Samsung this week has said that they will work with Nokia to make their respective DVB-H services interoperable. Given that the act DVB-H datacasting specification is now quite tight, that should present little problem except perhaps for the differences the two camps have had in the past over Digital Rights Management implementations.
Samsung is known as a company that is happy to support almost all standards, and already has a DVB-H OSF client in the bag. Now it will work with Nokia to create OMA BCAST version and a DVB 18Crypt version.
The two handset makers said they would work together to achieve interoperability between their DVB-H handsets to deploy in multi-vendor mobile TV services in 2007.
“Within DVB-H technology, Samsung has already commercialized handsets
based on the Open Security Framework (OSF) standard, and will develop the OMA BCAST standard based mobile TV handset. Its inclusion in our product portfolios will enhance our customers’ flexibility in choosing suitable standards based on their business models,” says Kwang Suk Hyun, Senior Vice President of Alliance Team of Samsung Electronics.
DVB-H comes out of the DVB Project and there are multiple DRM standards that are being used for real world implementations, confusing the market. One is Open Media Alliance (OMA) DRM based, adjusted to allow for a broadcast only environment, while two other flavors come from the DVB Project called Open Security Framework and 18Crypt. Nagravision and NDS support OSF in their product line and have championed its use at DVB, while Nokia has stood almost alone in pushing 18Crypt as an alternative standard.
Because devices which are not handsets can pick up DVB-H signals the OMA standard, which had always assumed that it would have a cellular return path for authentication, had to be substantially re-engineered for DVB-H. The NDS Nagra project group has always argued that scant regard would be given to offline clients and that a hardware element in the handset is vital to ensure content security at a level that will keep Hollywood happy.
So far NDS has completely failed to land a major DVB-H deal and sits on just one out of the 70 odd mobile TV trials that use DVB-H globally, despite it being neck and neck with Nagravision in the pay TV market for conditional access, while Nagra has made quite strong inroads in Europe into mobile TV.
“Nokia warmly welcomes the collaboration in accelerating the adoption
of DVB-H based mobile TV services to the market. We see that the OMA BCAST standard is essential in launching mobile TV services on a global scale,” said Harri Mannisto, Director, Multimedia, Nokia.
Also this week Israeli security designer Discretix, said it has partnered with German OMA DRM champion CoreMedia, and also produced a secure embedded client for DVB-H.
Discretix embeds secure clients onto SIM cards and Flash memory using just 60,000 logic gates in part of a memory card. This gives it support for all the major encryption standards including PKI, symmetric encryption and hashing, it says it has squeezed standard security down onto the smallest space possible.
It has also built in countermeasures to stop some of the better known ways of cracking on-chip security, such as simple power analysis, differential power analysis, timing analysis and fault analysis.
The CoreMedia Discretix system supports the OMA BCAST DRM profile as well as the DVB-H 18Crypt profile and the two companies says it significantly reduces the cost of putting together a multi-scheme security system for mobile TV.
‘Working closely with Discretix, CoreMedia has created a standards- compliant platform that is the most flexible and reliable of its
kind. We believe this solution will form the core of a new
generation of exciting mobile broadcast services,’ said Willms Buhse,
Executive Director, CoreMedia.
This week a group of suppliers and operators in the mobile TV market including Digitenne, Ericsson, KPN, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks, NXP, Sony Ericsson, Telef’nica, O2, T-Mobile, Vodafone and ZTE today all announced support for a Mobile TV profile developed within the Broadcast Mobile Convergence Forum (bmcoforum). The profile simplifies the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) Mobile Broadcast Services Enabler Suite (BCAST) specification to push for faster implementation times.
The three main features supported by this profile are an advanced program guide, support for multiple broadcast technologies, and support for content and service protection using the Smart Card Profile based on a SIM Card.