Articles
VO OTT DRM
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Over-the-top protection
In today’s always-on, connected world, TV content is no longer consumed only on traditional Television sets. Connected devices, such as tablet PCs, smartphones and more, enable users to consume video content anywhere and anytime.
Quick to respond, Over-the-Top (OTT) players saw the opportunity and seized it by launching video services over the Internet. By taking advantage of new, emerging technologies, such as adaptive bit rate (ABR) streaming, they can deliver smooth video streaming over unmanaged-networks. The success of OTT services has been impressive. In fact, they are considered by many consumers as viable alternatives to pay TV services.
In this fiercely competitive and dynamic market space, content service providers and Pay TV operators need to combat subscriber desertion – ‘chord cutters’. Moving forward, providers can leverage their existing content and relationships with content owners to expand their services to a new target market by playing in the OTT arena. By offering attractive content to non-subscribers, occasional users over the internet, content service providers have the opportunity to create incremental revenues streams and ultimately entice new, recurring subscribers.
A high-standard security solution is crucial to earning a position of trust with content owners and gaining access to desirable, premium content. However, in the case of a multi-screen environment, there are several additional rights management challenges:
- Device-based rights management that enables a specific asset to be viewed only on approved devices.
- Limiting the number of concurrent streams or downloads for an asset.
- Enforcing time-based licenses for multiple devices
- Ensuring proper rights management for both online and offline devices
Unlike the management of set-top-boxes (STBs) where limited versions of hardware and software are present, in the world of multi-screen devices there is a proliferations of operating systems and DRM standards including Microsoft PlayReady, Windows Media DRM 9 & 10 and OMA 0.1 & 0.2. A next-generation digital rights management solution is required in order to manage this diverse environment, while providing a high-standard protection for premium assets across a wide variety of devices.
VO OTT DRM is designed to help content service providers embrace the OTT TV challenge and seize the opportunities of TV everywhere. As part of a complete and pre-integrated ecosystem, the solution can be deployed in a short time to market enabling providers combat customer abandonment and increase revenues. The flexible, modular architecture can also be integrated into any existing infrastructure including third-party OTT platforms.
The VO OTT DRM solution is designed to work with the latest DRM standards for connected devices including Microsoft PlayReady, Windows Media DRM 9 & 10 and OMA 0.1 & 0.2. In order to maximize the Quality of Experience (QoE) of the end-users in OTT environment in which bandwidth cannot be guaranteed, Adaptive Streaming technologies are used. The VO OTT DRM solution supports Microsoft HTTP Smooth Streaming (HSS) and Apple HTTP live streaming (HLS). The VO solution content packaging and protection is done on-top of these technologies.
With VO OTT DRM, content service providers can protect premium assets and ensure delivery only to authorized devices. The solution provides licensing information regarding the number of concurrent streams, downloads and the license expiration.
- VO OTT Packager: This module enables the protection and the packaging of the contents provided by a content provider (or the service operator). Generally, the Packager is hosted in the service operator platform.
- VO OTT Licenser: associates licenses to the protected contents. The association is performed according to service rules defined by a Content Manager through a Web GUI application. Moreover, this module delivers the licenses to the authorized devices (PCs, smartphones, tablets etc.)
- Protect – secure premium content for consumption by in a multi-screen environment over the Internet.
- Deliver - provide a superior and consistent viewing experience across multiple connected devices with variable bit-rate technologies.
- Launch – reduce time-to-market by deploying a proven, pre-integrated OTT solution.
- Manage – manage users, devices and assets across a multi-screen network for live and on-demand viewing.
