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.

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.

It is HD content, delivered to any device, that has become primary benchmark in licensing terms and security requirements. The physical media delivery regime for HD was fundamentally grounded in the AACS protection model – now the application of similar principles and in the digital delivery domain is part of the background, although we are seeing trends that this is changing.

In fact, the content of this first version of the paper highlights areas – licensing attributes, new security techniques, release windows, usage rules and studio policies – that are most in flux and provides signposts on where requirements are headed. Of course, market dynamics will never stop shifting. Content owners will attempt to influence them through their licensing deals, and content protection requirements are among the most important licensing terms.  When appropriate, we will update our conclusions over time and use future versions of the paper as a vehicle for updates and elaborations as the industry evolves.

Whether you are a traditional managed-network operator, an OTT video startup, or an ecosystem partner developing devices and apps for premium video delivery, this paper is a must-read to gain a better understanding of content and revenue security in the changing world of multi-screen services.

If you are facing some of these choices in launching new breeds of services, please take a minute to download this paper and let us know what you think. We look forward to continuing this discussion!

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.

Check out the post and leave a comment so we can continue this discussion!

And stop by our booth at IBC 2011 – 4.B54!

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.

The commercial and technical communities are now clearly rethinking some early bets. And we would argue that the tendency to give services and content away for free, or for minimal ROI, just because they represent new and flashy beachheads for promotion, is increasingly being eclipsed by the trend to include Internet delivery options as a component of existing video service relationships.

Yes, there are some pure play OTT providers on the scene that have certainly been aggressive and innovative. But as the dust settles, we anticipate that they may be increasingly been seen as complementary or niche service options among a field of competitive options led primarily by established service brands.

At IBC 2011, we expect to see the growth of content delivery over the Internet as a parallel and complementary component of pay-TV services, simply using a different technology base from the other components of the service delivered using traditional managed networks.  I expect that the two will look increasingly similar or highly merged as far as business models and key players are concerned.

From our perspective, Verimatrix is highly visible at IBC 2011 as a key independent player in the world of revenue and content security, offering a flexible and comprehensive set of solutions to multi-network, multi-screen video business delivery challenges.  Being independent has proven to be an increasingly valuable differentiator for us as it has provided us with the flexibility and means to focus solely on content security.

Drop by our booth (#4.B54) at the show, to learn more about:

• Enhancements to our OTT security solution, VCAS for Internet TV, and the rationale for investing in these areas. As the global footprint for OTT services grows, we are adding captioning support for multilingual programming, on-screen display (OSD) fingerprinting, dynamic copy control directives and more. Find out why.

•  The competitive advantage generated for our customers by the integration of Verimatrix IP technology and the mature DVB technology we acquired earlier in the year. One of the clear benefits is a common rights management approach and an architecture for hybrid client devices that enables dynamic dual network functionality for combinations of DVB and intermittent IP delivery networks.

• The alignment of our current products and development directions with the support for new technical and commercial standards that will serve to rationalize the industry moving forward, including DECE, MPEG-DASH and Open IPTV Forum.

• Our vision of the “new reality of multiplatform video distribution.” As multi-screen business models are being explored, the challenges of content licensing and rights becoming more apparent. Operators are faced with determining and managing a fast-growing set of rights. We’d love to share our current thoughts and experience on these issues.

•  The latest on our new watermarking solution, StreamMark.

We will also have several partner and customer stories to share, along with demonstrations that illustrate our multi-network, multi-screen security solutions – a space where we are unique in our ability to support the vision of the world’s most ambitious operators.

We are also delighted to announce that VCAS for Internet TV has been shortlisted for a CSI Award in the best content protection technology category.  A much appreciated nod, and a great way to kick off what we anticipate will be a very successful (and busy!) conference.

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.

StreamMark server-side forensic watermarking: Extraction Process

Earlier this month, we announced the availability of our new StreamMark server-side watermarking solution, which we demonstrated at CableNET 2011.

We are very excited about the launch and believe that StreamMark has tremendous potential to help shape the market for premium video on demand (VoD) content.

Yes, we realize early release windows and watermarking have been discussed, debated and hyped for many years. But premium VoD has been revitalized ever since the FCC’s ruling allowing selectable output control (SOC) for set-top boxes in the U.S. – and for good reason. The ruling opened up significant new revenue opportunities for premium VoD at earlier release windows. We can attest to the fact that several major content owners and operators are experimenting with early release windows to deliver a “home theater” experience.

While opinions on the potential success of early release premium VoD certainly run a very wide gamut, the overall forecast is good with many pundits predicting a rise in demand for technologies that enable early release windows for premium VoD content over the next several months.

We are very excited that to be able to meet this anticipated demand with a server side technology that is now in its prime, thanks to an enormous amount of research and insightful forecasting. We have worked closely with major film studios and other content owner to develop StreamMark and we are excited to help them realize the many benefits of premium VoD.

Check out video with CTO Petr Peterka and Sr. Director of Advanced Technology Niels Thorwirth explaining why we developed StreamMark and how it works with Fred Dawson from Screenplays.

You can also download white paper on watermarking at www.verimatrix.com/wm and get the industry’s reaction to StreamMark here.

While opinions on the potential success of early release premium VoD certainly run a very wide gamut, the overall forecast is good with many pundits predicting a rise in demand for technologies that enable early release windows for premium VoD content over the next several months.

We are very excited that to be able to meet this anticipated demand with a server side technology that is now in its prime, thanks to an enormous amount of research and insightful forecasting. We have worked closely with major film studios and other content owner to develop StreamMark and we are excited to help them realize the many benefits of premium VoD.

Check out video with CTO Petr Peterka and Sr. Director of Advanced Technology Niels Thorwirth explaining why we developed StreamMark and how it works with Fred Dawson from Screenplays.

You can also download white paper on watermarking at www.verimatrix.com/wm and get the industry’s reaction to StreamMark here.

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.

We’ve received an overwhelming response to the report and we feel that’s because it hits on some major issues operators are currently dealing with, such as the infrastructure challenge, how to ensure revenue security across multiple devices, and tackling universal content rights that appeal to both the consumer and the content owner.

Based on the feedback we’ve had so far, we thought it would be valuable for Steve Oetegenn to expand on some key points from the report.

• What were you hoping to elucidate with the recent Videonet report, “Making all TV multi-screen TV?”

This report is timely and is another indication of the maturing of the over-the-top (OTT) video marketplace. Consumer expectations have driven the need for multi-screen TV and we are at a point where the technologies and standards are catching up for operators to enable such services – and operate them in a way that complements their more established business streams.

Now we are talking about how to more effectively scale and monetize these services; how to combine on-demand content (which has dominated OTT video) with live content; and how to deliver it over different networks to different devices without sacrificing quality of experience.

This is an exciting time because progressive operators are setting the bar for what is possible. The technology and business decisions they are making are critical to meeting consumer expectations and long-term development of the market.

• How do you see subscription-based and ad-based TV models co-existing in multi-screen services?

Informal polling results from our recent Light Reading webinar illustrated what the market is also seeing – operators taking a mixed approach to revenue extension, just as they have done on more traditional delivery platforms. The more you look at pure online offers today, the more they look like subsets of traditional cable operator models.

• What type of standards will need to be established to secure multiplatform content across different network domains and native DRM schemes?

Actually multiple DRMs and hand-offs during delivery seems like a highly unlikely scenario to us for the most part. The trend appears to be towards efficient and effective end to end models of cloud based services. The future development of these approaches seem likely to adopt “security neutral” forms of content distribution and service protection such as HLS, DECE/Ultraviolet CFF and YouView’s choice of Marlin. (Read more on this topic in ScreenPlays)

The use of DTCP-IP in the home is a counter example with a single “conversion” point in a home gateway, but one that is again vendor neutral in concept, enabling technology solutions to be created that add significant value to the underlying solution.

• What is Verimatrix’s strategy to ensure interoperability within a multiplatform world?

We have launched a strategy that offers two directions in support of optimizing and extending our customers service umbrella.

The first of these is certainly a focus on supporting a widely deployed standard for advanced adaptive streaming, which we believe is HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) at this point. Our value proposition here is to provide additional authentication and entitlement capabilities to existing device implementations and match more of what a commercial premium service is looking for. Clearly, this involves supporting many lightweight client implementations, but this is well rehearsed territory for us in the IP set-top box space.

The second is in response to a clear recognition that not all devices targeted by a given service operator will use a single protection mechanism or even similar file formats. However, it will remain important for operators to manage rights of all devices in concert and it will be vitally important that the consumer experiences a highly uniform and pervasive service offering. The Verimatrix MultiRights strategy provides an answer for this by licensing critical third party technologies and providing them under a common management umbrella.

• With operators facing major transition points for their network (e.g. analog to digital or MPEG 2 to MPEG 4), is there a common security consideration that will more easily enable multi-screen services?

Multi-screen services are just one aspect of an operator seeking to optimize commercial opportunities – and such network transitions are all a part of this kind of picture. Verimatrix provides a single security approach that addresses many aspects of the new commercial opportunities that our operator customers wish to exploit, which is in contrast to the highly siloed approaches of legacy conditional access (CA) providers.

• Where does digital watermarking come in?

Watermarking is a powerful tool that we bring to bear in a layered revenue security approach. The most interest in this extra layer has been for high value, early release content where high resolution video-on-demand (VOD) services offer a tempting point of interception for content pirates and we need to offer a multi-level, layered security approach.

It’s not obvious at present that the value of pirated video copies at mobile screen resolutions warrants the use of this additional security layer, but as screen sizes and service resolutions grow this will become significantly more important.

We will be launching our new server-based watermarking solution at CableNET. Stay tuned.

Click here to view the Videonet report.

Send us a comment or question that you feel hasn’t been addressed for the roll-out of multi-screen video services.

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?

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