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march/april 2014
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march/april 2013
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cover.indd 3 04/03/2013 11:18:52
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november/december 2012
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cover.indd 1 11/13/2012 10:43:53 AM
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At tipping point: Are CDNs the future
of broadcast?
Inte
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cover.indd 1 17/08/2012 16:10:14
CSI magazine is now available as a digital-edition across all tablet and smart-phone devices
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www.csimagazine.com May-June 2014 03
Cloud TV
Spo
nsor
ed b
y:
When I joined Harris
Broadcast nearly a
year ago, I was
surprised at the state
of an industry which
remains fragmented,
proprietary, hardware-
dependent, lacking in technology reference architectures,
and without an ecosystem-friendly supplier community. The
IT and Communication Service Provider world had
substantially migrated to IP-based technologies. Open
standards and reference architectures have been adopted –
accelerating application development, all of which have
resulted in a mobile network that has grown from 1 to 6
billion subscribers in less than a decade.”
So wrote new CEO Charlie Vogt in March as he split
what was once Harris Broadcast into two entities, one of
which – Imagine Communications – is looking to a future
firmly defined by IP, software, TV Everywhere, multi-screen
and the cloud. A sign of the times if you will.
Many of these developments go hand in hand. For
instance, cloud-based solutions are now tightly associated
with high-quality multi-screen and over-the-top delivery.
Managing and manipulating video in the cloud simplifies
some requirements and a host of vendors such as Cisco,
Ericsson, Harmonic and Envivio are responding to trends
by adopting virtualised encoding and processing capabilities.
The idea is to bring the QoS and robustness of payTV
combined with the personalisation and interactivity of
multi-screen propositions seen in the OTT world.
Pressured by OTT players and other new entrants,
operators are looking at ways to speed new services
(‘service velocity’ or ‘service agility’ as companies like to
call it) and cloud-based approaches
often mean these services can be
introduced or enhanced more
quickly and at lower cost. In many
cases, it allows operators to use
standards-based technologies to
further simplify deployment and
development. The traditional
headend is moving onto software
platforms running in standard-issue
IT-scale production servers rather
than specialist broadcast video hardware,
which is pushing costs down.
The cloud also gives operators previously
unattainable levels of flexibility by reducing
silos and offers a way of reducing device-side
complexity and fragmentation.
so many options…
Of course, good broadband connection are not available
everywhere and worth bearing in mind too are issues such
as security/privacy, performance and scalability - especially
relevant given TV’s peaky nature. Service providers also
have to ask themselves how much they put into the network
or data centres and how much into controlled devices such
as set-top boxes or advanced home gateways. Moreover, they
have to choose or mix between public, private, hybrid and
emerging community forms of cloud. The good news is
there is room for each model and choosing between the
various options depend on migration scenarios.
Large operators like Liberty Global, Deutsche Telekom,
Time Warner Cable and Comcast are well underway with
their migration strategies, moving features like UIs,
middleware and traditional headend functionality into
virtual data centres. Liberty has credited its cloud-based Pan
European Central Head End (PECHE) as accelerating its
Horizon TV platform’s time-to-market from 12 months
down to under three months. Those developing smaller
apps, meanwhile, can do so in weeks.
Ziggo has been tapping the cloud for a while now,
becoming one of the first European MSOs to deliver an
advanced VoD user interface entirely from the network
cloud. The initial deployment included VoD navigation and
guide functionality to existing boxes, and Ziggo said the
cloud-based streaming graphic (SGUI) contributed to a 56%
year-to-year growth in VoD transactions. Virtualising the full
EPG is the next step, Ziggo said at a Verimatrix organised
breakfast event at last year’s IBC.
Cloud technology can also act as a very useful way to
gather sources of content into a network DVR service. It is
also worth mentioning here that localised caching, whereby
the most commonly viewed content is being stored closer to
the network edge, is becoming increasingly popular,
resulting in better quality content.
Finally, the promise of the cloud could also extend into
new areas of big data & analytics (something that Channel
4 in the UK is trailblazing) although for the large part this
remains a largely untapped field in the TV space.
Ultimately, the rise of cloud services and associated
technologies like IP, HTML5 and so on should benefit
consumers as much as media companies, irrespective of
how we choose to define TV going forward.
editor’s introductionGoran Nastic looks at what’s driving broadcasters
and payTV operators to the cloud, and what it means for the future of TV
Multi-screen and OTT go hand in hand with the
cloud
Goran Nastic CSI Editor
The many faces of the cloud
pretty much wherever you
look at the moment, across
every industry sector,
companies are using cloud
technologies, to reduce cost
and increase operational
flexibility. So why should
the TV industry be any different? Most operators
use the cloud either to assist in the streaming of on
demand or live content to multiple devices, or to
virtualise video processing.
Luke Gaydon, VP of media of EMEA at
Brightcove, says the rate of cloud adoption across
the industry during the past five years has been
startling. He points to the number of TV industry
figures now to be found at Amazon’s ‘re:Invent
web services’ event as one indicator. “Three or
four years ago it was just developers,” he says.
“Last year there were representatives of pretty
much every broadcaster.”
That interest is translating into action. Later
this year, Sony will launch a new US TV service
that will provide live TV, VoD and DVR in the
cloud. Consumers will be able to search through
all content and store it in Sony’s cloud, then
access it using any Sony device, including
PlayStations, smart TVs and Android devices.
Last autumn Liberty Global announced it was
using Active Video’s CloudTV software to extend
its Horizon platform to additional devices and
older set-top boxes.
“The move to put what were the essential
functions of the set-top box in the cloud is being
driven by multi-screen,” says Jeff Heynen,
principal analyst, broadband access and pay TV,
at Infonetics. “There’s really not an efficient way
to provide a unified programme guide or interface
across all those devices unless you move the
traditional functionality of the headend into the
cloud.
“And in markets where pay TV providers were
locked into a proprietary conditional access or
digital rights system they don’t move fast enough
to support all these new devices. Putting it in the
cloud so that a change in the agreement with the
content owners can be supported for all the
customers and devices they support makes sense.”
He cites the work both Liberty and Comcast
have done in this area as leading the way, in
strategy terms. “Comcast is trying to break free of
the traditional set-top box environment. It is
focused on their customers wanting to watch TV
or content recorded at home anywhere, with
whichever devices they like to watch. They’ve
moved the UI and the EPG into the cloud.”
Technology providers have responded to this
trend by developing a host of supporting
technologies. “Operators are increasingly
pressured by Netflix and OTT
competitors and the more
forward-thinking ones are asking
‘What are we good at?’” says
Fredrik Andersson, co-founder
and sVP of business development
at Accedo. “They are deciding
that some of the play-out issues
could be managed by someone
else – it’s not something that sets
those companies apart from their
competitors.”
Cloud can also help consumers find content
across multiple platforms. Joshua Danovitz, VP of
innovation at TiVO, points to the services TiVO
has developed with Virgin in the UK as a good
example of how these technologies can help. “A
cable customer with Virgin who has TiVO and a
single remote control can do a search that goes
across linear TV, VoD, iPlayer, Netflix, YouTube,
Spotify... the list goes on. For the consumer, to be
able to have a single search and user experience
makes their lives so much easier.
“The difficulty for a service provider is
integrating all these services so that you have the
platform to find the content, then attaching the
client securely to deliver the content,” he says.
Cloud technology could also act as a very
useful way to gather sources of content into a
network DVR service. Danovitz says this will be
an important area for development in future. He
believes that falling cloud storage costs will have a
With media companies old and new moving cloud wise, what exactly is happening and what is the logical conclusion of this migration? Dave Adams investigates
04 May-June 2014 www.csimagazine.com
Cloud TV
Spo
nsor
ed b
y:
www.csimagazine.com May-June 2014 05
Ziggo’s cloud UI, powered by ActiveVideo’s CloudTV H5 virtual STB platform
bearing on commercial developments, because
cheaper storage means operators seeking to
develop network or cloud DVR will not
necessarily be set on using shared copies of
content for multiple nDVR users, often a source
of difficulties in negotiations with content owners.
Cloud could also be used to bolster live TV
services, particularly for ‘event’ linear TV like
sports. Keith Wymbs, chief marketing officer at
Elemental Technologies, is sure we will see more
of these services in future. “I think you’ll see
some more of this around the World Cup and we
saw some of it for London 2012, where you have
a live feed going into a cloud environment, you do
the replication there and then it goes to the
CDN,” he says.
Cloud could also help drive dynamic ad
insertion technologies too – which might appeal
to operators contemplating tight margins on
multiscreen services.
Virtualised video processing
Use of cloud may also lead to significant changes
when used for transcoding or virtualised video
processing. For several years now, some
companies have argued that it is theoretically a
cheaper place to perform multiple transcodes in
the cloud versus devices such as gateways but that
this approach is still in many cases held back by
rights issues. It is gaining in traction now,
however, with this year’s NAB swarming with
virtual encoding announcements.
Harmonic and Encoding.com have joined
forces to offer a cloud-based transcoding service,
which can be used on a pure cloud or a hybrid
basis. Gaydon says the company’s clients,
including BBC Worldwide and Channel 4 in the
UK, are attracting to the platform for cost and
efficiency reasons.
“If you’re managing an on-premise, hardware-
based encoding platform you have to plan for your
peaks, so you will be paying for a lot of
infrastructure which may not be utilised,” he says.
“If you are a Zencoder customer you pay for what
you use at that point, so it is significantly more
cost-efficient.”
Security remains a concern for some content
owners, but Gaydon believes these concerns are
fading as cloud proves its strength. He points to
the trust placed in Netflix, a largely Amazon web
services-based platform, by content owners.
Another provider, Elemental, offers cloud-
based Platform as a Service (PaaS). End users
include the BBC iPlayer, for which Elemental
provides the underlying infrastructure. iPlayer is
moving its video processing environment to the
cloud. Wymbs explains how the cloud solution
helps the BBC deal with spikes in demand at
certain times of day and deal with the challenge
of processing video for the iPlayer under tight
time constraints, sometimes turning a 30 or 60
minutes programme into an iPlayer asset within
30 or 60 minutes. “In the past that would have
taken ten plus hours,” he says.
“If they wanted to build the system themselves
to cope with the peak demand they would spend a
lot of money on infrastructure and 85% of that
infrastructure wouldn’t be used for most of the
day. So for an hour or two every day they spike
into the cloud to meet those business
requirements.”
Another provider, Envivio, announced two new
cloud releases at NAB: integration of its core
software Muse encoders and its Halo network
media processors into the OpenStack cloud
software initiative; and a partnership with the
OTT streaming specialist 1 Mainstream to provide
a turnkey end to end cloud-based video service.
“One of our cable customers asked us to
virtualise the services we gave them, with the goal
of making their operations easier and being able
to easily provision instances of our software
products on their data centre resources, turning it
on and turning it off as needed,” explains Arnaud
Perrier, VP of strategy and corporate development
at Envivio. “We have some clients who have told
us that they don’t want to use any CapEx at all.
They say to us, ‘you have the expertise in video,
can you run that service for us, end to end?’”
The Ip end game
An increasing number of both operators and
content owners now appear to be more
comfortable with the use of cloud than ever
before.
However, the success of many of these services
will rest ultimately on the speed and reliability of
the consumer’s broadband service.
“In the end all cable operators and pay TV
operators are going to move to the cloud – but it
certainly depends on whether they also offer
broadband. Satellite will have to find a way to
partner with others to provide this type of
environment to all their customers – and at a
quality they can control,” says Heynen.
Brightcove’s Gaydon believes we heading
towards a wholesale move away from traditional
broadcast infrastructure into IP-delivered linear
transmission. “We say that’s about five years away.
The rate of change will surprise everyone. It will
not be long before we see broadcasters move to a
fully IP-delivered platform.”
“For an hour or two every day the BBC iPlayer spikes into the cloud to meet those business requirements.”
Cloud TV
Spo
nsor
ed b
y:
elevating revenue security to the cloud
What really
defines a
“cloud TV”
service? The
terminology
used to
describe this
phenomenon is quite broad as the video industry
looks to retool itself and become more software-
empowered.
Consider the approach to cloud TV in practical
terms – a video service delivered all or in part
over unmanaged internet connections (wired or
wireless). But at a higher level, it becomes
apparent that implementing delivery of such a
service is emblematic of broad trends in our
industry: namely, the shift of an increasing
number of aspects of the video preparation and
delivery infrastructure towards software
subsystems, which are fundamentally dependent
on IP connectivity.
As this software shift reaches down into the
client device design and implementation, the
devices become less specialised in architecture as
they increasingly rely on the software resources
on the head-end or server side of the delivery link.
In other words, more device functionality is
moving to the cloud, including user interfaces,
DVR storage, preference management and,
perhaps most important from our own
perspective, a greater share of the core rights
management logic.
The best of these new cloud-centric or hybrid
network services can offer their subscribers a
highly integrated user experience across a wide
range of client device types. Yet these services
also demand carefully architected security features
to protect revenue streams, particularly when the
physical boundaries of a head-end become less
well defined.
navigating the path to a unified head-end
Harmonizing the back-end systems makes the
unified service paradigm of cloud-centric and
hybrid services possible. As operators work to
deploy such an approach, they should pay special
attention to the following:
• Stream/file transcoding and grooming
resources that are flexible enough to deal with
the full range of today’s content delivery
protocols – from MPEG-TS to HLS to DASH
– and that can be re-programmed to deal with
those of the future;
• Workflow and content management support
that can accommodate the full range of live
and on-demand content preparation
requirements and treat the results as a unified
suite of related assets;
• A security solution that can protect the full
range of media delivery protocols and mange
rights in harmonised fashion across the
delivery networks; and
• A suite of delivery instrumentation and analysis
tools that can treat complex multi-network
service delivery as a unified entity and provide
insight into consumer behavior in switches
from client type to client type.
Clearly the operator not only has to consider the
security of content delivery via the cloud, but also
the security of content ingest links, content
storage in various formats and
subscriber databases. A
technology partner ecosystem
within the multi-screen
workflow is of significant
benefit to those service
providers seeking to deploy
such a unified security
approach.
The fact that the various
individual technologies often
employ open standards makes
it easier for operators to
integrate at least the security
infrastructure into whatever multi-vendor
workflow might be considered. Verimatrix is a
case in point where teaming with specific vendors
facilitates the deployment of solutions with a full-
scale security infrastructure built in.
The power of analytics
Greater visibility into the usage patterns and
operational data on the client devices is of
growing importance for video services. Operators
and content owners gain valuable insight into
subscribers’ preferences and activities when
consuming content. Integrated multi-network
analytics also affords operators the opportunity to
generate new revenue streams, increase subscriber
loyalty and reduce costs through:
• Real-time performance, issue identification and
resolution – Operators can greatly enhance
QoE and subscriber satisfaction through
proactive response to adverse performance
trends and traffic patterns;
• Historical media usage and subscriber pattern
analysis – Operators can implement better
network planning, based on customer
preference and service targeting data;
• Network optimisation – Operators can push
targeted information more efficiently to the
point of consumption with better visibility on
performance; and
• Social networking integration – Operators can
capitalize on popular social media features
where subscribers can opt-in and create
personal profiles that enable real-time flagging
of “now watching” content, with preferences
and recommendations to friends and contacts.
The shift to cloud TV is part of a broader trend in the video industry towards IP and software systems, says Steve Christian, VP of marketing at Verimatrix, who looks at the security implications of this evolution
06 May-June 2014 www.csimagazine.com
Cloud TV
Spo
nsor
ed b
y:
security optimisation through unification
With a diverse mixture of set top boxes (STBs)
and CE devices as clients of a cloud-centric
service, it is almost impossible to rely on any
specific client being equipped with more than the
most basic of hardware subsystems that can be
leveraged to support comprehensive client
security logic. The legacy Conditional Access
approach of relying on dedicated security
subsystems at each and every device is clearly
outdated but legacy implementations that still rely
on extensive client side logic, key manipulation
and persistent storage encourages an environment
where threats are focused at the weakest links in
these diverse client implementations.
The natural response to this – especially given
the broader system architectural trends identified
above – is to ensure that the core security
functionality and content rights management logic
resides as much as possible in the head-end cloud
subsystems. When business rule decision-making
and entitlement management become cloud-
centric for security reasons, the opportunity also
exists to make the systems much more responsive
and dynamic to usage patterns and asynchronous
events. Unification of security also offers the most
seamless experience for consumers.
As an example, domain-based entitlement
management enforces business rules to a logical
group of devices (as opposed to an individual
device) to ensure that entitled content is
automatically available to all the subscriber
domain’s devices. Such dynamic entitlements
support more flexible and Web-like business
models than historically seen in the pay-TV world.
Unifying security infrastructure across
networks and devices offers many benefits,
including the ability to revoke clients and renew
client security on the basis of knowledge or
suspicion of threats on particular kinds of devices.
It seems that the device that is most significant in
terms of revenue streams is often attacked first;
being able to revoke and renew security on that
device in order to sufficiently address any threats,
can help significantly protect an operator’s
bottom line.
The foundation of this renewability and
revocability is software-centric communications
logic built on the firm foundations of hierarchical
certificate structures – the very foundations of
Internet security. In each client device, there is a
minimum set of subsystems that are needed to
ensure an adequate revenue security, including a
hardware root-of-trust. Traditionally, hardware-
based roots–of-trust can provide cryptographic
keys, code verification keys and secure device IDs.
Recent advancements include hardware
security cores inside STB chipsets/system-on-chips
(SoCs) that perform highly sensitive content
protection functions on a personalized basis. This
hardware security core approach brings
significant security and architectural advantages.
When such a hardware root-of-trust is combined
with a proven software security environment, a
robust revenue security regime is created.
The increasing proliferation of cloud-based
video services will push operators to re-think their
security strategy in order to optimise revenue
security while reducing operational costs.
Security, in all its forms, is a continuing concern
for video operators as they move towards a
software-empowered model. An even greater
concern is that the introduction of higher
resolution, more valuable content services, such
as UHD/4k, are matched by enhanced security
approaches that must employ as much next-
generation techniques as commercially
reasonable.
It is clear that the software-empowered video
operator model requires a new vision of revenue
security that is a substantial leap forward from
most of the current offerings.
The new generation of software-based,
IP-centric security solutions, where control and
integrity can be managed at the point of service
origin, are especially well aligned with the vision
of a more dynamic, flexible and extensible value
proposition that will drive the new marketplace.
The end is in sight for the single-vendor
monolithic video solutions that we have seen in
the past. The landscape is much brighter for
specialist vendors that have proven component
integration points — often standards-centric —
with other members of a deployment ecosystem.
The result is less vendor lock-in and a promise of
significant reduction in deployment cost.
For more information, download the ‘Rise of the
Software-Empowered Video Operator’ e-book at
www.verimatrix.com/swempowered and attend the
‘Multi-network Forum’ at ANGA COM at
www.verimatrix.com/anga2014
www.csimagazine.com May-June 2014 07
Cloud TV
Spo
nsor
ed b
y:
Multi-network revenue security enables you to cost-effectively reach your subscribers across different networks, devices and geographic boundaries. The Verimatrix Video Content Authority System (VCAS™) and ViewRight® solutions offer the flexibility to match any hybrid network combination and keep pace with the latest connected devices. Discover how Verimatrix is working with global digital TV operators to build a single harmonized rights management platform that protects and enhances revenue.
BUILDING A WORLD OF SECURE MULTI-NETWORK SOLUTIONS
Visit us at ANGA COM 2014 Hall 10.1 • Booth #M10
Join us forMulti-network Solutions in the Real World Forum Wednesday • 21 May8:00 am to 9:30 amwww.verimatrix.com/anga2014