Tim Pearson, VP, Solution Marketing at NAGRA, spoke to ttvnews about the announcements and solutions that the group will be presenting at the event in Amsterdam, ranging from increasing subscriber loyalty and extending service reach, to protecting investments and securing against business threats.

NAGRA, the world’s leading independent provider of content protection and multiscreen television solutions, will showcase its range of innovations, demonstrations and customer successes from across the Kudelski Group, at the IBC in Amsterdam.

Under the theme “Explore the possibilities beyond the horizon“, the company will present announcements and solutions that range from increasing subscriber loyalty and extending service reach, to protecting investments and securing against business threats.

“This year at IBC we’re really looking forward to reconnecting with customers and people who want to learn more about what we do”, said Tim Pearson, VP, Solution Marketing at NAGRA, who spoke to ttvnews about everything the company will be presenting at the event in September.

Create satisfied, profitable and loyal subscribers

The first of the three main categories of products and innovation that NAGRA will be presenting has to do with creating loyal subscribers. “At the moment what we see in the market is many pay TV organizations needing to get a lot closer to their consumer. With solutions like the OpenTV Video Platform, we are working with customers who are aggregating their content and remodeling what they do, so that when they present their offer to the end subscriber they can get access to all the content in one place”, the executive explained.

As an example, he spoke about the work NAGRA is doing with Claro in Colombia, where “they’ve aggregated a lot of their own content, a lot of third party content, and they’ve also brought on Netflix and they’re doing the carrier billing there as well, so that users can get their Netflix bill through their Claro bill”.

“There’s also the loyalty side of it and that’s where NAGRA Insight comes in”, he added. “NAGRA Insight is our internal smart pricing capabilities, where we work with our customers and we look at the subscriber behaviour data and we can actually start to predict trends”. This innovative solution allows operators to proactively predict changing consumer behavior, which helps them optimize investments and personalize subscriber offers to minimize churn and maximize revenue opportunities.

Extend service reach to address a broader audience

Complementing existing box-based propositions, NAGRA’s direct-to-TV solutions including TVkey Cloud are opening new channels to market, reducing complexity and lowering acquisition costs.

“What TVKey is doing is putting the NAGRA security directly onto the smart chip of the TV. So you have the best hardware security that you can have, meaning pay TV operators are allowed to bring their services directly onto the Smart TV with the same security and brand experience as they would have in a set top box”, he explained.

In addition, addressing the growing demand for linear streaming and on-demand content, NAGRA is enabling operators to extend their service reach to multiple types of devices through a common UX app and enabling innovative and strategic bundling approaches for different platforms.

“We’ve spent a lot of time building apps for different types of devices and apps that are showing the full feature set that we can power through our OpenTV Video Platform. So we’ll be showing our generic app that an operator or video service would customize, along with an array of those apps, including some that our partners have done”, he revealed.

Protect investments and secure against business threats

Intelligence-led anti-piracy solutions are accelerating both customer and industry coalition investigations by leveraging NAGRA’s Anti-Piracy Intelligence Platform and NexGuard forensic watermarking solutions.

“A lot of the work we’re doing in antipiracy and particularly in Latin America, where we’ve recently been part of Operation 404 in its fourth wave, is intelligence-led. Our teams are looking everywhere across the web to find all the key relevant connected bits of information that join together to provide that overall view of that piracy. And then we work with operators and teams that have their own anitipiracy teams on site, and helping them accelerate their investigations. One of the big tools in that is our NexGuard forensic watermarking. NexGuard is key in making sure you can detect the leak after that content is being distributed”.

Also on the security side of things, NAGRA is presenting the NAGRA Active Streaming Protection. “What that aims to do is attack streaming piracy. But where as antipiracy services come in after there is a problem, active streaming protection is all about making sure there’s something there to prevent the problem in the first place”.

Through a comprehensive security approach, advanced monitoring and analytics dashboards quantify illicit network activities, NAGRA Active Streaming Protection protects both the content and the service to maximize subscriber value, transforming anti-piracy initiatives from a cost center to a profit center.

NAGRA Scout

Complementing the showcase is NAGRA Scout. Focused on protecting consumers’ connected lifestyles, it directly addresses consumer concerns about the security of their digital lifestyles when in and away from the home. Featuring a consumer mobile app alongside a cloud-based back-office platform, it also provides operators with additional tools such as home network fault diagnostics, adding significant value to broadband service operator’s offers.

“The research we’ve been doing identified that the consumer, with the super connected lifestyle that we all have now, is really starting to be concerned about the security of their digital lifestyle. With NAGRA Scout what we’re able to do is to look into the home network, coming in through the router, and help the home center agent figure out where the threat is coming from. And it’s helping consumers protect their lifestyles when they’re at home and when they’re out as well”.

CSI Awards Finalist

At this year’s IBC, NAGRA is also a finalist in two categories of the 2022 CSI Awards: “Best Content Protection Technology” with the NAGRA Active Streaming Protection, and “Best Cybersecurity Product of Service” with NAGRA’s Holistic Cyber Protection.

“Working very closely in parallel you’ve got the NexGuard Watermarking, the Antipiracy Intelligence and the Cybersecurity piece as well. So we’re really excited that we’ve been shortlisted for the CSI Awards”, the executive said. “Our solutions bring together part of the antipiracy intelligence piece and part of the cybersecurity piece. Fundamentaly they’re two sides of the same coin. We’re offering our clients the opportunity to protect the enterprise and the content as well”, he concluded.