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.

Steve Christian, VP Marketing at Verimatrix provides the DRM / Conditional Access perspective of OTT TV as part of an IBC 2011 special blog series. Verimatrix is the leader in software-based security solutions for service providers.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In our opinion, 2010 has been the year of over-the-top (OTT) applications and no technology has done more for the deployment of OTT service delivery models than adaptive rate streaming (ARS). We would even venture to claim that adaptive rate streaming has been one of the most influential technologies of 2010.

Digital Hollywood is a long running event in Santa Monica that always seems to be worthwhile, especially when you pick up on a few interesting industry nuggets.
“Non-company line” remarks from senior speakers at broadcasting organizations, content providers and consumer electronics giants some of the grind just seems to pay-off. Here are a few.