By Simon Trudelle, Senior Product Marketing Director, NAGRA
Pay-TV companies everywhere are looking to the internet as a source of growth. In the race for IP leadership, recent research by the NAGRA Pay-TV Innovation Forum shows that the US cable industry is leading the way.
But it’s not just the US - all around the world, more and more providers are migrating to IP delivery. And as they do, they are finding opportunities – not only to innovate – but also to ensure that their content is safer and more secure. However, these opportunities are not without their challenges. The forward thinking providers that make the move to IP will now need to secure both linear and on-demand content. They will need a backend system that can deliver content to a huge variety of devices and, crucially, they will need to embrace change across all areas of their business.
As the way we access content changes, the way we protect it is evolving too. The rise in anywhere, anytime content means pay-TV providers need a digital rights management (DRM) platform that can adapt to the new ways we watch and share content. Instead of downloadable DRMs, today’s solutions are often built directly into devices and browsers. These can provide higher levels of security but also bring added complexity. Not only will providers need to work with new DRM and CAS technologies but they will need to work out which parts of their legacy STBs and CAS platforms they can bring into their new IP ecosystems.
And that’s not all. The increased need for on-demand any-screen content also means that content needs to be packaged and delivered across multiple networks using new IP-based technologies. Time-shifting functions, for instance, require a cloud-ready delivery platform that can deal with more advanced workflows than its linear counterpart. And that’s not to mention the extra resources required to keep operations running smoothly during this period of upheaval.
But it’s all worth it when you consider the opportunities ahead. Moving to an IP-based architecture not only gives pay-TV providers an opportunity to take stock of their delivery methods and integrate any previously fragmented systems, by migrating to IP, providers can deliver on-demand services, manage time-shifting functions in the cloud, and collect more user data. All of this gives the customer a more personalised experience and offers providers the chance to adapt their business models to challenge the increasingly powerful internet giants.
With so much at stake, it helps to make the process as straightforward as possible. That’s why NAGRA has designed a single versatile, virtualised platform to simplify the complex challenges of IP delivery while reducing spending on operations, CPE equipment, and network infrastructure. And with their expertise and industry-leading technology, NAGRA is helping pay-TV providers around the world deliver truly future-proof TV solutions.
If you wish to know more about the services we can offer to help you smartly and securely transition from broadcast to IP, please contact us at [email protected].