Irdeto and SafeNet combine CA and DRM

Irdeto and SafeNet claim to have resolved ‘thevMobile TV protection technology war’ by announcing the world’s first solution combining conditional access and DRM. The resulting joint solution unites two normally competing technologies to reduce risk and uncertainty for broadcasters and operators and to enable mobile TV to reach its potential.

Traditionally, broadcasters and operators had to choose between conditional access and DRM when deploying mobile TV. Each solution has strengths: conditional access brings the experience of decades of deployment in cable, terrestrial, broadband and satellite, while DRM exploits open standards favoured by the mobile community.

Irdeto has more than a million mobile TV conditional access users in South Korea, South Africa and Germany, and SafeNet has the world’s first commercial DRM deployment for mobile TV in the UK.

Under the partnership, SafeNet’s DRM Fusion Toolkit4TV will be integrated into Irdeto’s mobile broadcast conditional access solution, therefore supporting: a) all networks – Irdeto and SafeNet together have deployments over DAB, DMB, DVB-H, and MBMS; b) all protection standards – the joint solution is the only one to support conditional access using DVB-OSF and DRM using DVB-18Crypt, MBMS Security, and OMA BCAST.

Through support for SimulCrypt, a part of the overall DVB standard, the joint solution even supports simultaneous deployment of multiple mobile TV protection standards within a single system. This allows the system to use OMA BCAST smartcard profile with standards-enabled handsets and SIMs, and DVB-OSF with other handsets and broadcast-only devices.