Driving DASH industry adoption for VoD and Live TV premium content protection: Starting from Common Encryption applied to MPEG-DASH we are able to playback streamed content in the browser without plugins via W3C HTML5 Media Source Extensions (MSE) and Encrypted Media Extensions (EME). This demo showcases playback of Microsoft PlayReady DRM protected media content on various platforms, including Chromium browser and Opera SDK on Linux with an integrated PlayReady CDM, which is based on the Open Content Decryption Module (OCDM). Furthermore, Microsoft’s Edge browser (on Windows 10) adds playback support for HEVC encoded MPEG-DASH streams, which enables efficient 4k/UHD streaming.

Thomson Video Networks has a long history of delivering superior video quality at the headend for very demanding applications such as satellite broadcasting where bandwidth is scarce, and the ViBE VS7000 multiscreen video system is another example of Thomson's outstanding compression performance. Picture quality becomes crucial for the end user as the average display size used to watch Over-The-Top (OTT) content continues to grow.

Multiscreen TV

Delivering high-quality video certainly helps to reduce churn and increase customer loyalty, but compression performance is also about increasing the HDTV eligibility footprint on ADSL networks, whether IPTV is delivered through a managed multicast network or through adaptive bit rate encoding (ABR).

Compression performance is also beneficial to operators working with Content Delivery Network (CDN) companies because they are usually charged per GB for the transport over a CDN network.

Hence, a lower bit rate for a given video quality will directly translate into OPEX savings. The Thomson ViBE VS7000 video system encompasses Thomson's next-generation compression platform for outstanding picture quality in an all-IP environment, with live broadcast-quality encoding.

By integrating the new HEVC compression standard into the ViBE VS7000, Thomson Video Networks is also paving the way for HD and Ultra HD content on any kind of device and any kind of network.

• Superior picture quality for all screens, from smartphones and tablets to smart TVs
• Flexible distribution solution for simultaneous delivery to IPTV, Mobile phones, tablets & PCs
• Support of all major industry codecs and formats including MPEG transport streams, Adobe® Flash®, Apple® HTTP Live Streaming, Microsoft® Smooth Streaming, MPEG-Dash and HEVC
• Easy integration with other subsystems such as CDNs, CAS, DRM
• Full automatic redundancy management across complete system
• Versatile architecture with smooth upgrade path to future compression or streaming formats
• Easy workflow customization and service provisioning
• Scalable from 1RU server to multiple blade server chassis

bitmovin is specialized in adaptive streaming solutions based on MPEG-DASH and Apple HLS, which can be used to offer live as well as on demand content in highest quality (HD, UHD/4K) without stalls and startup delays. Therefore, bitmovin offers its cloud-based transcoding and streaming platform bitcodin to generate the content for adaptive streaming via the Internet as well as its bitdash MPEG-DASH players to consume this content in the best quality (up to 100 % higher media throughput as other solutions). Using bitmovin's products it's possible to have one technology and solution for multiple platforms (Web, TV, Smartphone, etc.) and to use cost-effective HTTP delivery infrastructure, which both helps to reduce costs.

Features and Assets

• OTT adaptive streaming solutions based on MPEG-DASH and Apple HLS
• Cloud-based transcoding and streaming as-a-service
• bitcodin High Speed Cloud Transcoding of 4K and beyond: Multiple times faster than realtime
• bitdash MPEG-DASH and HLS Player: Based on HTML5 with a Flash fallback
• Live-Streaming as well as VoD Transcoding and Streaming

BitTubes GmbH is a spin-off of the Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS. Our technology allows the viewer to interact with objects within a video and access any kind of supplemental information, such as websites, documents or other multimedia content. We will showcase how interactive video is created and distributed through cloud based media services to any type of device ranging from PCs, Smartphones, Tablets to Smart TVs. 

The HTML5 based solution offers players and tools for both, media companies as well as individual users to create, manage and share interactive content through object-based media annotations, comments and supplemental information across Social networks custom made media campaigns.

We are proud to introduce suitest, an ambitious and exciting digital testing suite. Suitest enables QA specialists to quickly and easily test connected TV apps across a wide range of connected devices from anywhere in the world.

Faulty QA can destroy months of development. Before suitest, testing across multiple platforms and devices took hundreds of hours. Suitest allows a user to define test cases based on a ready app, using the web interface. Suitest records your interactions with the app and the app’s states at each step, and can then perform parallel tests on hundreds of devices in a matter of minutes.

Suitest does not use simulated testing. All tests are conducted on authentic devices.

Features and Assets:

• A streamlined application to remotely test Connected TV applications across hundreds of connected TVs and set-top boxes on the market
• Cuts costs by saving hundreds of man-hours on QA testing
• Suitest uses remote “device zoos” to eliminate the need to purchase expensive devices for testing purposes
• Drastically reduces the likelihood of human error
• Provides essential feedback to manufacturers about the compatibility, functionality and speed of applications on their specific devices, and can compare this across their own – and their competitors’ – devices
• By streamlining the testing process remotely, suitest allows applications to enter into the market faster – ahead of the competition

The Open Content Decryption Module (OCDM) is a Content Decryption Module (CDM) compliant to W3C Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) specification to be used with HTML5 based browser environments. OCDM source code is now available on GitHub.

The Open Source Content Decryption Module has been developed by Fraunhofer FOKUS with the aim to be suitable and interoperable for as many systems and providers as possible. The code is accessible for everyone on GitHub.

It is intended for OEMs, DRM providers, system integrators and browser vendors looking to enable playback of premium video content via EME. The CDMi itself contains most CDM logic and is a c++ wrapper for the embedded platform DRM. This implementation offers interoperable HTML5 based protected video delivery, DRM interoperability based on Common Encryption (CENC) and MPEG-DASH support.

• Interoperable HTML5-based content protected video delivery

• EME-compatible Open Source CDM

• Compliance with CDMi specification

• Compatible with Microsoft PlayReady

• Integration with Chromium/Blink

The HbbTV Application Creation Toolkit – HAT – presents a CMS for creation of HbbTV applications, which allows content creators without specific technical skills to build interactive TV applications and is developed by Fraunhofer FOKUS' Competence Center Future Applications and Media (FAME). So far HAT covers a simple themes collection which can be accessed through the editor UI. Here the content editor can choose from different layouts and designs regarding the background and color scheme. The layouts include basic modules, broadcast or IP-video, text, image and live blog. The live blog includes an external live blog coming via social media APIs. We see a great potential in the uptake of programme-related HbbTV apps creating new markets for developers and technology providers.

HbbTV Application Creation Toolkit Editor

HAT provides an editor/CMS with a set of GUI templates that can be filled with text, images audio and video content via a responsive user interface for desktop and mobile devices alike. The content palette can be extended by customized modules, e.g. for display of social-media feeds.

Benefits

• Fast and easy creation of programme-related HbbTV applications

• Provides a set of App templates tailored to the TV screen

• Content can be added via an easy to use web interface

• Supports HbbTV app developers by offering templates and modules like interactive video and photo gallery, text, menus, social media and companion screen support

Linked data for service quality and experience gain in DVB-T/T2 networks. Digital service broadcast suffers from misconfigurations at the source and dynamically changing signal propagation conditions. The lack of feedback leads to undisclosed service degradation and decreased experience. Selective professional monitoring is costly and often not enough to cover large areas. 

Our Broadcast Probing System offers cloud-based continuous near real-time monitoring of broadcast networks by utilizing massively distributed low-cost probes. Controlled either individually or in groups the probes are securely instructed to execute scheduled jobs like scanning, tuning and transport stream inspection. The collected spatiotemporal data links RF characteristics and stream quality (e.g. Signal levels, TS packet errors), multiplexed tables (e.g. AIT/HbbTV, EIT/EPG) and AV dumps to allow for live analysis, evaluation and integration into monitoring environments.

Features and Assets:

• Feedback channel for DVB-T/T2 networks to detect potential misconfigurations and service degradation 

• Near real-time monitoring of digital service broadcasts (RF level, TS level, AV level, ETSI TR 101 290)

• Remote control of individual and groups of low-cost probes (Android, Raspberry Pi)

• Execution of scheduled probing jobs and secure instant access (PKI, TLS)

• Analysis and evaluation on live and historical linked data (JSON-LD)

• Integrates with existing monitoring systems and offers a comprehensive API (SNMP, MQTT, REST/HTTPS).