ip coverstory_cover story 07/03/2014 08:34 Page 6
has raced ahead and innovated in order to
securely deliver content across a diverse set of
environments; while service providers have
traditionally had control over end-to-end
platform for delivery, simplifying the security
model,” says Dale. According to Price
Stephens, ensuring compatibility and security
of video across differing devices has required
specific effort on the part of the service
developer, particularly because the required
functionality was not natively supported in
earlier HTML browsers.
PROPRIETARY. “Security and
interoperability are absolutely not compatible
across devices,” asserts Fisher. “XBoxes and
iPads don’t ‘natively’ run the same protocols
or encryption mechanisms. Everything is
software, so of course they could – but the
software infrastructure provided by Microsoft
for the Xbox and Apple for the iPad provide
mechanisms that are not compatible. Until a
single protocol comes to dominate the
industry, we can expect this incompatibility
to continue. Worse, since the bulk of
conditional access and encryption are offered
by proprietary methods offered by different
DRM vendors who compete based on their
own ‘secret sauce’, we can expect security to
continue to be an area lacking in
interoperability for many years to come,” he
warns.
“The short answer is no,” says Tullemans.
“Many devices still need a special treatment.
Technology is going fast at the same time
generating new requirements for playout.
Standards get updated accordingly. Together
with different operating systems, this creates
a big forest of possibilities and with a large
impact on backward compatibilities.
Standard s like MPEG-DASH that allow
common encryption help with device support
of content security. But if you want to support
a large set of devices for a long time you need
to implement different content protection
systems and keep old services that are used
less and less in the air. Obviously this impacts
the operation.”
Leporini says that content security, along
with CAS, DRM, and related security services
such as security renewability, serve two major
needs: enforcing the business agreements
between content service providers and
content/rights owners, and enforcing the
service business rules as defined by content
service providers. “We believe both needs are
and will remain strong areas of innovation and
differentiation facilitating new types of business
agreements and enriched content services.”
MOMENTUM. One of the leading industry
groupings driving open standards is HbbTV
(see panel). Kirk Edwardson, co-chair,
HbbTV marketing group, reports that HbbTV
is very focused on improving the quality of
experience for broadcast television, using IP
20 IP television
broadband. “As HbbTV enters its fifth year,
the momentum and enthusiasm for the
initiative is growing strongly with interest
from Asia as well as North and South
America. As broadcast TV goes digital across
the world, HbbTV connects the desires of
broadcasters, consumer electronics
manufacturers and pay-TV operators to
deliver an interactive, richer TV experience,”
he says.
“These include a variety of services and
features, including Video on Demand and
customisable information services. As
features and services continue to push the
boundaries of TV innovation, interest
internationally will continue to grow and
HbbTV will soon become a global standard.
We are also seeing interest from pay-TV
operators to implement HbbTV for their TV
services in telco, cable and satellite operators.
It’s really exciting to see it adopted across
segments and geographies and this is a great
example of standards helping to improve QoE
for the TV experience,” he adds.
EVOLUTION. Robin Mersh, Broadband
Forum CEO, notes that network access has
evolved over the past twenty years from just a
simple Internet offering to today’s explosion
of services and applications, varying speed
and performance requirements, and a variety
of core and local access methods. “With such
a vast array of broadband technologies in
existence it is increasingly important to
develop methods to ensure harmonious
operations. The motivations for the
introduction of multi-service architectures
derive from the need to allow all of these
different access technologies the capability to
operate over a common simplified network
architecture,” he says.
He reports that the Broadband Forum has
been driving the evolution of Broadband
Network Architecture for over a decade. It
has identified the increased need for
bandwidth together with Quality of Service
(QoS) based on service policies. From this it
has created reference architectures for multiservice broadband networks. The Forum’s
work defines high level network
requirements, and specifies functional
modules to meet those network requirements.
To begin to answer these requirements,
the Forum has developed a number of
Technical Reports that are designed to
support access co-existence within a multiservice architecture and a smooth migration
to new technologies. This work addresses the
need for network interconnection standards
for broadband access, Quality of Service
(QoS) support and bandwidth on demand,
increased overall bandwidth and higher
network reliability and availability.
According to Mersh, the multi-service
architecture will open the door for new access
independent services. Fixed network
operators, mobile network operators, as well
as converged operators and OTT service
providers will benefit from these services and
generate new revenue streams.
HERITAGE. The importance of standards in
encouraging growth and innovation has been
highlighted by Richard Lindsay-Davies,
director-general, Digital TV Group.
Addressing a Westminster Policy Forum
Keynote Seminar, he said the Group had a
long heritage of good standardisation,
building on international standards but also
contributing back to those international
standards. “We are the foundation of the
three free TV platforms in the UK, Freeview,
Freesat and YouView, and our specifications,
appear in around 20 million homes in the
UK. We think we are an important part of the
ecosystem within the UK but probably more
importantly, as the UK initially led with
digital television, we contributed back into
both European and international standards to
nurture harmonisation,” he said.
“In fact, it’s still one of our stated
objectives to use market forces and our great
expertise in digital television to, as much as
possible, create harmonisation in technical
standards, and therefore reduce the barriers
to media transfer, not only throughout
Europe but also across the world. There’s also
been a period where other parts of Europe
and other parts of the world led in some of
the innovation in digital television, and we
are now in a process of working out how we
adopt some of these standards, standards
such as HbbTV in the UK market, so again we
can get to a position where television sets and
set-top boxes can be sold throughout Europe
in a technically-harmonised way.”
According to Lindsay-Davies, this
“unique” industry collaboration, and
technical and commercial developments have
ensured a very vibrant and a very competitive
TV market within the UK, but it also ensures
that the DTG both underpins and supports
the wider European market. “There have been
examples in the UK and other markets where
we’ve been over prescriptive with technical
standards, possibly adopted some technical
standards that by the time the platform
launched looked a little bit less wise than they
did when we started. Broadcasters and the
consumer electronics industry in the UK find
it quite tough to make the right technical
choices and decisions as to which standards
to adopt. I certainly think regulators will
never keep up with tha t. So we have to ensure
that we do allow these market forces to
prevail and the very exciting, very active
technical developments that go on across the
world. We should allow these to flow into the
market quite freely and the market will
decide.”