The transition of high-level movies and video from conventional media channels to multiple devices presents challenges to content service providers. How do you keep content owners happy by protecting their product and still meet consumer demand for entertainment? Amit Shofar, VP Business Development at Discretix Technologies, says the answer is protection solutions that are secure and easily deployable.
“We’re seeing the migration of premium Hollywood movies and TV from traditional media to new-generation devices like smartphones and tablets,” says Amit. “These devices are designed to address video services and give users a compelling experience.”
Hollywood studios and content owners invest millions producing and marketing their content. As a result, they will only allow distribution to platforms and services that can preserve their business model and their copyright. “Before you can launch and deliver a service you have to prove you can protect the content,” explains Amit. “Otherwise you won’t get a licence.”
In cable and pay TV, the broadcaster or service provider supplies consumers with a set-top box that includes proprietary technology to deliver and protect content. “It’s a vertically integrated value chain,” says Amit. With mobile devices, that value chain is wide open. Smartphones are not controlled by service providers. They are interoperable and have open operating systems with the ability to deploy apps. This makes traditional solutions for delivering and protecting content obsolete.
New capabilities are needed to address consumer demand and protect the interest of content and rights owners. “You need new solutions that work with these devices and can be deployed as a downloadable application or embedded in the devices,” says Amit.
Discretix Technologies has 10 years’ experience designing and implementing security solutions for portable devices. “We understand the hardware, operating systems and the app environment,” explains Amit. “We provide a very secure, easy-to-use and optimized implementation of standard content solutions that are highly popular and used by most of the service providers in the market today.”
The Discretix Downloadable Secure Player supports Microsoft PlayReady, is available for a wide range of operating systems and complies fully with content owners’ requirements. Customers include leading device manufacturers like HTC, Motorola and Sony as well as several service providers. “We handle all the PlayReady implementation for HTC Android devices,” says Amit. “What’s more, a large service provider in Europe uses our Secure Player to deliver content.”
Discretix will be displaying these solutions at IBC 2011. They will be demonstrating their Secure Player both as a downloadable app and an embedded solution on various smartphones and tablets. Amit and his colleagues will also be showing web-enabled TVs and set-top boxes that can get secure content directly from the internet. “We’ll be showing how you can deliver protected media with PlayReady utilizing smooth streaming technology to all these devices.”
Schedule a demo with Discretix, or another related technology at IBC.
