Nagra's Evolution with Partners like SKIDATA, Tata, Transform Service Offerings

Nagra's Evolution with Partners like SKIDATA, Tata, Transform Service Offerings By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director

Wednesday, February 13, 2019 - 3:35 pm

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Nagra has long been associated with content protection of video assets but, increasingly, it is expanding its offerings to enhance user interfaces and to also leverage technologies from fellow Kudelski partner companies like SKIDATA to help the 500 operators it works with develop new business models. And, of course, it will also keep its eye on protecting assets.

Ivan Verbesselt says that Nagra's relationship with SKIDATA and Tata are transforming its value proposition for clients.

We will do whatever is possible in the legal framework to maximize operator revenue related to the content, says Ivan Verbesselt, Nagra Kudelski, SVP, group marketing. We have taken down 150 major pirate sites and with things like our Dashboard service our clients can see the source of the piracy, where it was pirated, etc.

Nagra has plenty of experience in the OTT market as is working with 500 operators who, in turn, have services that collectively pull in $100 billion in revenues around the globe. Key to Nagra's efforts is its Pay TV Innovation Forum, an event that has been held for three years and involves senior executives from across the industry providing valuable insights into market trends.

The proliferation of OTT has permeated the core of TV consumer behavior and consumer expectations are changing, says Verbesselt. And then on the backburner of everyone's mind is piracy which is all over the place and harder to fight.

The proliferation and raised expectations of consumers is putting more pressure on operators to offer an engaging user experience that is available across various devices and set-top boxes. The goal is to not only get consumers engaged but also to monetize content and also gather information about subscribers that can drive growth.

The growth in OTT, and the explosion in new services expected in the next 12 months, means that linear OTT services will become more and more important. Those linear services will rely heavily on live content which provides another level of challenge for those looking to protect their content. It is also one of the reasons Nagra launched NexGuard QuickMark late last year as it enables near real-time identification of the subscriber at the source of the piracy. New technologies like real-time fingerprinting allow for streams from the Internet, social media, or illicit streaming services to be automatically fed into the detection platform. It is also integrated into Nagra's OpenTV Player, giving an end-to-end application environment for live OTT. The Open TV platform takes advantage of cloud-based services to help minimize issues like latency, media asset management, security, and more. Latency, for example, can get down to the four to six second range with the use of things like time stamping which can help time accuracy be maintained throughout the playout process.

Blind detection of piracy can occur in a few minutes so those in an OTT environment can act because if it takes too long it will be too late as there is often no relevance after the event, adds Verbesselt.

Working with SKIDATA, a company whose core service began as tracking skiiers as they bounce around a ski resort and on the slopes, is allowing NAGRA to help its clients better integrate their OTT services and other digital commerce opportunities into those who are at a sports venue.

You can have things like paperless access, merchant offers, and then securely stream content in the stadium and leverage the whole data flow from SKIDATA which is typically not combined with pay TV, says Verbesselt. And then fans can use our Cuts system to share a cut highlight from the venue feed.

Another new relationship is the one Nagra has developed with Tata Communications, the global communications powerhouse that works with entities like F1.

They know how to do networks we know a thing or two about security so we can layer on top and have a total fan experience, says Verbesselt. It's a new area for us and we have all the tools and then with a partner like Tata working on latency control this can be an interesting offer for clients. The time is right as the expectations are there and linear OTT is becoming more relevant.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2019/02/13/nagras-evolution-with-partners-...
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