Connections

LAS VEGAS — More than 50 MESA members exhibited during NAB. Here’s what a few of them had to share at the show.

Verimatrix

When it comes to cybersecurity and confronting piracy, Jon Samsel, SVP of global marketing for Verimatrix, put it succinctly: “The bad guys go where the money is. And they’re banding together.”

Verimatrix had a hunch the future for protecting media and entertainment would be what we’re looking at today, Samsel said, where cyber security and anti-piracy measures work hand in hand to protect assets, resulting in one platform, in the cloud, managing everything at once. “Our solutions are being battle-tested in a lot of industries outside of media and entertainment,” he said. “The reality is that it’s the ecosystem of connected devices that you need to prioritise your efforts around today.”

Samsel sees content owners in a tough place when it comes to protecting content: how do you protect it and the user-experience without disruption, allow users to enjoy movies and TV content with zero security concerns?

“What’s changed is industry-scale piracy exists, where they used to just abuse a single piece of content,” he said. “Now they steal an entire stream and put it up as a service. Your entire business can be corrupted.”

With Verimatrix, you can take an entire app, run it through the company’s technology, “and in 10 minutes, it’s protected, no coding required,” he added.

At NAB, Verimatrix showed off a host of solutions, with its award-winning, studio-grade Streamkeeper super bundle of multi-DR), Counterspy, watermarking and additional content cybersecurity solutions front and centre. And while some may say DRM is an old way of protecting content, don’t be fooled: it has a crucial role to play.

“It’s a series of layered protections,” Samsel said. “DRM is locking your front door, even if they’re trying to come down the chimney. You don’t leave the front door open even if they’re attacking elsewhere, and you don’t need to spend a ton of money to trust in a comprehensive approach.”

Synamedia

Imagine being at a Premiere League, MLB or NFL game, and an amazing play occurs.

You immediately pick up your 5G smartphone and watch the replay from a dozen different angles, with all the available stats, including ball speed, season comparisons, and athlete details. Synamedia, with partner NativeWaves, is making that a reality.

The application, front and centre at their booth at NAB, features Synamedia Vivid compression, Vivid OTT with ultra-low latency and fast channel zapping, and secure delivery using Fluid EdgeCDN, all working together to augment and enhance the live sporting experience.

“We think this will be the future of in-stadium experiences,” said Julien Signès, GM of video networks for Synamedia. “For the fans it will be a great view of the in-game action they haven’t had before. It’s no longer enough for streamers to match broadcast latency and expect to keep viewers satisfied — they depend on robust, scalable technologies more than ever before.”

Streaming sports at Super Bowl-level scale, moving distribution from satellite to IP, revolutionising the way content delivery networks work … Synamedia pretty much had every service provider need imaginable covered at NAB, with its portfolio designed to cover the niche streamers through on to tier-1 operators.

At the show, Synamedia unveiled new branding for its offerings, with Synamedia Quortex the new name for its self-service, multi-tenant SaaS solutions; Synamedia Vivid for multi-cloud, single tenant solutions; and Synamedia Solid for virtualised software and video processing appliances. Additionally, Quortex Play — formerly Quortex IO— offers just-in-time live video streaming via a self-service SaaS solution. “It’s unique among just-in-time scaling services because you only incur costs as content is watched,” Signès explained.

Synamedia also showed off its Vivid PowerVu and Quortex Link cloud-based solutions, geared toward broadcasters handling affiliate distribution in support of an increasing number of live events. Company customers looking to move to IP-based distribution use Vivid PowerVu for lower costs, improved reliability and new monetisation opportunities via ad insertion. Meanwhile, Quortex Link offers one-click video distribution to reduce the time and investment associated with establishing a video distribution link. What previously took months can now be achieved in seconds.

“At NAB, we are demonstrating, through real-life experiences, exactly how our portfolio will create new experiences that will be big wins with viewers and new revenue streams for service providers,” Signès said.

During the show, Synamedia also announced that telecommunications and broadcasting infrastructure operator Cellnex Group is deploying Synamedia virtual Digital Content Manager (vDCM) to support public broadcaster RTVE across Spain.

“When we renewed our five-year contract to support RTVE’s TV signal transmission, distribution and broadcasting service earlier in 2023, we turned to Synamedia knowing that its solutions and services will meet ours and RTVE’s evolving needs over the long-term,” said Xavi Redon, product manager for Cellnex.

NAGRA

NAGRA announced several pieces of news throughout NAB week, including the announcement that Openview, South Africa’s first satellite free-to-air Service, launched the pay TV offering Ultraview by using NAGRA’s security solutions, helping to deliver themed channels, drive monetisation and increase subscriber reach.

The free-to-air television service has more than 3 million free-to-view subscribers and the protection of the new offering marks an expansion of the operator’s relationship with NAGRA.

“NAGRA has played an instrumental role as a trusted partner in evolving our business from solely a free-to-air service to now including a paid option with Ultraview,” said Khalik Sherrif, group CEO at eMedia Investments. “Knowing that all of our channels, whether free-to-air or subscription-based, are protected is essential as we invest in new content to attract new audiences.”

Currently offering two bouquets, PRIDE (comprised of two channels catering to the LGBTQIA+ community) and SPICE (comprised of two channels catering to the Indian diaspora), Openview has plans to launch two additional channels later this year.

In addition to securing existing content, NAGRA provides Openview with a scalable solution that offers the option to range additional paid content as required over time. The approach ensures the secure availability of exclusive content made available as part of these bouquets or separately. New content could include additional PPV content or pop-up channels and events.

“We are proud to extend our partnership with Openview which demonstrates our mutual teams’ desire to innovate together and use NAGRA solutions to drive and monetise change,” said Nancy Goldberg, EVP and chief marketing and sales officer for NAGRA. “We wish OpenView enormous success with their new Ultraview proposition as they explore new business models and reach new audiences.”

Dolby

The metaverse, audio books, and more … there was no shortage of news from Dolby at NAB.

Dolby announced that enterprise metaverse company Mytaverse will integrate Dolby.io in order to create realistic sound in virtual environments, essentially bringing major movie and TV quality sound into new digital frontiers.

Mytaverse is a cloud-based platform that allows 3D-immersive, multiplayer workplace environments, with companies including Zaha Hadid Architects, PepsiCo, and Dassault Aviation already tapping Mytaverse to collaborate with 3D content in virtual spaces. In addition to high-fidelity graphics, configuration, and collaboration tools in the metaverse, now the company has added a best-in-class audio experience to the metaverse with Dolby, which is also helping deliver HD and 4K video streams into the virtual world, enabling live streaming and virtual events within Mytaverse.

“Everyone thinks of the metaverse as a visual experience,” said Jaime Lopez, Mytaverse co-founder and CTO. “But the soundscape is just as important to delivering immersive experiences to our enterprise customers, who want to work in realistic virtual environments. Dolby.io allows us to create a beautiful, dynamic, and realistic soundscape for our customers. Layering it with Dolby.io’s HD audio and 4k real-time video streaming enables us to further enhance our collaboration offerings to our enterprise customers.”

Mytaverse is deploying Dolby.io to replicate how sound changes as you move through virtual space: walk away from an avatar, and their voice becomes lower, walk up to a speaker and turn your head, and the sound orientation on the speaker changes.

Dolby.io, the new developer platform by Dolby Labs, puts decades of Dolby sight and sound technology into the hands of developers, and is geared toward real-time streaming, communications, and media processing solutions. The platform includes a suite of self-service APIs, SDKs, and sample apps that enable developers to quickly deploy real-time streaming services with sub-second latency.

Additionally, just prior to NAB, Dolby announced that Audible, a creator and provider of premium audio storytelling, launched Dolby Atmos on Audible, a collection of immersive, cinematic listening experiences in spatial sound. The Dolby Atmos collection highlights the talents of a variety of actors, writers, directors, sound designers, and other creators across multiple genres, including feature-length multi-cast productions, soundscapes, live performances, and podcasts.

The launch collection includes more than 40 of the service’s most popular Audible Originals, available for the first time in spatial audio with Dolby Atmos, as well as new titles like “The Little Mermaid,” narrated by Leigh-Anne Pinnock, and the Audible Theater production “Marrow.” The Dolby Atmos titles are available to all Audible members to stream and download through the Audible app on compatible iOS and Android Dolby Atmos-enabled mobile devices.