Being able to do so is becoming increasingly important. Operators need to extend their services outside the traditional set-top and offer essentially the same content to consumer devices inside and outside the home.
"If they don't do that, then their competitive position is weakened because companies offering pure OTT services with content specialization can chip away at available revenue for that household," said Steve Christian, SVP of marketing at Verimatrix.
Early on, content owners wanted to restrict delivery rights, but the tendency recently has been to expand agreements to allow operators to offer content on multiple screens and devices. Likewise, there seems to be some effort at convergence in adaptive bitrate streaming protocols around MPEG-DASH. However, there doesn't appear to be movement on the DRM side, with the Internet giants, like Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) with Android and Chrome, creating more proprietary silos and making it more difficult for operators to smoothly navigate rights management, Christian said.
"This seems to be the way the politics are working right now," Christian said. "The benefits accrue to (having) your own ecosystem of browsers, client device types and tablets, but it does make life more complicated for those people in the video industry who need to deliver across device types."
The average household may have five to 10 devices, all of which consumers may want to use at some point for video display. And while the video delivery model for these devices continues to move toward an app-based environment, browsers still come into play, meaning that operators must take them and the associated DRM differences into account.
"If a video service works in one browser, but not another, this makes no sense to (viewers)," Christian said. "If a video service works on an iPad, but not a smart TV, does that make any sense? All these things are consumer hostile. The goal of the operator is to try to offer the same service across the number of devices that is commercially reasonable."
Not only is DRM technology across platforms and devices slightly different in terms of enforcement, but licensing rights may also differ depending on the type of content. For example, premium UltraHD content may only be available to certain types of devices to ensure security. In addition, the DRM infrastructure is dynamic, meaning that the technology on client devices gets updated frequently as operating systems and model types change.
"It is the maintenance challenge ... the lifecycle management issues that dominate people's minds when deciding to do DRM in-house," Christian said.
Verimatrix offers a so-called black box solution, MultiRights, as part of its overall Video Content Authority System (VCAS) platform. "Our role is to make sure the consumer doesn't notice the difference between device types and the operator doesn't need to manage device types in a different way."
Ultimately, having a proven DRM solution in place may make it easier for providers to secure rights in the first place, particularly with premium content like UltraHD, Christian said. "What does the content owner want to see in terms of the overall security envelope when they license content to you? There is a benefit for the video service provider to relying on a brand image and technology. Otherwise, they have to defend each technology decision they take on a case-by-case basis."