Streaming Media - October/November 2007 - (Page 51) Microsoft PlayReady DRM for Silverlight Microsoft announced its PlayReady in early 2007, and will make the new DRM technology widely available to content publishers in the first half of 2008. Recently, I had a chance to sit down with Microsoft general managers Adam Berns and Jim Alkove, who are responsible for the business and technology aspects of PlayReady. Berns and Alkove were kind enough to provide Streaming Media magazine with an exclusive question-and-answer session about PlayReady and insight into Microsoft’s DRM strategy. You made a big splash this week at IBC with the launch of Silverlight. How does PlayReady fit into the Silverlight story? Berns: Silverlight will deliver digital rights management support built on Microsoft PlayReady technology. PlayReady helps complement a broader distribution-and-accessibility-to-content story, providing business model support for content providers. That, coupled with our existing Windows Media technology, makes PlayReady a really good fit for Silverlight scenarios. We think our work in the mobile handset space and our work with Silverlight are the crux of getting this technology in front of consumers, whether it be on the web or on handsets. Could you tell us a little more about the feature set that PlayReady will offer and some early partners and adopters you are working with? Berns: PlayReady is the result of extensive feedback that we received from our handset manufacturer partners and our existing industry partners and content owners and licensees. We listened to that feedback and partnered with our existing customers to enable new scenarios and bring an offering to market with them. Our main goal is to help our customers reach their goals of building out their services and new handsets deployments. We announced at the 3GSM Conference [in Barcelona in February] that we already have several key partners in the PlayReady rollout, including Telefónica, O2, Verizon Wireless, Bouygues Telecom, and Cingular Wireless, now the new AT&T. Then, in August of this year, Nokia announced support for Microsoft PlayReady in the Nokia S60 and Series 40 mobile device platforms, starting in 2008. WWW.STREAMINGMEDIA.COM 51 http://us.ntt.net/streaming http://us.ntt.net/streaming http://WWW.STREAMINGMEDIA.COM
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