Technicolor reaches 100 million digital set-top box milestone

Technicolor, formerly Thomson, a worldwide leader of services to content creators, has reached the milestone of delivering 100 million digital set-top boxes over multi networks since it entered the market in 1994.

Technicolor’s success is largely thanks to the contracts it has won with major clients in a global marketplace. In North America, Technicolor’s first digital satellite STB customer, DIRECTV remains a loyal customer today. In Latin America, Technicolor provides set-top boxes to key players including DIRECTV Latin America and Sky Brazil and Sky Mexico, while in Europe, it has nurtured relationships with leading names including UPC Broadband and News Corp. affiliates such as BSkyB, as well as HOT, in the Middle East, and Astro of Malaysia and Tata Sky in the Asia-Pacific.

For many of its global customers, Technicolor has established long-term relationships and garnered repeat business thanks to its ongoing product evolution for all technology platforms, including digital cable, satellite television, terrestrial broadcasting and IPTV.

For the full press release, click here.

TV 2.0 – The Future of the Set-Top Box

Set-top boxes will grab the central role in media distribution within the home, and service providers’ digitalTV (DTV) strategies will drive the design of and demand for set-top boxes. Over the course of the next two years, competition in the TV service market will heat up substantially, ignited by the global digital transition and new video distribution channels like DTT, IPTV, and over-the-top video services. The battle in the DTV field will spread to the entire digital home services market, as incumbents and newcomers alike will market service packages to households, using video as the anchor for an expansive bundling strategy. Operators will increasingly leverage the set-top box as a platform to promote these multiplay strategies, and the device will also play a role as a home media server connecting multiple entertainment platforms.

http://www.parksassociates.com/events/connections/2010/about/research.html

Learn more about what happened at 2009 CONNECTIONS: The Digital Living Conference & Showcase.

Decreasing Piracy in the Modern Digital Environment

At the upcoming CONNECTIONS Europe event in Amsterdam, I will be taking part in the "Digital Furnace: Residential Gateways and Set-Top Boxes" paneldiscussion, which will explore the increasingly popular 'home hub' experience.This is an especially critical topic for the industry right now as it considers hardware developments, environmental factors, applications, and features as well as content delivery and protection.

Currently, consumer demand for media-rich home entertainment services is driving innovation and new revenue opportunities in the set-top box industry. Next generation set-top boxes will integrate video content from multiple signal sources such as broadcast television, premium video-on-demand and Internet-based services. They will also provide value-added capabilities like time-shifting and enabling content to be distributed to a variety of viewing devices including multi-room TV networks, personal computers, portable media players, and other mobile devices.

Yet this level of source variety and content portability is inherently more susceptible to piracy attacks, which dramatically increases the complexity of security requirements. Set-top boxes, their associated conditional access systems and digital rights management technologies are under constant threat from device tampering, software security breaches and hacker attacks that can significantly impact the reputation and bottom line for both set-top box manufacturers and operators.

How do manufacturers and operators alike achieve sustainable security in the set-top box ecosystem thus preparing their devices to safely deliver high-value premium content to global consumers?

If the manufacturers get it right, they can fight against attacks, while creating a profitable business model.

The “Digital Furnace: Residential Gateways and Set-Top Boxes” panel discussion will take place at CONNECTIONS Europe, Amsterdam on Wednesday 4th November, 2009 at 11.45 a.m. CET.

By Andrew Wajs, CTO, Irdeto

Evolution of the “Digital Furnace”: Residential Gateways and Set-top Boxes

New trends such as cloud computing, green living, mobile connectivity, and hybrid Internet-TV services are reshaping the role of the set-top box. Carriers, squeezed by low subscriber revenues and the demand for more features, need a home hub that offers more capability for less capital.

The Evolution of the “Digital Furnace”: Residential Gateways and Set-top Boxes session explores:

-- The evolution of features that home hubs will support
-- Support for features such as home monitoring, energy management, and health monitoring
-- Network and hardware requirements for “future-proofed” home hubs
-- The role of retail-purchased consumer electronics as compatible nodes

Participants on this panel include:
Art Lancaster, CTO, Affinegy
Christer Larsson, CEO and Co-founder, Makewave (formerly Gatespace Telematics AB); VP EMEA, OSGi Alliance
Bill Stanley, Executive Director, Operations Solutions, Telcordia
Frederic Van Durme, Head of Product Management, Thomson
Andrew Wajs, CTO, Irdeto Group, Irdeto/Cloakware

Moderator: Kurt Scherf, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Parks Associates

CONNECTIONS EU: Defining the New Video Experience

The consumer video experience is incorporating more than just television and movie content. This CONNECTIONS Europe panel identifies the near- and long-term roadmap for the shape of television, video, and entertainment consumption from both CE and service perspectives: New services as supplements to the core video experience; Integrating mobile, online, and PC content into the three-screen ecosystem; The emergence of 3D video and gaming solutions; Cloud services to the set-top box; and Visual networking – bringing social networking to the TVisual networking – bringing social networking to the TV.

Panelists include:
Ronald Brockmann, Managing Director, ActiveVideo Europe
Richard Bullwinkle, Chief Evangelist, Rovi Corporation
Patrik Nilsson, Director, Adobe
Geof Todd, Director of Sales & New Business Initiatives, NDS

Stuart Sikes, President, Parks Associates will be moderating this interactive session.

Residential Gateways & Set-top Boxes at CONNECTIONS Europe, Amsterdam

New trends such as cloud computing, green living, mobile connectivity, and hybrid Internet-TV services are reshaping the role of the set-top box. Carriers, squeezed by low subscriber revenues and the demand for more features, need a home hub that offers more capability for less capital.

The Residential Gateways & Set-top Box session at CONNECTIONS Europe explores:

* The evolution of features that home hubs will support
* Support for features such as home monitoring, energy management, and health monitoring
* Network and hardware requirements for “future-proofed” home hubs
* The role of retail-purchased consumer electronics as compatible nodes

Speakers are represented from Affinegy, OSGi Alliance, Telcordia, and Irdeto/Cloakware.

Thomson takes a further leap forward with next generation interactive HD cable set-top boxes

Thomson, a worldwide leader of services to content creators, is demonstrating two new cable set-top boxes, based on its third generation technology and delivering high speed data as well as comprehensive digital cable services. The set-top boxes allow cable operators to offer broadband to the home at up to 100Mb/s with home networking and content sharing using the MoCA (Multimedia over Co-ax Alliance) standard.

The new DCI708 set-top box is ready for both standard and high definition television using MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 coding, including 1080 line progressive HD. It is based on a new system on a chip device, which incorporates full support for Docsis and EuroDocsis, including channel bonding to achieve internet access speeds of up to 100Mb/s. The DCI804 set-top box offers the same features and additionally includes an internal disk recorder, using fast and compact 2.5” disk drives for local recording, timeshifts and downloading data from the network operator.

The new boxes support multiple middleware and conditional access solutions. The integral high speed data connectivity gives the operator ready access for advanced interactive applications such as video on demand, and secure communications, as well as remote diagnostics and updates to minimise support costs. Where the home has existing co-ax cable connecting rooms, the implementation of MoCA allows a single set-top box to distribute content to multiple rooms within the home, allowing the users to take advantage of home networking.

For the full release, click here.

Europe and Hybrid Set-tops

The market for set-top boxes (STBs) in Europe has gotten a major boost from the transition to digital services. Terrestrial television is still a major source of video for viewers in major Western European markets, including France, Italy, Spain, and the U.K., where over 40% of television viewership rely on terrestrial services.

Healthy adoption rates of DTT (digital terrestrial television) in Europe, where Spain in particular has been at the forefront, are opening new markets for STBs. These aren’t standard STBs but hybrid receivers capable of receiving signals from multiple sources and providing access to paid content. The most popular STB version so far offers a mixture of IPTV and DTT, which European telcos have been employing to offer low-cost television service for consumers not interested in bundling pay television with other services.

As noted in the Parks Associates report Set-top Boxes: Outlook, the growing presence of the STB is an important step in the development of the digital home ecosystem, as this device is evolving into the primary point of entry for television services, and service providers worldwide are upgrading equipment within their installed bases to support advanced digital television services.

Irdeto Diversifies Conditional Access Product Offering With the Launch of Universal Client Software

Irdeto, a leading expert in content and business model protection solutions and services, announced the launch of the Irdeto Conditional Access (CA) System with Universal Client. The Universal Client is Irdeto’s unique new software client designed to meet the needs of broadcasters who require a cost-effective and secure content security solution that is easily integrated with a wide variety of low-cost devices, including Digital Terminal Adapters (DTAs) and “zapper” set-top boxes (STBs).

As the transition from analog to digital picks up pace, an increasing number of operators and broadcasters have operational and security requirements that are best served by the Irdeto Universal Client, which provides robust content security for basic subscription packages. The solution is also ideal for Free to View broadcasters who need to restrict the geographic distribution of their content to comply with content owner requirements.

The Irdeto Universal Client is a software-based DTA security solution based on Irdeto’s 15 years of experience in securing the content and revenues of more than 300 digital pay TV operators worldwide. The Universal Client is resistant to hacking, cloning and reverse engineering because of its use of the latest Cloakware™ software protection technologies.
Irdeto is working with renowned silicon manufactures and has integrated its Universal Client technology on Broadcom’s latest DTA system-on-a-chip (SoC) solution. In addition, Irdeto is working with the world’s leading set-top box manufacturers to pre-embed the security solution for quick market deployment.

For the full press release, click here.

Irdeto achieves significant global growth and expands its media solutions offerings

Company celebrates 40 years of innovation by expanding its media solutions offerings for the convergence era --

Irdeto, a leading expert in content and business model protection solutions and services, attained substantial global market momentum in its fiscal year, which ended 31 March 2009. The company, who celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, continues to be an innovator in the digital media industry with some key milestones in the region and expansion of its media solutions portfolio.

A pioneer in the pay TV industry and global leader in conditional access (CA), Irdeto has rapidly expanded its portfolio over the past few years to provide additional capabilities such as digital rights management, business support systems, set-top box software solutions, software security and broadband media services to more than 500 premier customers worldwide, enabling them to protect and monetize digital content. This set of capabilities will deliver a converged network architecture that unifies CA and DRM content delivery and protection while extending the operators’ span of control into the home network.

With more than 95 patents and patents pending, Irdeto is on the forefront of providing industry leading changes. During the past 40 years of operation, Irdeto has been a leader in technology innovation delivering many firsts including implementation of the very first DVB-CA system, the first IPTV deployment and the first Mobile TV CA solution.

VUDU slashes prices

Vudu has cut the price of its set-top movie-on-demand box in half, to $149 (down from $299). In addition, the professional grade Vudu XL box drops to $499 (down from $999), and the "no-hassle wireless kit" drops to $79 (down from $99).

With a successful holiday season and lower component prices, Vudu can afford to drop theses prices and bring its products within consumers' reach. The VUDU Labs feature (streams web-based content directly to the box) has also been quite successful.

For more information, visit http://www.vudu.com/

New white paper expose security risks within next-generation set-top boxes

Consumer demand for media-rich home entertainment services is driving innovation and new revenue opportunities in the set-top box (STB) industry. Next-generation STBs will integrate video content from multiple signal sources such as broadcast television, premium video-on-demand and Internet-based services, provide value-added capabilities like time-shifting, and allow content to be distributed to a variety of viewing devices including multi-room TV networks, personal computers, portable media players and other mobile devices.

Cloakware's latest whitepaper, Security Impacts of Next-Generation Set-Top Boxes, describes the market and technology trends that are influencing set-top box designs and explains how advanced features are creating new content security challenges for set-top box manufacturers. This paper is intended for product and business managers, security architects, development managers and other technical staff who are directly involved in the specification, design and development of advanced set-top boxes.

This white paper is available for download at: http://security.cloakware.com/whitepapers/set-top-box-security/intro.php

All Eyes on the TV: What Will Define the Next Generation of Services?

by Kurt Scherf, VP & Principal Analyst, Parks Associates

The Evolution of TV: No Longer Just “Lay Back”!

For years, the tried-and-true television experience was very much the “lay-back” experience. Before cable and satellite services grew in significance, viewers had four main channel options. Even after the Fox Network was launched in 1986 and subscriptions to multichannel offerings became the norm, the model remained the same –viewers tuned in at specified times to watch a particular show based on a predetermined schedule. In other words, it was television on somebody else’s terms.

With the rise of digital video recorders, alternative content available through the Internet, and fierce competition among different television providers, control over when – and even more dramatically what – to watch is very much in the consumer’s hands. As the television audience becomes increasingly fragmented, consumers demand more in terms of the content choices they are offered and the overall value of their television service. More importantly, the value of entertainment services is not measured by one facet (such as the number of channels) but by providers’ success at offering blended services to their customers. In initial stages, this blending will include bundled services, in which one company provides voice, video, and data services (generally over one type of fixed-line connection), typically at a discount. However, the longer-term offerings will include actual convergence in offerings, in which end-user devices and home networks facilitate the delivery of services in new ways.

Television Gets Smarter: Stages of Evolution

As new entrants seek to attract and retain customers for broadband, television, and communications services, we see significant opportunity for a host of new services and applications to drive new revenue and serve as competitive differentiators. Television service, in particular, will transition from a relatively basic offering of several hundred channels and some interactive features such as video-on-demand to a fully interactive and distributed service that reflects key digital lifestyle attributes, such as home connectivity, a blending of services, and an emphasis on holistic applications, including home management, safety, and health.

Three stages of television’s evolution to a more personal and interactive medium are highlighted in the figure below. At the present time, the major markets in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific sit mostly between the near-term and mid-term opportunities. The basic services are in place, and the scene is set for some dramatic changes to video services in the next few years.

Development Path for Advanced TV Features

Efforts in the near-term stage will emphasize a more personalized television experience, with a key focus on DVR functionalities, home networking (linking the PC to the set-top box), an enhanced level of information (through informational widgets), and rethinking the user interface. We are not expecting a wholesale evolution of the electronic program guide (EPG) during this phase; however, program guides will incorporate more advanced (32-bit) graphics to help sell additional services such as premium VoD movies (by displaying easier-to-read title boxes).

The second phase of advanced TV services deployment will rely more on two-way communication to provide even more Internet-like content. Companies will incorporate place-shifting features (such as those embodied today in what Sling Media or Orb Networks can offer) into television services, which will allow consumers to stream recorded content from a DVR and play it on any Internet-connected device. Social media enhancements will offer features like channel and/or program recommendations that come to viewers from a circle of friends and "virtual water coolers," where viewers can see the top-viewed shows for any given night or week.

The last stage of development will include more advanced entertainment and communications convergence. Providers will enable videoconferencing at the TV, and there will be applications tied to t-commerce (allowing consumers to order products directly from an advertisement using a remote control). We also expect to see features such as home monitoring and health (i.e., Web conferencing to check on an elderly relative). Community features will allow for a more customized information service related to local information (updates on city government and school events; allowing subscribers to connect to each other on Craig’s List or Angie’s List).

Are consumers ready for these features? As service providers seek to differentiate and add value to their services, the additional investments necessary to create these advanced features have come with significant questions. Telco/IPTV providers in particular have come under scrutiny for their investments in deep fiber technologies and their deployment of television and bundled services, but after some initial skepticism from Wall Street, these efforts are being seen in a more favorable light as subscriber numbers have increased.

Now that the basic offerings are in the field, the focus has returned to the consumer. As television services expand beyond “me too” offerings, do consumers see value in these additional features – interactivity, more programming, greater personalization, higher-quality content, etc.? Our data (most recently from Digital Media Habits II) indicate that premium video-on-demand services will be a key differentiator, followed by the ability to enjoy music and user-generated content (such as photos) on the TV.

This article was published for the 2008 CONNECTIONS™ Conference Industry Insights, the official publication of CONNECTIONS™.

Opening Keynote — Media Mobility and the Connected Home

Summary information from Day 1: CONNECTIONS™ May 2007, hosted in Santa Clara, CA.

Opening Keynote — Media Mobility and the Connected Home
Presented by: Ray Sokola, Chief Technology Officer and Corporate Vice President, Motorola, Inc.

More than ever, consumers expect providers to offer seamless, on-demand access to a wide array of personal and professionally created media. The next-generation of technology for the Connected Home will not only enable this access, but expand the consumer's choice and offer more individual personalization than ever before. With these new technology platforms come new and emerging business models: content mobility, on-demand ad insertion, push-to-consumer technologies, mobile advertising and more. In his presentation, Mr. Sokola spoke about the technology innovations that enable the Connected Home environment and discussed how these technologies open the door to new revenue streams for service providers.

In his CONNECTIONS™ keynote, Ray Sokola discussed the underlying trends that allow a product to be “mobility-enabled.” A key starting point is the rise of very affordable storage, both for local (the in-home DVR) and network-based applications (such as video-on-demand with DRAM-based VOD servers). Take every single conversation that a person has during his or her lifetime, for example. They could all be stored on a terabyte (and it could be accomplished rather cost-effectively).

The consumer is going to benefit from the evolution of the set-top box (STB), Sokola noted. First, the STB was all about controlling the channel. It then evolved to a platform to control the time and place of viewing (with DVRs and whole-house DVRs). The third stage will be user-motivated control of programming and content, which leads to interesting applications, such as Motorola’s Follow Me TV™, where time-shifted programming can flow from room to room using home networking.

Finally, Sokola discussed the evolution of advertising, where $70 billion was spent last year just on television ads. Sokola wondered aloud whether this was an inefficient use of ad dollars and if there are ways to make it more meaningful – “repartitioning” it, as he put it. Two new models that may come to fruition are location-based and personalized-driven advertising.