NEOTION launches CI Plus 1.3 CAM for Russia's AKADO

NEOTION strengthens its position on the Russian market by launching a new CI Plus 1.3 CAM for AKADO

AUBAGNE — Akado Telecom, a key cable network operator in the Moscow region, has recently selected NEOTION, a French company providing secure solutions for digital TV industry, for its Advanced Security CAM.

NEOTION successfully launched a CI Plus 1.3 CAM for AKADO fully certified as compatible with the Verimatrix Video Content Authority System (VCAS™) for DVB cardless Pay-TV solution.

NEOTION is reinforcing its position on the Russian market with a key partner as AKADO confirming a long-term relationship. Increasing the value-proposition of the CAM as a recognized green, smart and cost-effective device for Pay-TV Operators, NEOTION will support AKADO to compete successfully on the market, while keeping TV viewers’ satisfaction at its top level in a daily use.

“This project is a long-time cooperation between our two companies and we are pleased today to confirm our position in Russia with such a quality partner like AKADO. We are confident for the future in jointly developing a real success story with the CAM,” said Olivier DEMOLY, Sales & Marketing Director at NEOTION.

Please feel free to visit NEOTION booth at ANGA, in Koln, 7-9 June, Stand H13 in Hall 10.2

Neotion partners Viaccess-Orca; introduces CryptoGuard CAS

Neotion has expanded its partnership with Viaccess-Orca.

As a result, it now offers seamless integration between Viaccess-Orca’s Adaptive Sentinel dual card and cardless Conditional Access System (CAS) and its own Conditional Access Module (CAM) portfolio.

Commenting on the development, Olivier Demoly, sales and marketing director at Neotion, said: “Viaccess-Orca and Neotion have a longstanding working relationship, allowing us to provide customers with an innovative dual card and cardless solution that is both secure and flexible. Ultimately, this enables pay-TV operators to choose the best way to address the market: starting with a cardless-based solution, with the opportunity to move toward a card-based solution. This next step in our partnership with Viaccess-Orca is a solid basis for future CAM business development”.

Chem Assayag, EVP marketing & sales at Viaccess-Orca, added: “Viaccess-Orca’s Adaptive Sentinel solution is a unified, end-to-end card and cardless conditional access system that is secure and cost-effective, enabling quick time-to-market for pay-TV services. Together with Neotion CI Plus CAM, we offer even more flexibility, making it easy for operators to deliver content securely”.

CAM portfolio enlarged with CryptoGuard CAS
Separately, Neotion has enlarged its CAM portfolio with the CryptoGuard CAS. The CryptoCAM allows pay-TV operators to enhance the subscriber’s viewing experience while keeping control over user content.

Olivier Demoly said: “Neotion is very pleased to affirm its partnership with Cryptoguard, a highly successful Swedish developer and vendor of CAS and DRM solutions. Flexibility, adaptability and customization to meet with our customers’ satisfaction are a common motto for CryptoGuard and Neotion and we are confident in being jointly successful in the CAM market!”

Hannu Vunnel, marketing director at CryptoGuard, added: “We are pleased to cooperate with NEOTION to provide high-grade security for its innovative CAM products. CryptoGuard’s low entry cost and ‘pay-as-you-grow” model makes it a viable option for any size of operator. We are delighted having Neotion as one of our partners for our further success within the market”

Neotion will be at Stand H13, Hall 10.2 at ANGA COM 2016.

Neotion unveils Neohome at IBC

Neotion will unveil Neohome, a complete and secure smart home ecosystem, based on Neotion’s range of Home Gateways and its in-house security processor, compatible with a large range of wireless smart home devices.

The Smart Home market, which forms part of the future of IoT, promises huge growth and revenue, with more
than 100 billion IoT devices to be deployed in the next 10 years across the globe. Built on its core ASIC and
security foundations, Neotion will offer a wide range of Smart Home products and services. In line with any
existing or future OTT strategies, this will open new revenue opportunities for Operators and Broadcasters.

Neotion positions itself as a smart home technology solution provider by offering a complete ecosystem, driven
by a range of Gateways (Zigbee, Z-Wave Wave, etc.) and home automation devices including secure Wi-Fi Cameras, to meet two important consumer demands: safety and security and lighting and energy control.

The two worlds, Entertainment and Smart Home, will be combined on a single application, accessible from all screens (Including tablets and smartphones) in the house, but also the TV. It will be possible for example to receive notifications, view a video stream from the cameras, while watching TV in the living room or in the bedroom.

“By combining these two worlds of entertainment and Smart Home, Neotion opens interesting and exciting perspectives: Our global road map already plans to go even further, in Media content access and management, Music distribution solutions and advanced links with Social Networks.” says Gregory Wieczorek,president of Neotion.

STB-less pay TV expands to MEA with recent CAM launches

STB-less pay TV expands to MEA with recent CAM launches

Sub-Saharan pay DTT provider GOtv has deployed CI+ Conditional Access Modules (CAMs), enabling its channels to be viewed on compatible integrated digital TV sets without the need for a set-top box (STB). The deployment is currently limited to GOtv’s Kenyan and Ghanaian operators, but could be expanded to the remaining six countries of its pay DTT network.  Go TV’s announcement follows a similar launch in the MENA region by the satellite operator My-HD earlier this year. GOTV has branded its CAMs as ‘GOcard’, and they are being provided by French vendor Neotion. CAMs enable pay TV content to be viewed directly on a television set, without the help of a set-top box (STB) provided the TV set has a digital tuner (iDTV) and a DVB-common-interface (DVB-CI) slot, also known as PCMCIA slot.

Our take
The impact of CAMs on pay TV STB shipments has been geographically constrained to Europe, but these MEA launches could lead to further declines in EMEA STB demand. CAM modules have been eating into STB sales in Europe significantly since the introduction of the more secure CI+ standard in 2009; CAM shipments in Europe as a proportion of region’s total digital pay TV receivers grew from 2% in 2009 to 7.1% or 5.3 million in 2013. Europe is the only market currently suited to significant CAM usage because it the only market with a large installed base of CAM compatible TV sets.  This is the result of a 2002 EU mandate for the inclusion of DVB-CI slots in all TV sets with digital TV tuners and screen diagonal >30cm, which combined with the migration to DTT broadcasting drove the installed base of compatible TVs to grow from 9 million in 2002 to 412 million in 2013.

Despite strong growth between 2009 and 2012, CAM growth did start to slow down in 2013 primarily due to changing market dynamics and CAMs technical limitations. CAMs can neither route nor decrypt IP-delivered content, nor can they handle multi-stream reception. This means that features such as multi-channel DVR and almost all IP-reliant services remain unsupported. This may not have been a drawback for CAMs a decade ago, when TV was largely linear and less interactive, but markets such as Europe have since evolved. Established pay TV markets such as Western Europe have reached a stage of saturation where Pay TV providers have to rely on advanced services to stay competitive and boost ARPUs. These services include IP VoD, multiscreen, DVR and cloud-based offers. Since CAMs cannot fully support these services, operator CAM deployment remains confined to supporting the most basic experience; the delivery of linear digital channels alone.

Emerging markets such as the Middle East and Africa (MEA) are still largely focused on delivering the basic digital pay TV needs of the end user. This means that CAMs technical limitations are not yet an entry barrier for these markets. Instead, the main barrier to entry is the general lack of availability of compatible TVs. Government mandates for CAM compatibility in digital TV sets are currently absent, but would be a key driver. However, the presence of multi-national pay TV operators in MEA can also be an appeal for TV manufacturers looking to introduce CAM compatibility in their products. TV manufacturers like to produce sets that can be sold across – an entire region rather than a specific country, for production efficiency. Due to low margins on TVs, manufacturers avoid the inclusion of extra functionality like DVB-CI, as it adds to BOM costs. Therefore, it makes little or no economic sense for TV manufacturers to introduce DVB-CI to serve a single operator in a single country, but if that operator is present across an entire region sufficient scale could be achieved. The presence of multi-national operators like GOtv and MyTV in MEA potentially offers this scale. This means that if TV manufacturers launch a specific product for such an operator, it could be scaled out to multiple operations. Chinese vendor Hisense has already launched a CAM compatible TV product for GOtv in Ghana and Kenya, which also is likely to be rolled out to GOtv’s remaining 6 countries soon. MEA is also a price-competitive pay TV market – where demand for premium features such as smart TV and UHD is not generally high. Making TVs compatible with CAM can serve as a differentiator for TV manufacturers looking to stand-out in such a market.

MEA is an important market for the future growth of CAMs and also for STBs. From a STB perspective, MEA will be the third largest growth market for pay TV STB shipments after Eastern Europe and Latin America. STB makers may not currently see CAMs as a big threat in emerging markets because it is currently limited in these regions by the general lack of compatible host devices. Should a future government mandate be placed, or should pay TV CAM availability encourage TV manufacturers to introduce compatible products in the region, as many Chinese companies including TCL and Hisense are already looking to do, this threat can potentially impact STB growth as it has in Western Europe.

Neotion integrates Verimatrix into CI+

Neotion says it has successfully integrated the Verimatrix Video Content Authority System (VCAS) for Broadcast-Hybrid revenue security solution in its latest generation of CI Plus 1.3 Conditional Access Module (CAM).The announcement was made at the CSTB expo in Moscow.

The Neotion Advanced Security CAM with VCAS for Broadcast-Hybrid directly plugs into any connected CI Plus 1.3 TV set with built-in IP interface.

It combines the standard-based VCAS Broadcast-Hybrid solution for satellite, cable and terrestrial broadcast networks with an IP return path via Internet/broadband network. The product is now compliant with the latest Verimatrix high level security requirements based on embedded chipset protection – while enabling two-way key and entitlement management over IP networks only.

NEOTION, Broadpeak and Eutelsat to show OTT over satellite at CSTB

NEOTION, Broadpeak and Eutelsat provide satellite OTT delivery solution for smartphones, tablets and 4K screens

AUBAGNE — NEOTION, a French high-tech company providing innovative solutions for the international digital TV market, today announced that it has teamed up with Broadpeak and Eutelsat to provide a global solution to enable Free-To-Air or Secured OTT Services for Smartphones, Tablets and 4K screens. With the combination of NEOTION’s DVBeacon platform, Broadpeak’s nanoCDN system and Eutelsat’s SmartLNB, Satellite and Direct-To-Home operators can now deliver live OTT TV channels and interactive services to millions of subscriber devices over the satellite, which can be made available everywhere at a cost-effective price. The joint solution will be presented for the first time live at the forthcoming CSTB 2015 exhibition, in Moscow at the Eutelsat booth 2-201.

Considering the rise of mobile and tablet video consumption, it is key to enhance the attraction of Pay-TV via Satellite for existing and new subscribers by enabling multiscreen and OTT services independent from any IP infrastructure.

The costs of a traditional unicast-based CDN (Content Delivery Network) increase with the audience while satellite operational costs remain flat, meaning that the global solution, including the DVBeacon OTT Gateway, becomes cost-effective above a few hundred thousands viewers/subscribers.

SmartLNB and IP multicast solutions over Satellite allow for a delivery of OTT Services with a broadcast service quality to all subscribers independently from the broadband infrastructure available. The return channel provided by the Smart LNB allows to deliver the DRM right clearance, exchange of encryption keys when no Internet is available.
Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) streaming and end-to-end DRM enable to address any mobile screen individually, thus solving QoS issues on WLAN, decoding performance and security on devices.

The Russian market is one of the most dynamic markets and one where Satellite and Satellite platform operators will have to propose innovative solutions, especially considering the coming of the analog switch off and evolution of UltraHD and multiscreen offers. It is therefore a pleasure for NEOTION to demonstrate this global solution at CSTB in Moscow to take part of the Russian Satellite market evolution.

Globally, this complete ecosystem can benefit and feed the needs of all Satellite operators.

“The combination of Broadpeak’s nanoCDN application with NEOTION’s DVBeacon gateway and Eutelsat’ SmartLNB is groundbreaking because it significantly extends the reach of broadcasters inside the connected home,” said Jacques Le Mancq, CEO at Broadpeak. “By leveraging multicast technology, broadcasters can affordably deliver live TV channels to any screen, enabling them to meet the increasing consumer demand for a full adaptive, multiscreen television experience.”

“We believe that the DVBeacon, which is based on our latest chipset technology, complemented with Eutelsat’s Smart LNB and Broadpeak’s nanoCDN application will allow NEOTION to enable DTH operators to provide full and competitive OTT Services in addition to their current broadcast Pay-TV offer and next UHD content offering”, said Christophe Genevois, Neotion’s CTO. “Moreover, NEOTION is pleased to work with partners such as Broadpeak, for their very innovative and competitive system, and Eutelsat for their continued drive and capacity to innovate and generate new attractive solutions to enhance the operator ecosystem and content delivery to Satellite viewers”.

Please feel free to visit EUTELSAT at CSTB, Hall 2 booth #201, for a demonstration or to contact us. Please feel free to visit NEOTION at CSTB, Hall 4 booth #593 to see our demonstrations.

NEOTION and Sat-Trakt launch Cardless CAM in Serbia

AUBAGNE — NEOTION introduces its new Cardless solution for the Serbian Cable Pay-TV operator Sat-Trakt.

The NEOTION CAM is powered by Irdeto Media Content Protection on Cardless features and registered as a CI Plus 1.3 CAM ready.

Sat-Trakt subscribers will now benefit from the easiest way to watch digital Pay TV.

“Sat-Trakt is our key partner in Serbia for Irdeto CAM distribution since almost three years now. At the origin of our cooperation we accompanied them with a smartcard based product. Today we are very pleased to make our partnership evolve on CAM accordingly to Irdeto product roadmap. With this new operation we strengthen our position in Serbia with an important actor in the region, willing to catch other deals based 

NEOTION shows CI Plus 1.3 CAM ecosystem at ANGACOM2014

With NEOTION CI Plus 1.3 CAMs, Pay TV Operators can now provide Secure OTT Services to their subscribers

AUBAGNE — NEOTION demonstrates that the ecosystem surrounding its CI Plus 1.3 Conditional Access Module associated with a Connected TV will once again enhance Pay-TV attraction for the subscriber.

By using the CI Plus 1.3 Specific Application Support (SAS) resource in the CAM, the OIPF agent of the Connected TV set and the HbbTV standard as the user interface for Over The Top (OTT) services delivery, NEOTION demonstrates that live TV and broadband based services (VOD, Catch-up…) can be combined within a single offer.

Indeed, any subscriber equipped with a Neotion CI Plus 1.3 CAM will be able to receive the Operator’s OTT VOD services. The Neotion CAM merges linear broadcasting and extended on-demand services by focusing on the content security protection.

Through the CAM, subscribers’ references can be identified through the unique rights management from any Conditional Access System. The SAS resource allows the CAM to communicate with the Operator’s customised HbbTV application and authorizes the subscribers to access the video catalogue through the Internet connection.

Combining enhanced features of the Neotion CAM and the Connected TV, the subscribers could now enjoy the best of both, broadcast and broadband services.

NEOTION increases its CONAX CAM range

AUBAGNE — NEOTION confirms its partnership with Conax and increases its CAM portfolio for Pay-TV Operators requiring a CAM solution with a Conax Conditional Access System for TV content protection.

The NEOTION CI Plus CAM portfolio is compliant with the latest CI Plus 1.3 Standard specifications allowing Conax customers to access premium Pay-Tv content with OTT (Over-The-Top) services such as video on demand or catch-up TV, while increasing control over content usage (Unique Pin Code handling or Host Control v2).

The NEOTION Chipset Pairing CAM portfolio embeds the latest Conax STB Kit 6.0 specifications throughout the range: Standard DVB-CI Consumer CAM, CI Plus 1.3 CAM and Professional CAMs.

NEOTION Conax CAM portfolio:

NEOTION CAM range	DVB-CI	CI Plus 1.3	PRO DVB-CI
Non-Pairing CAM	✓	Not applicable	✓
Pairing CAM	✓	✓	✓

The NEOTION Consumer DVB-CI CAM available in Non-Pairing & Pairing versions can descramble up to 2 services simultaneously: live TV and Picture in Picture (PIP) – if supported by the end-user TV set or set-top-box.

The NEOTION Pro DVB-CI CAM Pairing or Non-Pairing is able to descramble up to 2, 4, 6 or more than 7 services simultaneously according to the Operator signalization (video, audio and subtitles PID allocation…) and the Conax Smart Card configuration. The full range is offered in 4 different packages to suit the Operator collective distribution needs based on a large panel of Integrated Receiver Decoders (IRDs), all tested in Neotion labs prior to release.

For more information, please visit NEOTION booth at ANGA COM, Level 10.2 booth #J36.

UPC DTH offers NEOTION CI+ 1.3 conditional access module

AUBAGNE — Neotion, a French high-tech company providing innovative solutions for the international Digital Television market is proud to announce that it is making available to UPC DTH S.à r.l. customers through local distributors, the first Conditional Access Module CI+ 1.3 which includes changeable personal profiles. In combination with a compatible TV sets, this new flexible technology will allow UPC DTH’s customers to enjoy, without an additional receiver, freeSAT programming in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia and will later be introduced for UPC Direct customers in Hungary.

With Neotion expertise, UPC DTH will change the digital experience of its customers by offering them the possibility to access a new unobtrusive technology. More compact and environmentally friendly, the CI+ module, which is an invisible cable free satellite receiver, will go unnoticed in the customers’ living rooms. The CI+ module is an extremely user-friendly tool which plugs directly into the TV. Customers will integrate the freeSAT or UPC Direct smart card in the CI+ slot of their compatible TV and along with the external satellite dish, that’s it… done!

Customers will be able to navigate through their channel line-up and control their TV with only one remote control. The CI+ module offers many advantages, including the personal profile feature that allows the automated installation and listing of all channels for TV sets that are CI+ 1.3 compatible.

This module requires a TV set with a DVB-S tuner, a CI+ compatible slot (CI+ 1.2 or 1.3 and above version) and an active freeSAT or UPC Direct service. As with all satellite services, an external satellite receive dish is required.

“In addition to our existing product line, we are pleased to see the availability of this new CI+ module for our customers. This flexible equipment will allow them to fully enjoy our services easily, as well as take advantage of the lower priced packages we make available for customers who purchase their own receivers and related equipment,” said Jim Helfgott, Vice President of Marketing and Sales for UPC DTH. He added, “As a customer focused company, it is our priority to come up with new ideas and innovations that improve the user experience. We could not imagine a better partner than Neotion and its teams to achieve this goal”.

Xavier Teil, Head of Pre Sales and Support Director for Neotion said “This is a real accomplishment for Neotion and our teams to release our first CI+ 1.3 module with Operator Profile in UPC DTH’s markets. The launch in several countries is a great experience and we look forward to seeing the results! This project with UPC DTH was remarkable and I hope to keep working with them for the years to come”