maxdome adds MPEG DASH support using Irdeto Rights

maxdome Successfully Adds MPEG DASH Support Using Irdeto Rights

AMSTERDAM — Irdeto, a world leader in Multiscreen, Revenue Assurance and Media Protection technologies, today announced that maxdome GmbH, the most popular video-on-demand company in Germany and Austria, is using Irdeto Rights to address the industry-wide challenge of supporting different DRM solutions for web browsers through one of the world’s first deployments combining MPEG DASH and Widevine.

As browser vendors move to embed specific DRM technologies on each of their platforms, any OTT service viewed on a PC, Mac or the browser of any CE device will need to support multiple DRMs in order to ensure that all viewers can playback the content on the browser platform of their choice. This could cause a significant disruption to the user experience, and generate churn, if not addressed proactively. Operating in a highly complex OTT environment, maxdome offers a premium subscription VOD and pay-per-view service via online streaming and applications on a range of connected devices. With a heavily browser-dependent customer base, maxdome wanted to upgrade to support HTML5 browsers without plugins and a multi-DRM, MPEG DASH solution that would support that move.

With a previous strategy focused on Microsoft Silverlight, maxdome was able to move to a new model based around HTML5 and MPEG DASH streaming in early 2015 to ensure support across all browsers and expand beyond PlayReady, using Irdeto Rights to manage all DRMs and enforce maxdome’s business policies across all platforms. This ensured that customer experience was not impacted by DRM changes while allowing maxdome to plan for future clients, browsers and DRMs as the market dictates.

“Irdeto has been working with operators to resolve the problems associated with DRM fragmentation as soon as it became clear it would cause major disruption to the market,” said Richard Scott, Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Irdeto. “For maxdome, the ability to reach customers through browsers is crucial. Irdeto recognized this threat early on and offered a solution that had a quick roll-out and gave the business a flexible, easy to manage system. DRM fragmentation is a challenge that will be faced by many other operators, and they must consider how their business strategies can be impacted by this and future industry shifts in technology.”

Working with Unified Streaming to package the content in the correct format for this advanced maxdome deployment, Irdeto Rights provides an integrated solution to enforce content usage rules beyond multiple DRMs for OTT services, no matter what business models are chosen. It allows operators to simplify OTT operation by dissociation of entitlement and usage policies from DRM license server functionalities, through a set of feature-rich, DRM-neutral APIs. Offering flexibility and scalability in an easy-to-use management system, Irdeto Rights allows operators to easily enforce their business policies irrespective of DRM technology.