Our awards shelf back at HQ has started to bow under the weight of all the accolades that SecureMedia has won this year. That’s five and counting, to be precise—adding to a series of major customer wins including Verizon, Time Warner Cable and Massillon Cable.
This week, Motorola’s Jim Welch accepted a Vision Award at TelcoTV on behalf of SecureMedia® Encryptonite ONE™ HLS+. This marks the product’s second win at TelcoTV—the largest U.S. conference focused on broadband network service providers—since it took home the inaugural award for Best Content Security four years ago.
Double awards! What does it mean?? We caught up with Jim to find out…
Q: You’re accepting yet another award for SecureMedia Encryptonite ONE HLS+. What’s the secret to all these wins?
A: Okay, I admit it… I’m an awards junkie, so let’s get that out of the way.
It’s been a great year, and this time it’s the TelcoTV Vision Award, and it’s absolutely a testament to the way that Medios SecureMedia has been solving the challenge of video content security for over a decade using open-standards, future-proof technology. Since we’re software-based, the technology is extremely flexible, extensible and scalable.
To address the need for a great entertainment experience on multi-devices we worked directly with the content studios to create an even better security solution for delivering video based on Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming (HLS). As a result, SecureMedia’s Encryptonite ONE HLS+ solution is not just about encrypting the content—it’s about providing advanced security features like device authentication, device authorization, tamper detection and clone detection and much more.
We also work with leading CE manufacturers like Samsung, LG, Sony and Roku to have them support our innovative HLS-based security solution, so we’re covering a wide range of devices. We solve what works with what. And that’s paramount when we’re talking about multi-screen and entertainment everywhere experiences.
Q: Multi-screen and TV everywhere were huge themes at SCTE last week. Why is SecureMedia so important here?
A: This goes back to SecureMedia’s history of working with industry standards while maintaining our technology’s flexibility and extensibility. New platforms and devices are coming out all the time, and SecureMedia, because it’s built on standards, works across the entire matrix. So using our technology, service providers don’t have to think about the device or the DRM scheme, format, etc. each time they’re sending out content.
Q: And why is that good for service providers?
A: We have yet to see a service provider who doesn’t look relieved when they find out how SecureMedia simplifies the video distribution process and saves them on storage costs. When you’re talking about delivering content to multi-screen, you’re not just talking about maintaining the technology for one video on one configuration on one device. You have multiple videos formats, screen resolutions and platforms to address these devices. The challenge is encoding and transcoding the right content to the right devices, the right display resolution, etc. And the storage costs of taking an entire library of content across all those permutations is going through the roof.
Now, we take care of all this work. SecureMedia puts all these devices on a common playing field, and today’s most popular encoders out there support our technology. So service providers just encode once and encrypt once, and it goes out to all right the devices. They reduce their storage costs and have complete control over the entire process.
Q: So does that mean that Verizon can limit the number of times I watch the Call Me Maybe video on my tablet?
A: The technology can do it. That’s all a part of permission rights, which SecureMedia handles. Maybe this content provider doesn’t want their video on a tablet. We can take care of that but the best part is that our companion Medios solutions, VideoFlow CMS and/or Connect SR automates this whole process, so customers like Verizon don’t have to worry about studio multi-device contract licensing rights. SecureMedia takes a lot of the headache out of truly secure video delivery.
Q: Okay, let’s be honest, security isn’t the sexiest thing that Motorola offers, but is it underrated?
A: We leave the sexiness to the marketing team. *Laughs* From a technology standpoint we’re invisible. But as we have shown time and time again, we’re proven and approved. Bottom line, if service providers want to distribute premium content, they need content protection. So you’re right, on the consumer side it’s not too sexy, but if it’s seamless and it works it doesn’t matter. The service providers like that, and consumers, even though they don’t see it, they love it too, because they get to watch their favorite programs and movies. I think that’s the beauty of great technology—it just works. It doesn’t get in the way of the experience.
