ISSUE 04 // December 09
WHITE PAPER
CI Plus - Benefiting pay-TV operators, content providers and consumers
TV has evolved hugely over the past years with recent developments – digital, HD, 3D, user-generated content – creating new consumer expectations and new business models for operators. With consumers’ viewing habits changing fast, operators need to find secure technology to enable these new models.
An improved standard was needed to guarantee secure content viewing across many devices. The existing DVB Common Interface standard, the commonly accepted standard up to July 2007, needed re-defining to support the secure delivery of pay-TV services on a range of consumer electronic (CE) devices. Ensuring content protection is the aim of the CI Plus specification.
CI Plus goals
The technical specification, CI Plus, was created in 2007 by leading manufacturers including SmarDTV, a Kudelski Group company. The goal was to resolve copy protection issues that were not addressed by the existing common interface. CI Plus added security features to the DVB Common Interface standard to allow CI Plus-compatible CE devices, such as integrated digital TVs and set-top boxes, to access pay-TV services via plug-in CI Plus modules.
The overall goal of CI Plus certification is to address any possible security risks that content owners face when their content is accessible via CE devices. Other goals include increasing the availability of HD content, which needs stronger content protection, and protecting content during broadcast.
It not only benefits the content owners and pay-TV operators, but also the consumer.
CI Plus benefits
CI Plus provides copy-protection solutions by eliminating vulnerabilities in content protection in pay-TV content. It also improves the consumer experience with an enhanced graphical interface, which lets consumers navigate menus similar to those in set-top box middleware.
What this means for the operator is that the interfaces can be branded and set to the relevant language for each country and their subscribers. It also helps improve the user experience and enables increased retention, protection of content and subsequent revenues. CI Plus certification brings added flexibility to the operator – and helps it manage its viewers and their viewing habits to create new business models. At the same time, it also brings guaranteed security for all content.
Subscribers want to watch HD films in their homes, whether on a TV in the living room, on their laptop in the bedroom or on an iPod or mobile phone. This all forms part of the ‘home domain’ and ‘home network’. CI Plus technology can help overcome some of the barriers and limitations imposed on sharing content securely across multiple devices to create a ‘home domain and network’. This has helped establish CI Plus certification as a major partner for the future development of digital TV.
What can CI Plus achieve?
TV has evolved hugely over the past few decades and operators need new secure technology to launch new business models and satisfy consumers’ changing viewing habits. All can benefit from CI Plus.
- Pay-TV operators can offer more secure yet flexible viewing choices on different devices. This reduces subscriber churn and can also bring about higher revenues per user.
- Content providers can rest assured that their content is secure and their revenues protected.
TV has had to constantly reinvent itself to keep up with digital innovations and trends. The digital pay-TV ecosystem has so far adapted with endless possibilities to satisfy consumers’ changing viewing habits. It’s up to the operators and content providers to maintain the quality of what’s on offer by ensuring innovative ways of protecting content at the same time as opening up new avenues for interactive services.
Download the full white paper CI PLUS: Innovative security solution for consumer electronic devices (PDF) to find out more about CI Plus certification. The white paper will outline:
- how conditional access systems address decoders
- how different decoders are reached with conditional access systems
- what CI Plus brings to the Common Interface
- what level of protection CI Plus provides.
For more information about CI Plus: www.ci-plus.com
