Nagra teams up with Samsung for TVkey Cloud

TV technology provider Nagra has teamed up with Samsung Electronics, the market leader in home entertainment for over ten years, have announced the launch of TVkey Cloud, providing enhanced content protection for smart TVs equipped with Nagra’s TVkey hardware based root of trust.

TVkey Cloud builds upon the existing TVkey specification deployed in the market today. While the TVkey system using external USB dongles is the reference for one way broadcast pay TV solutions, the growing availability of internet-connected smart TVs opens up new possibilities to combine the security capabilities of the TVkey embedded hardware in the TV with security management systems in the cloud, according to Nagra.

TVkey Cloud is open to a wide ecosystem of industry players, including conditional access vendors and TV manufacturers, and complies with MovieLabs requirements for Enhanced Content Protection of 4K Ultra HD, HDR, and early release content. Samsung will launch the first TVkey Cloud in its 2019 lineup of Smart TVs.

All new TVkey Cloud Smart TVs are fully compatible with TVkey USB dongles and will for the first time, allow consumers to immediately access premium broadcast content on their new Smart TV through a TV app with the ease of access as the established OTT service providers.

“With TVkey Cloud, we are enabling impulse purchase of pay TV content on any Samsung Smart TV without requiring any additional hardware, lowering the subscription costs and removing entry barriers. Consumers will be able to activate their pay TV services instantly as part of the initial TV set-up, making it even easier than ever to access pay TV services and enjoy their favorite programming on their new Samsung TV set. At the same time, it enables a no-CAPEX business model that gives service providers a cost-optimized path to a premium service,” said Maurice Van Riek, SVP Content and Asset Security for Nagra.

Nagra is exhibiting at IBC on stand 1.C81.