PERSONAL VIDEO RECORDERS (PVRs) & CONDITIONAL ACCESS (CA) CREATE NEW BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES FOR PAY-MEDIA OPERATORS PVRs, also known as Personal Digital Recorders (PDRs) or Digital Video Recorders (DVRs), are destined to fundamentally change the media delivery industry. A PVR is a computer hard disk, operated either manually or coupled to an interactive programme guide for intelligent recording. It offers the capacity to digitally record and play back television programming. It is capable of recording whilst simultaneously rewinding and playing back, allowing live television to be paused and, in some implementations, skipping advertisements during recording or playback. One of the factors behind the rapid success of the PVR has been the fact that hard disk prices have been falling quite rapidly (faster than RAM prices) over the past few years. During the same period, hard disk recording capacity has increased significantly. The pioneering companies behind the PVR concept during the late 1990s, TiVo and ReplayTV, have been joined by Set Top Box (STB) manufacturers, consumer electronics manufacturers, suppliers of interactive television software, as well as broadcasters and pay-media operators in their search for new revenue streams. This activity to integrate hard disk recording into other parts of the home entertainment value chain has created a large number of new product permutations. The PVR is thus undergoing an evolution from its initial use as a product to becoming a device within a service offering. PVR SYSTEMS PVRs offer the traditional VCR modes of pause, slow motion, fast-forward and rewind to enable a new way for viewers to consume programming in a non-linear way. PVRs also have the intelligence to base automatic recording decisions on previously observed user behaviour. A variety of PVR service models can be envisioned for viable commercial services:
Systems The important technological aspects of the PVR-integrated STB are:
The essential functionality of a typical PVR system is shown in the diagram below: This system provides for recording 2 sources simultaneously, whilst playing out either stored or real-time content. Other variations are possible e.g. a PVR is available with 3 tuners, where two tuners are dedicated to serving two TV sets in separate viewing environments, while the third tuner is dedicated to the hard disk. Standards In Phase 1, the TVA Forum has developed a set of open specifications that enable the inter-operable searching, selection, acquisition and management of content for PVRs. These functions are independent of the means of delivery of the service to the consumer. TVAs standards are being adapted to regional requirements in Europe by the Digital Video Broadcasting group (DVB), in the USA by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) and in Japan by the Association of Radio Industries and Businesses (ARIB) standardisation groups. Liaisons have also been developed with other important industry standards groups to ensure on-going harmonisation of efforts in this field. PAY-MEDIA & THE PVR
Compared to a broadband network, PVR services offer the pay-media operator an alternative in-home entertainment platform. The PVR-integrated STB offers several advantages:
Pay-media Requirements
The benefits of secure storage of content on the local hard disk are:
PVRs & IRDETO ACCESS CA PVR Option 1: STB Provides All PVR Functionality In this PVR variant, the STB or Integrated Receiver Decoder (IRD) descrambles the selected channel. The clear digital content is then applied to a Triple Data Encryption Standard (DES) scrambler within the STB, before it is stored on the Hard Disk Drive (HDD). Stored content that is to be viewed has to be descrambled by a key before it is presented to the STBs decompression system. The PVR is thus on or off, depending on a reserved product on the Irdeto Access smart card, which would be downloaded from the operators Subscriber Management System (SMS). This variant would allow the operator to charge additional monthly subscription fees to subscribers who purchase PVR-equipped STBs and who wish to invoke the PVR functionality. PVR Option 2: Session & Event-based PVR Management Two sub-variants are possible:
Irdeto Access is currently developing CA support for a variant that combines both session and event-based PVR management CONCLUSION Note that technological feasibility should not be confused with commercial viability. Success will be based on determining those features or services that interest the consumer to the point that they purchase the offered service. Conditional Access is an efficient solution for ensuring payment for and the proper use of advanced services capable of being delivered to users by PVR-integrated STBs. These services include VOD, interactive applications and similar revenue-generating sources for pay-media operators. The addition of a PVR capability to operator-STBs is thus likely to raise ARPU figures and reduce the time taken to amortise the cost of STB subsidies. |