Finding a cure for ‘App Fatigue’

Is your ability to find desired content drowning in a sea of apps?  Are you weary of searching through multiple sources to find programming of interest?  In this piece at Light Reading, Alticast technical product manager Susan Crouse discusses how the explosion in apps is causing “app fatigue” among consumers, and suggests that pay-TV’s unique position as the primary service provider can enable it to offer the streamlined experiences viewers are seeking. 

ALTICAST APPROVED FOR “CERTIFIED WIDEVINE IMPLEMENTATION PARTNER PROGRAM”

Alticast today announced that it has become a member of the “Certified Widevine Implementation Partner Program,” a designation that is intended to expand content security options for pay-TV operators worldwide.

As a modular DRM partner, Alticast’s AltiProtect Multi-DRM product can support Widevine DRM as one of several security solutions within a single infrastructure. AltiProtect enables a single point of control and transparent customer experience for delivery of content streams from multiple sources – and using multiple security mechanisms – within multi-service, multi-device environments. 

Widevine DRM is available on a broad range of platforms and is currently deployed on more than two billion devices.  The Widevine solution combines Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH), Common Encryption (CENC) and Encrypted Media Extensions (ENE) to provide robust multiplatform content protection.

Studio-approved and highly rated by Telcordia, AltiProtect uses well-defined industry standards to ensure reliable content protection for broadcast and VOD, and can easily adapt to unique network infrastructures.  AltiProtect is being used by CJ Hellovision, the largest pay-TV operator in South Korea, to secure the world’s first launch of UHD pay-TV service.

“AltiProtect is a dynamic CAS/DRM solution that already secures content on millions of deployed devices,” said Dr. Misung Cho, security technology lead for Alticast. “With Widevine we can expand the available content catalogs for partnering in a heterogeneous content delivery environment.”

Alticast will demonstrate a variety of products and solutions for pay-TV operators at its stand (1F.36) at IBC 2016 September 9-13 in Amsterdam.

IPTV Avoiding the Obstacles Ahead...

Multiple Pay TV operators are starting to provide video through IPTV infrastructures, and Alticast has published a couple of white papers that discuss the many considerations that need to be made as infrastructures are built out for a full transition to IPTV.

Early entrants like Sling TV can provide good insight to the challenges ahead as pointed out by Fierce Cable's Daniel Frankel in an interview with CEO Roger Lynch:

Lynch restated that the challenge for a live-streaming service like Sling TV is to overcome endemic technical problems associated with using the internet.

"If you were going to architect a network to deliver video, you wouldn't architect the internet the way it was architected," he said. "It wasn't architected for synchronous video delivery. And so a lot of effort goes into designing systems to counteract the way the internet was designed with its random discard of packets and things like that that happen in routers."

Read the rest of the interview to learn how Sling is now in 'Whack-a-Mole' mode to knock out the final issues.

ALTICAST GEARS UP FOR NEW MARKET OPPORTUNITIES; NAMES MIKE FALLON PRESIDENT OF ALTICAST AMERICAS

Alticast today announced the appointment of Mike Fallon as president of Alticast Americas as the company positions itself to capitalize on an increased number of technological and geographic growth opportunities in the global pay-TV industry.

Fallon, who previously headed Alticast’s North American customer engagement activities, will assume overall responsibility for Alticast’s business strategy and operational activities in the North and South American markets. John Carlucci, who had served as president and CTO of Alticast US, will devote all of his energies to his CTO role of identifying and productizing new technologies that can drive business results for pay-TV operators.

“Our success with Videotron, our APAC customers and other operators in North America and worldwide have generated numerous new business and technology opportunities,” said Mansoo Han, CEO of Alticast.  “The appointment of Mike Fallon will better enable us to leverage his strategic and leadership skills, while freeing John Carlucci to accelerate the technology solutions that the market is demanding.”

As head of Alticast’s North American professional services efforts, Fallon has helped to drive three consecutive years of increasing revenue growth.  During that time he has worked directly with Tier 1 North American pay-TV operators to determine their business objectives, and has built and leveraged an Alticast team that has expedited the creation of solutions that are meeting customers’ needs.

"Alticast’s best-in-class UX, our device software solutions and our next-generation cloud services platform already are positioned to drive value for our Americas customer base,” said Fallon. "We expect to build on that success as we bring the same CAS and DRM content protection technology that is widely deployed in APAC to the Americas market.” 

Prior to Alticast, Fallon spent eight years with Advanced Digital Broadcast and its Vidiom Systems acquisition.  As director of customer operations he led cross-functional teams that delivered an integrated software/hardware solution that was deployed nationally by Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable. Earlier in his career, Fallon spent three years with ARRIS.  He holds a B.A. from the University of Dallas.

Look who’s a finalist for an award at IBC

We’ve talked in the past about how more valuable 4K content and the diversity of consumer viewing devices is causing operators to rethink existing content security paradigms, but what’s important to note is how we’ve put our money where our mouth is.

We’ve taken the lead in providing operators with new security solutions that have the flexibility to protect both 4K and existing HD and SD content across multiple devices, including set-top boxes, streaming sticks and boxes, tablets and smartphones.  When CJ Hellovision launched the world’s first deployment of UHD to more than 4.3 million homes in South Korea, they turned to Alticast for their security needs.

This week, we notched another highlight: Notification that we’ve earned a spot on the short list of finalists for a Best Content Protection Technology award at IBC. The experts who judged Cable & Satellite International’s CSI Awards singled out our AltiProtect UHD for recognition as one of the most outstanding solutions for helping the industry protect the integrity of content delivery.

We can’t say for sure what the judges liked about AltiProtect UHD, but we’d like to think we caught their eyes for our ability to use market-proven cryptographic technology to maximize content security and operational efficiency via three key elements:

•  AltiProtect UHD CAS, which uses AES 128 or better encryption algorithms to ensure optimal content protection;
•  AltiProtect UHD DRM, which supports the multi-device environments that are prevalent in today’s television ecosystem; and
• AltiProtect Downloadable & Exchangeable Framework (AltiProtect D&E), which allows operators seamlessly to swap content protection systems to eliminate service calls and to accelerate the introduction of new devices.

If you’ll be at IBC, we’d be delighted to discuss AltiProtect UHD – or any of the other Alticast products or solutions that are driving value for the industry.  You can find us at Stand 1F.36 throughout the show and at the CSI Awards September 9 – where we’ll hopefully be on stage accepting the Best Content Protection Technology trophy.