Intertrust and Sofia Digital team up for direct-to-TV services

Intertrust and Sofia Digital have teamed up to offer direct-to-TV services with ExpressPlay XCA 

Operators seeking to implement direct-to-smart TV applications for video services must thread the requirements of legacy broadcast systems and modern broadband systems to provide support to consumers to increase subscriber stickiness and average revenue per user.

This means robust content security that meets Hollywood studios requirements while minimising the costs of new technologies..

In light of these trends, the pair are highlighting the benefits of new standards-based technologies like HbbTV OpApp to enable operators to build their own broadcast and OTT TV services directly from smart TVs with or without a set-top box.

According to Intertrust and Sofia Digital, Intertrust XCA Conditional Access is a suitable bridge technology for this transformation.

XCA is built on the Marlin open standard for Digital Rights Management and is a “DRM in Conditional Access clothing”, in the words of the pair, meaning it is compatible with DRM systems while implementing into a transitional CA headend. Furthermore, the cost point for XCA is far lower than any other CA system. Given its availability on the majority of televisions in Europe, XCA is an easy choice for operators.

The pair say they have delivered an XCA enabled system for German platform HD+ and are looking forward to announcing more operator partners globally as we move forward.

“We wanted to provide a cost saving option for operators to be able to modernize their distribution platform through a simple API integration allowing consumers the freedom of choice to access content seamlessly. Combining Sofia Digital HbbTV Application with Intertrust ExpressPlay XCA, operators can avoid the costly set-top box device and provide customers premium Direct-to-TV services”,  said Manas Matti, Managing Director, ExpressPlay.

“Sofia Digital has been at the forefront of HbbTV and Operator Applications development. Our company is happy to participate in creating new ways to access premium broadcast and OTT content with Intertrust and smart TV manufacturers,” said Juho Mäyränpää, Sales Director at Sofia Digital.