Deploying connected home video solutions for pay-TV service providers has now reached mass adoption in several markets. The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) is adding a new business opportunity to make the home even more connected and smarter for consumers. It also presents pay-TV service providers with some new challenges. They face competition from big consumer-electronics players and need to find the best way to leverage consumer premise equipment (CPE) to connect different devices, and thereby own this new smart home. To help its customers address these challenges, NAGRA launched JoinIn in 2013, its reference architecture for the connected home, which provides a blueprint to ensure all the different elements work together, seamlessly and effortlessly. NAGRA is now extending the use cases that JoinIn addresses to tackle the smart lifestyle opportunities.What is JoinIn?
JoinIn is a reference - or blueprint - architecture for the connected home which helps service providers to deliver an innovative and seamless user experience to their subscribers across different devices.
What JoinIn does is define a homogenous set of innovative technologies, protocols, industry standards and best practices. This allows pay-TV service providers to integrate different technology components to ensure that their premium content can be viewed and shared conveniently on a variety of devices.
JoinIn also now addresses new smart home opportunities by enabling service providers to securely connect lifestyle devices to deliver a rich user experience on various screens, including the main TV set.
What kind of features can JoinIn enable?
A lot of exciting TV-viewing scenarios can be enabled by the JoinIn architecture: the whole-home PVR where recorded content is shared and streamed to TV sets around the home, live TV streaming from a multimedia home gateway to WiFi-enabled devices, the side-loading of content from PVRs to tablets these are just a few examples.
For smart home scenarios, securely connecting home monitoring cameras, controlling the home energy system or tracking health information are just opportunities that can be enabled to increase operator revenues.
How does it work?
By offering a blueprint (the reference architecture) and an integration cook book (a set of best practices), JoinIn guides service providers and their digital TV partners in creating the most efficient smart-home solutions. It can be used both for completely new deployments and for bringing together already deployed elements in the best way.
To make an analogy with the construction industry, JoinIn can be a guide to building a house from the ground up or a guide to extending and upgrading an existing home. The blueprint gives you the building's detailed architecture documentation, allowing you to stay in control and efficiently commission additional work in the future.
NAGRA has its own end-to-end pre-integrated solution for the smart home based on the JoinIn architecture. It implements the OpenTV 5 connectware technology for powering the smart home gateway and media devices, NAGRA anyCAST security services components as well as NAGRA MediaLive Multiscreen products.
Which industry standards and protocols are involved?
JoinIn defines the integration of a multimedia home gateway with companion devices and other TV screens, so that both broadcast and cloud content can be delivered around the home. The standards and protocols used by JoinIn address content streaming and protection, user interfaces, cloud-based OTT delivery and service management.
The JoinIn architecture is based mainly on open industry standards such DLNA, uPnP as well as CAS/DRM technology along with HTML5 in client devices. For delivering video between devices, it relies on either native IP or adaptive bit-rate streaming, all secured with NAGRA anyCAST PRM link protection technology.
The same advanced link protection technology can be used for securing communications with smart home devices, ensuring these devices are controlled and guarded against external intrusion into the home domain to avoid sensitive data leaks or hacking of home systems.
What does JoinIn offer to pay-TV service providers?
The most important thing that JoinIn does is to help pay-TV service providers get the most out of the connected home. It does this by offering them a blueprint reference architecture that is optimized, flexible and innovative so that they can deploy scalable solutions.
So JoinIn helps them to deliver their most important premium video content securely to all devices within the home and also secure the interaction with other lifestyle devices. JoinIn helps service providers offer a seamless user experience that is consistent across all devices and use cases. With video and connected devices becoming ubiquitous and central to the life of consumers, service providers can market and brand this extended user experience to reinforce their relevance and presence in the digital lives of their customers.
What's more, JoinIn is future-proof, because it offers a flexible and modular architecture that is based on best-of-breed technologies and standards. It also offers reduced time-to-market and integration costs because it is designed to stimulate an open-vendor ecosystem without any lock-in.
For vendors, JoinIn offers a stronger partnership relationship with NAGRA and more efficient integration with NAGRA products while defining clear integration points with other components.
Why is JoinIn needed?
Leaving content sharing and new smart life opportunities to vertical CE players like Apple, Google, Amazon or Microsoft brings important risks. Pay-TV service providers clearly need to make the connected home a reality and a business success, and they need to keep control of the home and maximize reach. JoinIn addresses these needs and helps se
