James Burt, CTO and Co-founder, VUALTO
Technologies and standards in digital rights
management (DRM) are continuing to develop rapidly. With increased market
competition and greater investment in content, providers are looking to protect
their offerings through applying an effective DRM solution with studio-approved
encryption standards. In practice, however, the current options for doing so
are various in number, making it difficult for content providers to know where
to begin. There is nonetheless an avenue for the future that shows promise, and
it all starts with the Common Media Application Format (CMAF) and Cipher block
chaining system (CBCS). But how could these technologies make the difference?
The encryption landscape
The area of DRM has been widely dominated by
three big players in the market: Microsoft with PlayReady, Google with
Widevine, and Apple with FairPlay. While each has made headway in its own
markets and applications, slightly different standards exist across each
platform. In 2016, a breakthrough in terms of standardisation was made, as
Apple and Microsoft came together to propose CMAF, with this format helping to
simplify video streaming workflows and reduce latency and costs for content
providers.
Encryption however has traditionally been
fragmented, with the three main providers opting for different solutions. Each
provider had inconsistencies in supporting CTR and/or CBC encryption
technologies. Still, 2018 saw Microsoft and Google joining Apple in supporting
the CBCS encryption mode. This breakthrough has proven to be a promising sign
for improving standardisation across the industry, and to understand the role
it could play in 2021 for content producers, it’s important to delve into its
benefits.
Bringing benefits to the content
provider and end-user
It’s understandable that content providers
are looking for simplicity and flexibility in their DRM arrangement, and any
encryption standard that works on more DRM platforms will ultimately lead to a
greater audience reach through a wider range of compatible devices. For the
content provider, combining the low latency CMAF container with CBCS encryption
enables them to stream just one file per content title to reach a majority of
devices.
CMAF also allows video to be broken down
into smaller chunks of a set duration, which can be immediately published in
near real-time, while later chunks go through processing, increasing
efficiency. Storing just one set of video fragments means the workload on encoders
is reduced, storage costs are lessened, CDN caching becomes more efficient, and
DRM ultimately becomes easier to implement.
With CBCS running a partial encryption of
content, the end-user benefits from a slight battery power saving while playing
back a video, along with the lower latency, ensuring that the viewing
experience is at an optimum level. It’s important though that content providers
are aware that CBCS encryption is primarily available only on newer devices, so
there is a limitation when it comes to how much of an audience can be reached.
This is certainly an aspect that will need to be considered in the coming years,
but this situation will also most likely improve in the future as end-users
gradually move to updated devices.
The future role of CMAF and CBCS
There are already promising signs for the
growth of CMAF and CBCS in the future as a defining standard. In terms of home
entertainment, 75%
of the smart TV sector is made up of two big players, Samsung and LG,
and they have included CBCS support through PlayReady 4.0. While the
PlayStation 4 doesn’t currently support CBCS as it was originally released in
2013, a newer PlayReady port will open up the possibility of CBCS encryption on
the recently launched PlayStation 5 and the new generation of games consoles.
The potential for increased use of CMAF and
CBCS in home entertainment, along with the adoption of CBCS across the three
main DRM providers, will open up much of the market for content providers,
including the mobile device market, which is projected to be made up almost
exclusively of Google (Android) and Apple (iOS) devices in the next few years.
True standardisation and interoperability in
DRM and encryption could therefore be on the horizon for content providers,
creating efficiencies and cost savings. In addition, the ability to provide a
device-agnostic enhanced end-user experience through the lower latency
capabilities of CMAF will allow providers to deploy real-time stats, multiple
camera angles and other experiences that were not possible via traditional
broadcasting methods.