Digital Rights Management Vendor Matrix

The landscape in which the entertainment industry thrives has undergone a drastic makeover through the past decade. From accessing few free-to-air broadcast channels to being able to receive video content through multiple sources, this has not only increased competition between service providers but also has given flexibility to consumers, who can now view what they want without the restriction of time and place. The adoption of digital formats increased bandwidth and contributed to the birth of alternate modes of viewing video, such as cable, satellite, and now IPTV. As these service providers expand their customer base, enter new geographies, and offer new ways of consuming content, it increases the risk of exposing premium content to piracy and mishandling by unauthorized users. To prevent loss of content to hackers and pirates, and to minimize the impact of financial losses as a result of such mishaps, providers are increasingly adopting technologies such as conditional access and DRM to ensure secure delivery and consumption of content.

Several vendors offer conditional access solutions to the cable, satellite, and IPTV segments. However, in this Vendor Matrix, ABI Research evaluates the top vendors in the IPTV conditional access market. Some parameters taken into consideration while evaluating include support for multiple formats, applications in other markets, customer base, and geographic penetration, among others. Sixteen different criteria are divided into two main segments: Innovation and Implementation. Each has been weighted to give a total score out of 100.

The Implementation score is derived by examining the vendor’s capacity to produce in the marketplace, independently or with partners. The existing customer base and partnerships with other vendors such as middleware, set-top box, and size of the installation have also been taken into consideration.

The Innovation score is derived from the vendor’s ability to support multiple formats, interoperability, and presence in vertical markets. Furthermore, whether vendors are offering products that are smart card–based or cardless version, the ability to offer upgrades, maintenance, and support for end devices has also been taken into consideration.

The Implementation score is represented on the X-Axis and Innovation score is represented on the Y-Axis.

Rankings



After individual scores are established for Innovation and Implementation using the above criteria, an overall company score is established using the Root Mean Square (RMS) method:




The resulting overall scores are then ranked and used for percentile comparisons.

The RMS method, in comparison with a straight summation or average of individual innovation and implementation values, rewards companies for standout performance.

For example, using this method a company with an innovation score of 9 and an implementation score of 1 would score considerably higher than a company with a score of 5 in both areas, despite the mean score being the same. ABI Research believes this is appropriate as the goal of these matrices is to highlight those companies that stand out from the others.