Content security specialist, Widevine Technologies, says that Canadian IPTV provider, SaskTel, is using its technology to secure its new, 27-channel linear and on-demand VOD service, Max HD. The service features themed programming packages, and sports, news and movies from a number of Hollywood studios with which Sasktel has signed multi-year distribution agreements, including Warner Bros. International, Paramount, NBC Universal, Twentieth Century Fox, and Sony Pictures. "To acquire the highest quality and earliest release windows for our HDTV service, SaskTel had to demonstrate we had the content security to persistently encrypt SD and HD content throughout the entire video distribution chain," SaskTel president and CEO, Robert Watson, said in a prepared statement. "We chose Widevine because they are highly regarded by Hollywood for HD content protection and are the only company that could scale to the numbers of subscribers we need to support. Additionally, Widevine meets our emerging needs to expand the secure delivery of content to the PC and mobile video platforms." According to Widevine, SaskTel has purchased an additional 50,000 of its security clients in anticipation of customer uptake of the new HDTV service. The clients are integrated for the deployment with the Alcatel iMagic middleware, Kasenna MediaBase video servers and Motorola VIP 1200HD/H.264 set-top boxes that SaskTel uses for the service. SaskTel says that it plans to invest over $310 million over the next five years to bring fiber-optic cable closer to the home, in order to increase availability of the service.
Originally Published: October 17, 2006 Part 2 in [itvt] Issue 7.00
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