[08 September 2014]
Innovative and flexible content protection built into Vualto apps using DRM provided by Microsoft
Vualto, global specialists in innovative content delivery and management, has delivered live and on-demand services to a number of major European operations, each incorporating DRM provided by Microsoft PlayReady. PlayReady provides high resilience content protection solutions for computers, mobile devices, connected TVs and games consoles. Vualto provides PlayReady as part of their video framework that offers a cohesive set of software components to deliver end-to-end broadcast workflows with DRM.
“The advantage of Microsoft PlayReady is that, while it provides extremely robust content protection, it has also evolved to support latest technologies such as MPEG-DASH and EMEs,” said Camilla Young, CEO of Vualto. “The result is that we can deliver complete end to end systems using the latest technology, which meet the highest DRM requirements of content owners like Hollywood Studios.”
Among the users of Microsoft PlayReady as part of Vualto systems are newly formed independent cinema platform We Are Colony, French content distributor Tevolution and SSVC, which serves content to British military bases and ships at sea.
“The British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS) delivers 12 encrypted live television channels and 30 live radio channels to members of the UK Armed Forces all over the world with end-to-end DRM using PlayReady protection. It is now developing special offline playback services for austere and closed military environments such as ships and submarines using apps which will include PlayReady.”
Quentin Howard, Director of Television and Technology at BFBS said, “Our special requirements for live and off-line media was a challenge for most DRM systems. PlayReady was the only DRM system that met our unique needs for both streamed and downloaded content and has the necessary studio approval our content owners expect.”
We Are Colony is a new video on demand service, providing independent films to desktops and mobile devices. Vualto provided its complete delivery platform from file ingest through transcoding to content delivery, including PlayReady encryption. Much of the processing takes place in the cloud.
Tevolution provides a mix of free and pay channels and video on demand to set-top boxes. Part of the offering needed a high level of content protection which Vualto was asked to provide. This required designing a PlayReady solution which worked on the existing set-top boxes without changes to the firmware for those specific channels.
“Our alliance with Microsoft has delivered real benefits for these and other services,” added Young. “The result is that they can react quickly to the changing demands of their subscribers, delivering high value content securely, and generating new revenue opportunities.”
At IBC2014 (Amsterdam, 12 – 16 September) Vualto is exhibiting in the Microsoft area, demonstrating how PlayReady can be implemented into a complete delivery solution.
