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.

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.

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.

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.

Detailed pay-TV subscriber behavior and usage data can be instrumental in enabling more focused and engaging content across multiple platforms. Verimatrix is inherently well-positioned to drive the gathering and tracking of customer viewing information to help our operator customers achieve their larger business goals.

The majority of our conversations with digital TV operators these days are focused on, ‘what’s next?’ I mentioned this earlier this year, and the main themes still exist. Operators are evaluating the best, and most-cost effective ways to enhance their network that will improve their competitive profile, capture additional revenue or simply better serve current [...]

Verimatrix’s VCAS 3.0 was shortlisted for the CSI 2010 awards in the Best Content Protection category.

Part II of our interview with Editor John Moulding who recently completed the “Supporting the ‘any screen, anywhere’ video consumer,” report now available on Videonet. We tackle the drivers behind whole home video, current definitions of “cloud-based TV” and the technical challenges that operators still need to overcome to meet consumers’ expectations.

Project Canvas Selects Marlin as DRM Standard. Even in this new video delivery age, a strong core security platform provides the essential support for revenue generating services and complements the fundamental free-to-air and catch-up services central to the Canvas vision.

Videonet’s latest industry report, “Supporting the ‘any screen, anywhere’ video consumer,” provides an in-depth exploration of current whole home video approaches available as they are developing. One choice is to to deploy a powerful media gateway that repurposes content for various consumption models in the home network. Another option being aggressively promoted is to deliver traditional digital TV services via the ‘cloud,’ or a network-centric approach, in parallel with a variety of over-the-top services that have the right format, resolution and DRM to match the devices being used.