Nagra announced that TVkey Cloud, the cloud-based direct-to-TV security solution developed together with Samsung Electronics, won the Pay-TV Service Innovation of the Year award at the VideoTech Innovation Awards ceremony, held alongside the Video Exchange Streaming event in London last week.
According to VideoTech Innovation Awards judges, TVkey Cloud is “an impressive and innovative piece of technology recently launched and deployed” that also addresses a key business challenge of cost and ongoing maintenance of set-top boxes. They added: “With technology at its current state, sending out boxes feels very archaic, TVkey Cloud might be the start of a much better way to watch television.”
“We are delighted to win this award for TVkey Cloud, a product we jointly developed with Samsung, to deliver unique capabilities to pay-TV operators and consumers alike,” said Sebastian Kramer, SVP Business Development and PLM at Nagra. “As a next generation solution, TVkey Cloud brings pay-TV services directly to Internet-connected Smart TVs with instant activation out of the box. It makes it easier than ever for consumers to activate and access pay-TV services, along with their favorite OTT apps, with an aggregated experience in the operator’s own branded environment. For operators it also means lower acquisition costs and less complexity while enabling them to reach a new consumer segment via Smart TVs - truly a win-win in an increasingly fragmented pay-TV space.”
TVkey Cloud leverages Internet-connected smart TVs integrated with an embedded hardware root of trust that is powered by NAGRA’s comprehensive security services platform. Such security provisions also comply with MovieLabs requirements for Enhanced Content Protection of 4K Ultra HD, HDR and early release content.
TVkey Cloud is available in Samsung TVs and is supported by the NAGRA range of conditional access systems (CAS). The solution is designed to be available to the wider ecosystem of industry players, including conditional access vendors and TV manufacturers wanting to deliver an operator-branded user experience and advanced services directly to Smart TV screens. TVkey Cloud was deployed by HD+ in Germany in September 2019.