How can we provide our customers with the most innovative solutions for securing and enhancing revenue for multi-network digital TV services on the market today?

This month, Verimatrix has been recognized for our innovation by two separate entities, both distinguished in their own right.

During CES 2012, our MultiRights solution won the Content Protection category at the prestigious 2012 TV Innovation Awards.  Very exciting news, especially considering the source of the award.  Now in its third year and administered by IMS Research, the 2012 TV Innovation Awards are one of the premier endorsements of innovation in television. The awards recognize the most forward-thinking companies that are creating products and services to change the way people watch television.  We are thrilled that Verimatrix was honored as one of these companies.

We feel that this commitment to innovation has also contributed to our sustained market leadership in software-based security. In December, MRG released its bi-annual IPTV Market Leaders Report that named Verimatrix in the top position. This marks the 11th consecutive time that we have maintained our market share in IPTV, representing 5 ½ years of Verimatrix global leadership.

Not a bad way to ring in the New Year!  We are thrilled to kick off 2012 on such a high note and look forward to continuing our relentless innovation in multi-network and multi-screen content protection and revenue security. Our philosophy is that if we offer our customers innovative solutions for securing and enhancing revenue on their multi-network digital TV services, we help them to market leadership positions in their own business. Their success becomes our success.

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!

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.

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.

So, this time I was not sipping coffee at a foreign airport nor feeding my sweet tooth with poffertjes. This year I drove to NAB and it is hard to type while driving 320 miles back from Las Vegas to San Diego. I still can’t find a good app on my Android phone that would take my dictations and convert them to text.

But back to NAB. It seems like tablets were everywhere and if your booth didn’t have one, you were not cool (of course we had one or two as well). And it is all related to over-the-top (OTT) distribution of content, especially video. I can’t help but feel that the direction the industry is going is questionable: from HD video on a large screen TV to a low-bitrate, low-resolution video on a portable device.

I know, I get it, it is all about mobility and “on my time” and “wherever I am.” So it certainly has its benefits and the video quality is improving every day through better implementations of adaptive bit-rate streaming and ever increasing bandwidth.

The content quality is also improving as studios are getting more comfortable to release pay-TV movies and episodes when they are protected by conditional access (CA) or digital rights management (DRM). This was the point of our production-ready OTT demos streaming protected video to iPhones, Android phones, laptops and Macs, and yes, even iPads and Android tables (to make sure we fit right into the NAB buzz!).

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,” 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.

Yes, you guessed it; the good ol’ Blu-ray player. It is the most deployed entertainment device (including BD-enabled game consoles) already connected to your living-room large screen TV. And now, when you connect it to your broadband and insert the RCDb-Verimatrix disc (or rather a disc branded with your OTT service), Eureka! You have access to potentially thousands of movie titles, TV episodes and even live content from the comfort of your sofa (and no, it does not serve beer yet – we need to leave some room for phase 2).

And the beauty is that it plays on all BD players with BD-Live 2.0 capability (virtually all recently manufactured players) and it has a standard built-in DRM called Advanced Access Content System (AACS) used to protect all Blu-ray titles today.

A popular device, standardized around the world, capable of delivering high value paid content and already purchased by the consumer. Sounds like a sweet spot to me.

Speaking of sweet spots – if you still don’t know what poffertjes are, let’s meet at IBC 2011 in Amsterdam.

But we would 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?

The answer is found in the global perspective we have gained in working with many different types of network operators and system integration partners around the globe. Today’s digital TV global landscape is still dominated by DVB broadcast systems – but these broadcast only networks of today are certainly the hybrid networks of the future.

Based on compiling a number of industry metrics and reports, we’ve identified 700+ operators, today with more than 160M subscribers, will switch the technology base of their network over the next couple of years – perhaps from analog to digital, or from MPEG2 to MPEG4 digital technologies. Operators that fit this description will grow to 220M subscribers in the same time frame.

And we feel all of these networks will use the transition point to consider new CA/DRM solutions that enable cost optimization and position the network service to grow into IP service delivery of one sort or another in the medium term.

Even during the next transitionary few years, the subscriber base of virtually all of these operators may well be dominated by broadcast-only technologies. But at the same time as adding a number of premium IP-based service options, operators will almost certainly want to explore a range of client options including cost-effective cardless security.

Therefore they will see a flexible DVB broadcast solution as a major component of an overall growth trajectory that includes broadcast, hybrid, and Internet network delivery. And that they will want to manage the rights for content across all these networks in a holistic manner.

Think of it this way: the operators that “only” need broadcast DVB security now, will need VCAS 3 later in their deployment. With this acquisition, not only do we maintain our focus as digital TV security specialists, but we can now offer a full security migration plan for DVB operators that want to move to a hybrid network – all under a single security architecture.

By adding Comvenient’s deep DVB expertise and hard-earned reputation for secure and reliable products, which are very complementary to Verimatrix’s, we will reach our goal to be the most successful and innovative CA/DRM company in the market.

To put a finer point on it, here is how our company profile has been enhanced with this acquisition:

Founded: 2000

Scope: Content and Revenue Security for multi-network, multi-screen applications: IPTV, DVB, hybrid & over-the-top to STBs, PCs, connected TVs, web tablets & mobile devices

Locations: San Diego, California, with European HQ in Munich, Germany; Sales offices in The Netherlands, France, Russia, China, Singapore and Argentina

Customers: 450+ operator customers in 50 countries, including 20 Tier 1s and 2s – protecting more than 18M screens for IPTV, DVB, PCs and other devices

Partners: More than 110 ecosystem channel & integration partners Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia Siemens Networks, Technicolor and ZTE

Investors: Goldman Sachs, Mission Ventures, Crescendo Ventures, Cipio Partners, JK&B Capital and SunAmerica Ventures

NAB is a great opportunity for us to continue to discuss the benefits of our broadened DVB capabilities. You will see the Verimatrix booth (#SU6207) and the Comvenient booth (SU3024) adopt the new “Expect More” messaging and an emphasis on combining smart card and cardless security, DVB migration strategies and multi-network/multi-device security options.

Please come by to hear more.

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

Based on some R&D and plenty of customer feedback, we feel 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. Our revenue security solutions are already present at the device level to transparently – and securely – capture the critical real-time subscriber information needed to help drive an enhanced user experience.

Imagine what operators can do with a fine grain picture of who is watching what content, on what devices it is being watched, and when and where these devices are used. With such a picture, they can better determine the “why.” But it’s equally clear that all this data must be protected with an adequate security envelope.

At IBC this year, we sat down with Ben Schwarz to discuss this concept of “real-time subscriber intelligence.”  He has written about it in Broadband TV News and called it a humbling “why on earth I hadn’t I thought of that?” moment.  He has articulately described how Verimatrix technology would fit with an existing pay-TV ecosystem – alongside test & monitoring solutions as well as engine recommendation systems. Check it out and see if you agree.

We realize that the concept of gathering subscriber usage data is not new. However, with the advent of TV Everywhere services and instant gratification born through social media outlets, operators need to think about subscriber behavior and usage data more intelligently.

A cost-conscious and practical approach to make real-time subscriber data a reality is to leverage existing infrastructure assets from known and trusted partners that are already enabling next-generation TV services.

According to Colin Dixon of TDG, “Ensuring the security and privacy of sensitive consumer data is paramount in this equation. As a result, the infrastructure required to for gathering and delivering data on what customers watch and when must embody this reality. Verimatrix has been widely entrusted with maintaining the security of pay content and the integrity of rights information – and is therefore in a good position to extend this type of service to operational data.”

Download our white paper on the topic: “Arming Digital TV Operators with Real-Time Subscriber Behavior and Usage Data” to learn how operators can benefit.

This concept will continue to develop, so stay tuned.

We have been vocal in our position of how pay-TV operators should integrate OTT and adaptive rate streaming technologies with existing managed networks to enhance ARPU, subscriber loyalty and lure incremental advertising dollars.

We also believe this fundamentally changes how they view traditional delivery networks and business models.

To be successful long-term, this convergence of technologies must encompass a proactive revenue protection strategy that enables pay-TV operators to cast a much wider net with their service offerings. This shifts the central value proposition for the pay-TV enterprise beyond that of content protection alone, towards the broader perspective of revenue security.

Our VCAS for Internet TV component provides a complete digital TV security solution for OTT services over networks implementing the HTTP Live Streaming protocol. While the protocol incorporates a baseline security model for service, VCAS for Internet TV provides important extensions that improve the capability to support subscription and transaction based pay-TV services. In particular, the security solution ensures that decryption keys are managed and selectively distributed to authorized clients only.

We are particularly excited that Nokia Siemens Networks consciously decided to build its Ubiquity TV platform around the standards-based HTTP Live Streaming protocol. All operational aspects of the protocol delivery are standard-based, which makes it ideal for digital TV operators to offer large-scale OTT services. Plus it includes standardized support for key management and allows device and session-based authentication.

Through a single security head-end, we are able to manage CA and DRM functions over multiple networks and devices. For example, our core VCAS 3 architecture can secure QAM modulated streams on a cable network, VOD services in a managed IPTV system and rate-adaptive HTTP streams on a mobile devices network.

We are looking forward to working with more digital TV operators that want to take advantage of advanced HTTP streaming technologies that have been designed to effectively scale and solve many remaining IP video issues.

Please stop by our booth (4.B84) at IBC 2010 to discuss the opportunities and revenue security strategies for OTT convergence.