Over the years, the NAB Show has been the go-to event to dive into the topics, trends and discussions around the rapidly changing demands of the media and entertainment industry. This year’s show was no exception. From broadcasters and content owners to pay-TV players and post-production professionals, one topic was top of mind at this year’s show - best practices in protecting and optimizing valuable content. Here are the top five reoccurring themes that dominated conversations at this year’s NAB show.
1) Content Protection is More Important Than Ever
While the topic of content protection isn’t new, it was a recurring one in many conversations as it relates to the new nature of piracy. The truth is, pirating content is big business. The industry is not dealing with amateur operations. It is sophisticated and it is global. Combating these pirates requires more than a one-trick pony shot gun approach. A comprehensive closed-loop approach to secure and mark content, monitor for piracy, detect and identify and then quickly and decisively act against it is required.
What does this entail? It requires a broad product offering in delivering innovative solutions that protect the entire content value chain from origin to consumption. These technologies include NAGRA content protection solutions, and now also featuring Conax, along with NAGRA anti-piracy services, featuring real-time monitoring, takedown and litigation services, and NexGuard forensic watermarking for any OTT systems and any workflow.
2) Innovative OTT Services & User Experiences
OTT is clearly still top of mind and service providers are always looking for new ways to deploy new, innovative and fully-featured OTT services quickly and efficiently to any device. NAGRA’s Conax GO Live solution enables service providers to do just that, as demonstrated by the latest deployment of the solution with Montecable in Uruguay, which delivers live TV channels with start-over, catch-up and full EPG to Android and iOS devices.
And it’s impossible to talk about the latest innovations in television without the conversation quickly turning to the user experience, exemplified by NAGRA’s OpenTV Signature Edition. Its ability to discover content the way users want, without switching views or “inputs” is what the industry needs. The multi-journey experience keeps things fresh, allowing subscribers to discover intelligent, truly personal recommendations, alongside all their favorite apps, VOD and SVOD channels.
3) Piracy: Beyond Movies to Sports, TV and OTT
The piracy conversation historically has been centered around the movie film industry. Times are changing. Television and sports piracy are quickly growing concerns as its valuable content is under attack. With shows like the 'Game of Thrones' costing $15 million per episode and kick-off for the 2018 World Cup on the horizon, there is a lot of revenue to protect. Combine this concept with global syndication rights and OTT viewing and it definitely requires a content protection strategy that fits the current environment.
This point is driven home in MESA’s Smart Content newsletter stating, “Harrie Tholen, VP of Sales, NAGRA Anti-Piracy & NexGuard, said he sees content owners increasingly looking to protect their short-form assets (everything from dailies to commercials) with the same fervor they have when it comes to protecting feature- and TV episode-length assets.”
4) Collaboration is Key
When it comes to content protection and anti-piracy efforts, it is virtually impossible to go at it alone. There has been a major influx in coming together as an industry to address the problem. Piracy is a global issue that cannot be dealt with by a single entity or country.
NAGRA’s partnership with the International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy (IBCAP) to provide the next level of content value protection to industry players, is a perfect example of an alliance that bringing multiple players together to prevent unauthorized streaming and illegal distribution of international television content in the U.S. A similar organization, Alianza contra Piratería de Televisión Paga, is a group of content providers, pay-TV broadcasters and technology providers aiming at combatting FTA (Free to Air) piracy throughout Latin America. Other examples include increased movement in the MPAA’s coalition against piracy with participation from the likes of Netflix, Amazon and various Hollywood studios joining the initiative.
5) Talk of the Show = Android TV
Opening the pay TV STB to online video with Android TV is a very important and developing trend that was all the buzz at this year’s NAB.
According to nScreenMedia’s Colin Dixon, “Nothing illustrates this trend better than the advance of Android TV as a viable platform to bring the pay TV and online video worlds together on the operator set-top box.” At the NAGRA booth, the company was demonstrating a new 4K operator set-top box just launched by Norwegian satellite operator Canal Digital.”
Pay-TV operators leveraging Android TV need to ensure an extra level of security for premium content to conform to content owners’ security demands and protect their business model. Which is why end-to-end and secure Android TV-based viewing experiences such as the Canal Digital Android TV-based 4K experience OnePlace, featuring Conax Contego content protection technologies, was a very popular demo at NAB. The launch marked first NAGRA delivery of easy-to-integrate Conax Lynx separation technology to protect high-value content from “pirate in the box” attacks
With the right security and operating within an end-to-end TV solution framework, like Open TV Signature Edition, an Android TV-based solution can enable pay-TV operators to deliver compelling TV experiences that engage consumers and drive monetization.
6) Media Asset Management for Content Optimization
NAGRA also tapped into another hot trend at the show - content optimization. It debuted its DVnor Organizer, a one-stop-shop for all a pay-TV operator’s content management needs, and DVnor dSpree for VOD catalogue creation.
DVnor Organizer is a fully automated end-to-end Media Asset Management platform that delivers both innovation and cost-savings to pay-TV operators struggling to cope with ever-expanding VOD/SVOD catalogues and numerous content sources and file formats. A highly automated all-in-one platform for metadata and digital file management, transcoding, storage, distribution and post-production services, this solution drastically simplifies VoD workflows environments.
And, for pay-TV operators that would like to set up a VoD or SVoD service in a matter of minutes - DVnor dSpree is the answer. Delivered from a secure cloud, dSpree gives pay-TV operators the freedom to customize their store and give customers instant access to content on PCs/Macs, Android and iOS devices, or TV screens, via Chromecast or AppleTV.
For more information about NAGRA’s content protection, content optimization and user experience solutions visit https://dtv.nagra.com or contact [email protected].