Company Strategy

Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) is moving rapidly out of the lab and into commercial deployment with telecommunication operators around the world. According to Infonetics Research, revenues will soar to more than $44 billion in 2009 and 53 million households worldwide will be watching TV via broadband. IPTV is likely to revolutionize the content delivery model with a flexible combination of traditional broadcast, network-based video recording and rich Video-on-Demand (VOD). Exploiting the intrinsic two-way architecture of IPTV delivery, the viewing experience will change even more dramatically with extensive interactivity and support for viewer communities. Consumers will be able to view what they want to watch, when they want to watch it, with content in HD quality and supporting an advertiser's ability to more narrowly and accurately target viewer interests.

The content industry has a well-established distribution system with terrestrial, cable and satellite operators paying substantial guaranteed minimum royalties for material. The industry as a whole has been hesitant to embrace new channels of distribution - in particular the very word "Internet," as a fundamental component of IPTV, has raised legitimate concerns about perfect digital copies of premium programming being re-circulated across broadband file sharing services. The fact of the matter is that IPTV provides a unique opportunity to dramatically enhance the entertainment experience, while opening new revenue opportunities for studios, broadcasters and system operators. But this will only happen if content owners are satisfied that it is safe to allow their material to be distributed over IP-based networks. Fortunately, cryptographic and on-line e-commerce technologies developed for use on the Internet provide some unique advantages for video security and subscriber authentication in these new distribution systems. These technologies enable a more sophisticated level of creative content protection than seen in the prior generations of smartcard-based security systems.

Verimatrix designed its Video Content Authority System (VCAS) from the ground up for two-way and hybrid networks, incorporating pioneering security features that provide the broadest security perimeter of any content security and revenue enhancement system. From the outset, the company's design goal has been to provide complete transparency for legitimate content enjoyment while significantly raising the level of protection against all forms of content piracy.