Security solutions provider Verimatrix has launched its new watermarking technology, StreamMark, to address the embryonic market for ‘early release’ premium VOD content in the USA.
The new market was engendered by an FCC waiver last year which allowed cable operators to use so-called “selectable output control” technology to prevent viewers from recording a movie while being shown on a TV set.
The studios had been reluctant to allow premium VOD content to be released ahead of the standard four-month moratorium between first-run theatrical showings and home video release without such a blocking technology being allowed.
The FCC’s attempt to introduce a similar control measure, the ‘broadcast flag‘, was over-turned by a court ruling in 2005.
StreamMark’s notable features appear to be that it works server-side (rather than in the set-top box), and can be applied to encrypted content without the need to access the keys, using a process called ‘byte replacement’.
The idea is that for each movie the system provides a set of marked/altered frames to substitute for the original ones. Then, each time the movie is streamed, the system designates a unique subset of these frames to be replaced on the fly at the server.
This unique combination of substituted frames identifies each one-to-one stream, and therefore the user ordering it.
If that stream is pirated – for example by the user recording the movie off their HDTV display using an HD camcorder and making it available online – the watermark should persist, revealing the identify of the pirating household.
ADD: Within days of the Verimatrix announcement, VOD specialists SeaChange International and watermarking firm Civolution said they would be collaborating to offer the latter’s NexGuard forensic watermarking for premium video-on-demand (VOD), targeted at cable operators looking to launch early release content.
Category Archives: IPTV
Verimatrix introduces StreamMark watermarking to protect early-release premium VOD
Farncombe Consulting proposes replacement for DVB Common Scrambling Algorithm
Farncombe Consulting Group, which hosts this blog, has published a second White Paper on TV Conditional Access (CA), which proposes a possible replacement for the DVB Common Scrambling Algorithm (CSA).
This is the hardware-based digital TV encryption technology mandated under European Law and which underpins today’s DVB-based pay-TV sector.
Farncombe’s in-house video security experts think it’s overdue for a replacement, arguing that – although it was introduced for the best possible motives in the early 1990s – the technology now raises serious commercial, regulatory and technical concerns for the digital pay-TV industry.
For instance, they point out, the CSA was designed for an era when operators were keen to avoid their content being distributed to PCs, and where broadband did not exist as a distribution medium. But neither of these factors apply today. This means operators are saddled with a technology which makes content distribution more difficult, and is not only already vulnerable to piracy but poised to become increasingly so.
In the White Paper, Farncombe accordingly proposes a next-generation replacement for the CSA, based on a ‘toolkit’ approach which mixes both hardware and software elements.
This will take time to implement, however. In the meantime, operators who upgrade their installed receiver base without addressing the security flaws in the CSA approach risk wasting their investment. Farncombe notes that the nature of this weakness is such that it only takes one hacked receiver to allow control words to be fed over broadband to any legacy DVB STB and enable pay-TV content to be pirated.
This implies that the industry needs to introduce a replacement as soon as possible.
A PDF of the new White Paper can be obtained from Farncombe by clicking here (or by pasting the following URL into your browser: http://www.farncombe.eu/index.php?menu=4.4) and filling in a simple registration form. Farncombe will then personally send you a copy.
IBC Report – Microsoft considers Canvas as possible Mediaroom feature
Microsoft is considering supporting the UK Canvas specification – backed by a BBC, ITV and BT joint venture – as a possible feature of its Mediaroom IPTV suite, but only if it is genuinely open.
The suggestion came from Ted Malone, senior director of product management for TV, video, music and platform business at Microsoft, when Connected TV met up with him at IBC.
“If it proceeds as an open approach,” said Malone, “we could add support as a feature of Mediaroom.” Malone said that Microsoft would be paying close attention to the Canvas specification, when it finally emerges, to see if it included any proprietary standards. If so, Microsoft would not consider it to be “an open format.”
Malone declined to comment on what role BT Vision might play within the Canvas venture (a source of considerable speculation at IBC) , but, since this incorporates Mediaroom technology, albeit in a limited implementation, it does suggest one way in which the hybrid concept could be extended to accommodate Canvas. That, of course, will depend on what technology elements the Canvas venture eventually decides to incorporate in its specification, and whether it gets regulatory approval.
Malone pointed out that Microsoft was itself in the process of refashioning Mediaroom to make it a more open platform: for instance, he said, the current Windows Media Player DRM used in its IPTV suite was viewed as having reached the end of its working-life. It would now be replaced by PlayReady, a next-generation DRM product which is already part of the Silverlight platform.
This would make it easier for a Mediaroom set-top box to stream protected video content to other devices in the home. “We’re looking to migrate all of our proprietary DRM [to PlayReady],” Malone said.
The move reflects increasing convergence between the Mediaroom product – intended for managed IPTV platforms – and Microsoft’s ‘over-the-top’ technologies. For instance, Mediaroom will be extended to support Silverlight itself as well as the PlayReady DRM it incorporates. It will also adopt Microsoft’s Smooth Streaming technology. This adapts the quality of the video stream in real time, based upon the consumer’s changing bandwidth and the performance of his or her device, to minimise buffering time and offer faster startup times.
“Mediaroom will embrace these and extend the reach of the Mediaroom service,” said Malone.
Connected TV views this as a natural progression: as the performance and reliability of consumers’ broadband links increases and offers a video experience more akin to that of a managed IPTV network, the need for Microsoft to support two entirely distinct product lines is disappearing.
IBC Report – Civolution water-marking technology poised for Q1 2010 rollout with major US pay-TV operator
The first large-scale deployment of watermarking technology in the pay-TV world should take place in the US in Q1 next year, Connected TV has learned.
Watermarking is a technique which embeds invisible identifiers into broadcast and other content, which can survive multiple transmission, compression and copying stages, in order to identify the sources of pirated material. Each device in the pre-production, production and transmission chain, all the way down to individual set-top boxes, can be given a unique code to pinpoint where the ‘leak’ has taken place.
Speaking at IBC, Alex Terpstra, CEO of Philips watermarking spin-off Civolution, declined to name the US operator in question, but said the Civolution solution it would be supplying is a hybrid one, integrating the technology at the encoder end and the set-top box. This means that as well as identifying piracy taking place at the headend, any set-top box used to illegally re-distribute protected material can be precisely identified.
“There will be deployments in the field, we hope, in Q1 in North America,” he said. “I believe it is a break-through in the development of this industry.” The water-marking technology will be targeted at protecting HDTV content.
Previously, except for a few small-scale IPTV deployments where watermarking is integrated into the DRM system , such content identification technologies have been confined to the pre-release market.
Examples include protecting preview copies of films given limited distribution before events such as the Oscars or the Cannes Film Festival, or content aimed at in-hotel distribution (where premium movies are made available before standard pay-per-view and pay-TV release windows).
Terprstra said the fact that the technology was now mature would permit new business models: for example, consumers might be happy to pay a premium to watch a movie at home in VOD mode while (or even before) it was being shown in the cinema. Previously, the studios might have been reluctant to allow this to happen without some sort of guarantee that piracy risks were being addressed.
At IBC, Civolution also announced that Taiwanese company MStar Semiconductor had become the first chipset maker to integrate NexGuard – Civolution’s core watermarking technology – in hardware, as part of its MSD3A11 chipset.
Farncombe: Pay-TV shift to two-way networks will mean move away from smartcard-based conditional access systems
Farncombe Consulting Group, which hosts this blog, has just published a new White Paper on how the Digital TV Conditional Access sector will be affected by the shift towards broadband-enabled pay-TV networks.
Written by Farncombe’s own highly-experienced group of in-house video security experts, the White Paper assesses the pros and cons of using smartcard-based and cardless systems in different types of pay-TV set-up, ranging from traditional one-way broadcast TV operations to broadband-enabled two-way IP and connected home networks.
The paper concludes that while smartcards continue to remain the solution of choice for protecting one-way systems, cardless-based solutions are preferable for protecting video content in IPTV, ‘over-the-top’ and home networking contexts.
For one-way networks migrating to broadband connectivity, meanwhile, both types of system have their advantages, depending largely on the availability, reliability and quality of the broadband network.
The White Paper’s authors go on to suggest that since the traditional one-way pay-TV world is slowly but surely changing into a two-way one, it is likely that there will be a gradual shift away from smartcard-based systems in favour of cardless ones – led by the digital cable sector.
A PDF of the new White Paper can be obtained from Farncombe by clicking here and filling in a simple registration form.
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