CES 2017. Kudelski’s Nagra and Samsung Electronics will create a corporate body to license the new TVkey technology, first announced at IBC 2016, to industry stakeholders.
The new body will enable open market access to the solution by licensing TVkey technology to third-party chipset, TV, dongle and conditional access (CAS) vendors. Just before the opening of this year’s CES in Las Vegas, the two companies announced that MStar EMC TV System on a Chip (SoC) will integrate the new TVkey technology as the first independ producer.
TVkey allows consumers to sign up for pay-TV services directly on select new Samsung TVs, while meeting MovieLabs requirements for Enhanced Content Protection such as 4K and HDR. It offers a route to market for 4K services without requiring additional pay-TV operator investment in set-top boxes. TVkey licensing terms and technical specifications are expected to be available to interested partners by mid-2017.
“We are excited to expand TVkey technology access to a wider ecosystem of industry players. It will ultimately help provide a faster route-to-market of 4K services for pay-TV operators and the 4K value chain as a whole,” said JongHee Han, EVP of Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics.
“By opening access to the technology, we are committed to establishing TVkey as the de facto standard for access to premium pay services directly on TV sets.”
“TVkey gives global pay-TV operators the chance to create new and profitable business models by being fully in control of the user experience whilst reducing subscriber acquisition costs for premium services and eliminating the requirement for a dedicated set-top box,” said Maurice Van Riek, Head of Content and Asset Security, Nagra.
“This reduced cost of sales and simplified sign-up process enables operators to compete more effectively against online video providers.”
