Whether digital or analog television is a determining factor when measuring the level of piracy in a country. The more users are connected to analog TV, the greater the vulnerability to being a victim of piracy.
By Richard Santa S.
That 40% of cable TV subscribers in Latin America evade pay, has the region with one of the highest piracy rates of the entire television industry worldwide.
"The problem affects both pay-TV operators and programmers themselves." This was explained to TV Y VIDEO by Juan Esteban Medina, Electronic Engineer, MBA and independent consultant with extensive experience in the subject.
"Piracy affects operators because they are not receiving all the income they should receive since people are not paying for a service and programmers because they charge depending on the number of users who are accessing that particular channel. If the operator doesn't perceive them, neither does the programmer."
In recent years, this situation has become one of the main problems of the industry, because it is leading to the income of cable operators being in a tendency to decrease instead of grow, due to a reduction in paying users.
The solutions
Conditional access is the industry's development of helping cable operators protect themselves from piracy.
Watermarking, fingerprinting, renewable software solutions, CAS without smartcard, clone detection, a single CAS for different platforms giving convergence of services, among others, are some of the forms of protection.
There are several companies that offer systems for cable operators.
Verimatrix is one of those that works for the security of the business. To do this, he developed the VCAS system, which extends the solutions of the lines of the conditional access domain, where the focus has been the protection only of content.
The company offers security through VCAS ViewRight and secure client technologies for STBs, PCs and mobile devices, complemented by VideoMark watermark.
It also offers a proven set of subscriber interfaces to streamline multi-network operations and multi-service devices through its MultiRights. Their expertise is being used by one of Colombia's largest cable operators, UNE.
The system is based on the premise that the market must include a proactive revenue optimization approach that allows pay-TV operators to a much wider network, with their service offerings.
"This shifts the pay-TV company's core value proposition beyond content-only protection, toward a broader perspective of revenue security."
For its part, Conax presented its latest conditional access protection system. Contego is the version that replaces the CAS3, CAS5 and CAS7 systems.
This new system is focused on the premium services offered by cable operators and is compatible with business models in the market, such as subscription, pay per view, video on demand and DRM control.
It has a management system includes many important features, such as step-by-step wizards, diagnostics, notification and extensive audit logging.
A single installation of Conax Contego can support both broadcast and broadband operations with content delivery to consumer devices with or without smart cards.
This system was recently acquired by Telmex of Mexico and RCN of Colombia.
NDS's latest release for this field is videoGuard. This device can be implemented in the main adjustment boxes (STB), using smart cards.
It also offers the multi-security DRM platform for a wide range of devices, including PCs, mobile phones, connected TVs, tablets, OTT IP-STB, and game consoles.
VideoGuard enables linear sequencing and content demand directly from the operator header using adaptive streaming technologies or, alternatively, to securely transfer content from the STB/DVR to any other device in the home that can receive and play video content.
The company highlights that as it designs its own smart security platform cards, it provides the closest integration between hardware and software elements, which translates into the most secure application possible.
Juan Esteban Medina assures that it is not possible to identify which Latin American countries are most affected by the problem of piracy.
"Due to the trend of oligopolies in the television market, it is not possible to link it to a certain country. The averages are very similar in the region, although countries with a greater number of users on analog television are more affected."
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Juan Esteban Medina indicated that piracy is a situation that the television industry has to face with technology, because otherwise it can be seriously affected.
He argued that transmission technology, whether analog or digital, greatly influences the problems they face when they are falling victim to piracy.
"In analog TV there is not much to do. Splitters and coaxial cables pass from one house to another degrading the signal, affecting the return and inserting noise, which can ultimately generate dissatisfied customers who truly pay."
He added that in the case of digital TV the problem is bigger, especially if you have traditional conditional access. "The replacement of smartcards is generating large operating expenses for operators, not only because of the cost of the smartcard as such, but also because of its distribution and possible technical assistance in some cases."
The first thing cable operators must do to avoid piracy is the digitization of their signals, although it does not guarantee that the problem will be avoided 100%, if the vulnerability and risk decreases.
"Therefore, it is very important to choose an adequate conditional access, something that cable operators do not give importance today when in reality it is what should be most important, because it protects the income of the companies, which is where they should least skimp on the expense," Medina concluded.
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