Just this month, Verimatrix hit another major milestone that reflects as much on the entire digital video industry, as it does on the company. We celebrated reaching 500+ pay-TV operator customers and securing more than 20 million screens. Our cable and satellite (DVB) customer base increased 100% in 2011, and we’ve had a 500% growth in secure OTT video services. Based on feedback from customers, particularly our DVB customers, they feel more confident that our VCAS solutions will help them extend into multi-network, multi-screen video services more efficiently.

To help navigate this landscape, we developed 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.

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 [...]

At least one of the less obvious challenges related to delivering rich combinations of TV services to all these connected TVs and portable platforms is reproducing many aspects of the live TV experience in a scalable fashion. 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 – that we are all familiar with.

As IBC draws closer, we find ourselves reflecting on the trends that have been reinforced since IBC 2010, and anticipating the prevailing themes of the conversations at IBC 2011.

Since last year’s show, it seems the digital TV industry has entered a new period of pragmatism and commercial maturity. This feels like a welcome period of stabilization after the recent cycles of hype following OTT’s emergence as a viable new technical option for service delivery.

So if you’re in Amsterdam next month, drop by our stand, say hello and share your thoughts with us on the trends here and at @verimatrixinc that will define IBC 2011 and pave the way for the IBC 2012.

An increased number of portable and mobile devices are 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. This webinar explores the new requirements for effective rights management and content protection in a multiplatform world.

The distinction between multi-screen TV and TV will eventually disappear as all video services inherently incorporate any device where we want to consume content. The challenge is to make multi-screen services more scalable, which requires advances in headends, networks, content rights and revenue protection.

An increased number of portable and mobile devices are 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. This webinar explores the new requirements for effective rights management and content protection in a multiplatform world.

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” at NAB 2011, 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.

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.