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.

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.

Verimatrix is proud to announce its acquisition Comvenient, a Munich-based DVB conditional access company with an excellent track record and reputation. W’d like to underscore the rationale, with all the current industry hype around OTT video and TV Everywhere, for why the leading IP revenue security company would be investing in DVB broadcast conditional access.

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 standardization and deployment of HTTP-based adaptive rate streaming is likely to alter the current digital TV framework of managed network vs. Internet delivery.  We feel the open approach of Apple’s version of HTTP streaming and the popularity of the iPhone and iPad along with its growing list of video-based apps, has become a major [...]

DECE and Project Canvas have selected open, non-proprietary DRM standards to secure content in these ground-breaking initiatives, including Marlin.

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.

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.

Progressive digital TV operators may have to embrace novel technologies that have been designed to effectively scale and solve IP video issues and apply them over their delivery networks. By integrating OTT and adaptive rate streaming technology with pay-TV services, operators can enhance ARPU, subscriber loyalty and lure incremental advertising dollars.