Nagra Kudelski says it will combine the clients of its Nagra and Conax conditional access system.
At a media briefing in Montreux, Ivan Verbesselt. SVP Marketing, Nagra, said that while the customer base for the Nagra and Conax products remained very different, there was the possibility that platforms may outgrow what Conax can do for them and with a common client could more easily be moved to the more sophisticated Nagra headend.
Conax was acquired by Kudelski Group in 2014 for €164 million. Its client base has always been amongst smaller operators as opposed to the big beasts held by Nagra itself.
Both Nagra and Conax conditional access is driven by a cloud-based security services platform.
Nagra is pressing ahead with the deployment of the NexGuard watermarking technology. The company is looking to sports rights holders that in the past have shown a greater reluctance to protect their content compared to their counterparts in the Hollywood studios.
Simon Trudelle, Nagra’s senior Director of product management, says piracy is impacting the discussions. “If you look at the strategy of some of the players English Premier League has its security requirements and that includes watermarking in place. We think this is a trend and we’re pushing hard so that sports players take the same direction as Movielabs did almost 10 years ago.”
He added that pirates are still very interested in the high quality content, even if that’s the hardest to get.
