HTTP Live Streaming protocol. While the protocol incorporates a baseline security model for service, VCAS for Internet TV provides important extensions that improve the capability to support subscription and transaction based pay-TV services. In particular, the security solution ensures that decryption keys are managed and selectively distributed to authorized clients only.

We are particularly excited that Nokia Siemens Networks consciously decided to build its Ubiquity TV platform around the standards-based HTTP Live Streaming protocol. All operational aspects of the protocol delivery are standard-based, which makes it ideal for digital TV operators to offer large-scale OTT services. Plus it includes standardized support for key management and allows device and session-based authentication.

Through a single security head-end, we are able to manage CA and DRM functions over multiple networks and devices. For example, our core VCAS 3 architecture can secure QAM modulated streams on a cable network, VOD services in a managed IPTV system and rate-adaptive HTTP streams on a mobile devices network.

We are looking forward to working with more digital TV operators that want to take advantage of advanced HTTP streaming technologies that have been designed to effectively scale and solve many remaining IP video issues.

Please stop by our booth (4.B84) at IBC 2010 to discuss the opportunities and revenue security strategies for OTT convergence.