Multiroom DVR will become increasingly important in Europe but DVR sharing to multiscreen devices, rather than just to secondary set-top boxes, could be one of the next big service innovations. Right now, most TV Everywhere services targeting tablets, smartphones and game consoles are built around linear streaming, catch-up and VOD. Access to your own personal DVR recordings is rare; Swisscom is providing this where the DVR content is available from the cloud (network PVR for multiscreen).
There is no question that one way or another, consumers are going to want access to their DVR content on multiscreen devices. This looks like an obvious next step and as soon as one operator does it in a market others will have to follow, given how compelling the concept is. Cloud PVR recording and delivery may not suit everyone so interest is growing in how we make local PVR recordings available right around the home, including on handheld devices.
This is something that ACCESS has been addressing, harnessing its NetFront Living Connect DLNA technology and making use of the DTCP-IP link protection mechanism associated with DLNA to enable much greater operator, and therefore studio, control over content once it leaves a local DVR drive. The company is confident that, when combined with CA and DRM solutions, you can now create a scalable security solution that delivers as much control as required in order to satisfy rights holders and therefore open the door to DVR redistribution.
ACCESS and Verimatrix announced a pre-integrated solution earlier this year that covers CA, DRM and secure DLNA redistribution, including any necessary decryption and re-encryption inside secure zones on chipsets on gateway devices. Verimatrix calls it the ViewRight Gateway solution and it also covers the redistribution of linear content. In this product operators can use a single Verimatrix VCAS content security headend to manage all parts of the delivery, translation and redistribution.
The ACCESS part of this solution is actually CA agnostic but the companies are jointly marketing the pre-integration, which is productized and ready to use.
Joerg Eggink, Product Director, Connected Home at ACCESS, says one of the primary requirements is device domain control, so operators can decide which devices, and how many, the Pay TV content is distributed to. You can scale the security requirements according to the type of content, so free channels (available through a Pay TV bouquet) could be protected with DTCP-IP for example, while premium channels could be covered by this plus DRM on top.
The integrations required between the CA system and the ACCESS NetFront Living Connect DLNA technology include metadata, content and reporting and logging. Reporting and logging is important because operators should want to know what is happening inside the connected home, including where the content is being played. The Verimatrix ViewRight Gateway provides a client that delivers all of these requirements.
Eggink is particularly excited about the potential for DVR content sharing to devices like the PlayStation game console or an Apple iPad, but also to the set-top box. “PVR to the second screen adds another level to TV Everywhere. Nobody is really providing the local DVR content today. This will enable business models that have not been possible yet.â€
Making DVR content available for offline viewing on multiscreen devices could be one of these new business opportunities. While making DVR recordings available on multiscreen devices via local streaming is a major step forward in the user experience, download-to-go could be an important differentiator in the TV Everywhere environment.
