In Broadcast - CABSAT 2015 - 54

54

www.inbroadcast.com | CABSAT InShow Guide | 10-12 March 2015

Piksel - Boosting
Multiscreen Content
Protection at CABSAT 2015
By Neil Berry, Executive VP
of Commercial, EMEA

I

t is clear that Digital Rights
Management (DRM) is of critical
importance to the future of successful
pay TV and content services.
Consumption of video content over IP
is at an all time high, and streaming is
now almost as popular as traditional
broadcast, according to research firm,
Infonetics, OTT pay TV revenue is set
to explode, growing from $5.8 billion
in 2014 to just over $10 billion in 2018.
We are seeing services like Netflix
invest huge figures into both the
acquisition and original production of
content - a reported $100 million was
spent just on the blockbuster, House
of Cards, alone. With those sorts of
figures flying around, service providers
are all too aware of the need to better
protect their investments against the
threat of piracy.
Concrete figures indicating the
overall fiscal effects of piracy on
the creative industries are hard to
accurately gauge. This is because they
potentially come from a wide variety
of factors, such as lost sales, legal
fees, or even unemployment through
piracy. However, 2013 research
from NetNames puts the figure at
a staggering $80 billion, with an
estimated 432 million internet users
frequently copying content illegally.
By protecting content to ensure
it is only accessible by legitimate
subscribers, DRM is the technology
that is standing in the way of
widespread piracy.

Yet today's TV landscape is growing
increasingly fragmented. The rapid
pace of technological change and
proliferation of connected devices is
making it hard for aggregators and
distributors to keep their content
libraries secure.
The fiercely competitive browser
market - termed the 'Browser Wars' -
is muddying the waters even further.
In this arena the dominant players are
Microsoft, software giant and creator
of the Internet Explorer browser, and
Google, internet giant and creator of
the Chrome browser. With honourable
mentions to Apple and its own FairPlay
technology, and a few industry
heavyweights, like Disney and Sony,
which use their own largely bespoke
schemas, it is Microsoft PlayReady and
Google Widevine that are carving up
the marketplace for DRM technology.
Although both camps have a vested
interest in protecting against digital
piracy and helping users to gain
seamless access to legitimate content,
the vagaries of this business rivalry
don't always result in harmony. We
saw this culminate earlier this year,
with Google announcing that it had
ceased to support Microsoft Silverlight
on its Chrome browser, which is
no insignificant move considering
Chrome accounted for almost 47% of
page views in January 2014. Google
is retiring the set of APIs (NPAPI)
upon which Silverlight depends, citing
them as a major cause of browser
performance issues.

As a result of this, any content
protected by Microsoft's PlayReady
DRM will stop working for those that
use Chrome as their primary browser,
and it doesn't look hopeful that a
compromise will be reached. Google's
decision may well foreshadow similar
moves by other browser makers, such
as Internet Explorer, Firefox, and
Safari, and expose the heightened
need for content to have multi-DRM
support. Content providers have a
lot to think about and need to ensure
they have the highest level of flexibility
and protection, across all browsers,
devices and DRM technologies.
For the millions of users who fired up
a Google browser to watch PlayReady
content that will no longer play, it
was an annoyance which perhaps
prompted calls to an IT support desk.
But even hypothetically speaking, any
OTT business which discovers that its
DRM strategy makes it uncompetitive
against Netflix, or finds that its content
won't play on the next generation of
Apple devices, will experience far more
serious consequences.
DRM will be a significant focus for
Piksel at the CABSAT Show in March,
as one of the latest additions to
Piksel's services-oriented architecture.
In response to the rapid pace of
change in the DRM market, Piksel will
be discussing the latest launch of its

industry-leading, new DRM solution,
Piksel Guard, which now supports all
major DRM technologies that online
video providers use for their valuable
video assets, including Microsoft
PlayReady, Adobe Flash Access, Apple
AES-128, Marlin Broadband, and
Google Widevine, as well as future
proofed technologies such as MPEGDASH and CENC.
Piksel Guard is a fundamental
element of the Piksel Palette, Piksel's
services-oriented architecture (SOA)
for the agile delivery of SaaS-based
video applications. The Piksel Palette
allows the company's customers to
select bespoke modules from Piksel's
portfolio for their specific business
needs. The integration of the highly
configurable Piksel Guard into this
suite of independent, modular, cloudbased services, allows the company's
customers to efficiently evolve existing
systems and adapt to changes in the
market, with the highest level of DRM
protection.
For service providers, implementing
the correct DRM strategy is the first
step towards ensuring the highest
possible level of flexibility in today's
rapidly evolving, fluid TV landscape.
Join Piksel to learn how it is enabling
seamless and simple video delivery for
its customers, supported by all major
DRM technologies, at CABSAT 2015.
http://www.inbroadcast.com http://www.piksel.com http://www.piksel.com http://www.piksel.com
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