NDS Partners With MobiTV To Demonstrate First Mobile WiMAX TV Service

January 03, 2007

DS, the leading provider of technology solutions for digital pay-TV, announced today that it has partnered with MobiTV to demonstrate the first-ever secure delivery of Mobile WiMAX TV to Ultra Mobile PCs. The integration of NDS VideoGuard with the MobiTV® service enables Mobile WiMAX operators to offer premium mobile television over a two-way IEEE 802.16e network while maintaining content rights and protecting service revenues. The new technology will be demonstrated at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show.

The solution integrates the NDS VideoGuard DRM and Conditional Access (CA) Server with MobiTV’s backend system to support the encryption of content and management of subscribers. On the client side, the two companies have integrated the NDS VideoGuard DRM and CA client into MobiTV’s mobile TV client which runs on an Ultra Mobile PC. An Ultra Mobile PC is a new category of mobile devices optimized for specific usage such as Internet-to-go, Entertainment-to-go, and Education-to-go, while providing full PC capability and versatility.

The MobiTV client connects to the video sent over the WiMAX network and displays it only after verifying subscriber rights for the service. This type of integration enables operators to protect the revenues generated from the MobiTV service, ensuring that only paying subscribers can gain access to the available channels.

The integration of the MobiTV service with NDS VideoGuard demonstrates an end-to-end pay-TV platform for WiMAX service providers. The service includes an efficient delivery mechanism for video, an electronic service guide (ESG) with channel and program information, and a TV client application. The integrated DRM offering allows operators to enforce content rights and to apply various business models to the content that is being delivered, including subscription, pay-per-view, pay-per-time, and others, appealing to different subscriber profiles.

“MobiTV offers the leading platform for delivery of TV to mobile devices and PCs. Our demonstration at CES shows how Mobile WiMAX operators can generate revenues from mobile video by supporting multiple business models and protecting their content at the same time,” said Joseph Deutsch, Vice President of Product Marketing for NDS.

Kay Johansson, CTO for MobiTV remarked: “Video and television delivery will obviously be one of the key applications for Mobile WiMAX, and a well thought out, mobile television solution providing multicast and unicast streaming is crucial for WiMAX operators trying to maximize ARPU. By integrating our solution with a key DRM player like NDS, we are showcasing how such an offering works and could be implemented with ease.”