DIAL Offers Open Alternative to Apple AirPlay

Netflix and YouTube have led the development of a simple protocol known as DIAL to allow second screen apps to talk to server applications on network-connected devices and displays. Consumer electronics companies including Samsung and Sony have contributed to the development.

YouTube, Dailymotion, Hulu, Disney and the BBC are among those interested in developing applications. It offers a simple open alternative to Apple AirPlay or other solutions such as Miracast and could change the way apps work with network connected televisions.

DIAL, which stands for DIscovery And Launch, is a simple protocol that second screen apps can use to discover and launch apps on first screen devices.

For instance, it means that users can simply launch a compatible mobile app and tap the “Play on TV” button in the app to view the output on a network-connected television device or display on the same home network.

Unlike AirPlay, which is currently proprietary to Apple and not available for licence to third parties, DIAL is an open specification that can be freely implemented without royalties. It has the potential to become widely supported, providing a missing link between second screen apps and first screen displays.

The DIAL protocol has two components: DIAL Service Discovery and the DIAL REST Service.

DIAL Service Discovery enables a DIAL client device to discover DIAL servers on its local network segment and obtain access to the DIAL REST Service on those devices. It is based on SSDP, the Simple Service Discovery Protocol defined by UPnP.

The DIAL REST Service is based on HTTP and enables a DIAL client to query, launch and optionally stop applications on a DIAL Server device.

Beyond that, it is up to developers to establish further communication, based on their requirements.

It does not address things like mirroring a display on a television screen. That is more the province of another system known as Miracast, a peer-to-peer wireless screencast standard created by the Wi-Fi Alliance based on WiFiDirect.

In many respects, however, DIAL is more open and flexible than Apple AirPlay. It can launch compatible apps installed on network connected devices or displays, or redirect a user to an apps store. If supported by the target device it will also be able to launch web apps.

DIAL can be implemented on many devices and not limited to Apple iOS or Android ecosystems. Code for a sample client and server implementation are available for download.

The DIAL specification and mark are copyright Netflix. The specification is maintained by Netflix and YouTube with input from a variety of partners. First screen applications have been registered by the BBC, Hulu, Dailymotion and Disney, among others.

Samsung and Sony provided significant guidance to ensure that DIAL would be a compatible and effective solution for first screen devices and also meet their goals for second screen user experiences.

It is understood that some Samsung and Sony devices already support DIAL. Other manufacturers are also expected to offer support.

As a software protocol, it could potentially be supported through a software update for existing devices.

AirPlay works brilliantly within the Apple ecosystem, for instance with an Apple TV. That may suit Apple and its ultimate ambitions in this space, but DIAL offers an alternative for the rest of the market. If it receives widespread adoption it could significantly increase the usability and functionality of smart television devices and displays.

Source: informitv

DLNA Premium Video Support Big Step for Connected Home

The DLNA’s support for streaming of premium content within the home, announced at IBC and initially for Europe only, is a major milestone in the evolution of connected home services. The move might have come sooner, but DLNA was waiting for maturation of the key underlying technology, DTCP-IP (Digital Transmission Content Protection over IP) to ensure safe and yet transparent delivery of content over IP networks. DTCP itself evolved in the mid 1990s, developed by chip maker Intel in conjunction with four major CE (consumer electronics) companies, Hitachi, Panasonic, Sony and Toshiba.

Collectively known as 5C, these five companies appreciated early on the impending need for a protocol capable of protecting audio/video entertainment content from illegal copying, interception and tampering as it traverses digital interfaces, such as USB ports.

The extension to IP came later, as did the crucial support for mechanisms designed to prevent content from being transmitted from a device inside the home to another device somewhere else. This was a vital step in persuading major rights holders such as Hollywood studios that they can trust home networks for delivery of their valuable premium content.

Apart from satisfying content owners, there is another important reason for DLNA’s adoption of DTCP-IP for copy protection around the home, which is to enable consumers to exercise their digital rights to the full. To do this, DTCP-IP enables operators to enforce multi-level rights dependent on the content.

Until now consumer devices have displayed video via either analogue interfaces, or the digital HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface), which incorporates a copy protection mechanism developed by Intel called HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) precisely to prevent consumers copying or recording. This allows no rights beyond immediate display of the content.

DTCP-IP on the other hand allows consumers to copy and record content subject to permission from the operator or rights holder. The rights are specified in a licence issued by the Digital Transmission Licensing Administrator (DTLA), details of which can be obtained from its website. The idea is that the licence encodes rules into the content, so that, for example, free-to-air terrestrial broadcasts could be recorded and copied without any restriction. In the case of subscription channels, consumers may be allowed to record content for their own subsequent viewing, but not copy it for sending to friends. Then premium content such as movies or live sports purchased on demand or pay-per-view via a specific transaction would probably be fully protected against recording and copying.

This begs the question of how these rights are robustly enforced, given that DTCP-IP is a software-only mechanism, as a result of the decision by CE makers that it would be impractical and too expensive to enforce hardware protection on the whole constellation of CE devices since unnecessary incremental costs must be avoided. The idea then is that hardware protection is confined to the set top box or gateway linking the home network with external delivery network via the operator’s Conditional Access (CA) system. Such boxes may well have SoCs (System on Chips) incorporating security hardware blocks such as Cryptography Research’s Crypto Firewall.

But then, from the gateway or set top onwards through the home network, the DLNA platform will take over with the software based DTCP-IP, although this will operate in cooperation with the CA and DRM, enforcing whatever rights they specify. In order to provide robust security without hardware, the developers of DTCP-IP, spearheaded by Intel, have developed some clever tricks.

First, and most obviously, DTCP-IP requires the devices at each end of a link to validate each other’s DTLA licenses via a joint authentication procedure comprising a sequence of data swaps and key calculations. This is designed to prevent pirates from inserting a circumvention device that would record a copy protection data exchange or strip out the protection, since such a device would first have to be authenticated before any communication with it could take place.

Secondly the 5C consortium have implemented specific measures that act in combination to prevent a device in a home transmitting content, whether previously recorded or streamed, to any other device outside the home even next door, unless the rights allow this. One of these measures involves limiting how many routers any IP packet that is part of the protected video can traverse before being deleted, which itself is effective in preventing transmission outside the home. Another measure involves measuring the delay between source and destination before allowing video to be transmitted.

Between them, these measures enable the operator to determine whether a DTCP device is trying to communicate with another device in the same home, with a near neighbor’s, or a more remote one, and act accordingly depending on the rights. This is a significant advance in software-only security and is the reason DTCP-IP has been embraced by DLNA and welcomed so warmly by pay-TV operators, including BSkyB and Orange in Europe. However, the full response of major rights holders has yet to come, and will ultimately determine whether the industry has hit on the right content protection solution for the future digital home.

The DLNA has emerged as the universal standards body defining the overall platform for the digital home, embracing standards developed by others, including Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) for device discovery and the lower level physical networking standards such as MoCA, as well as DTCP-IP.

By Philip Hunter, Broadcast Engineering

DLNA Now Supports Premium Video

The announcement by the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) of support for premium video during IBC2011 heralds the coming of age for home networks. The extension of DLNA’s Interoperability Guidelines to include premium video including HD content plugs an important gap in the standard, which previously was confined to streaming user generated content (UGC) between connected devices within the home.

DLNA has emerged as the ‘standard of standards’ for the connected home, providing the framework for interoperability, communication and automated discovery among devices. It makes use of existing standards such as Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) for device discovery, as well as underlying physical connectivity technologies such as Wi-Fi and MoCA. DLNA has been closing on its vision of enabling any device to access any form of digital content no matter where it resides within the home network, without requiring any complex set-up or configuration by the user. DLNA was started by CE (Consumer Electronics) vendors but has since been joined by service providers who have been pushing hard for the premium video support.

One such service provider is Orange of France, which has already deployed DLNA on its Livebox residential gateway, its IPTV and media centre set-top box and the home library NAS (Network Attached Storage). The new support for premium video will boost Orange’s connected home offering and provide a full multi-screen experience, according to Paul-François Fournier, Executive Vice President at Orange Technocentre. “It will enable us to deliver TV services over numerous screens inside the home, such as tablets, Web phones and connected TVs,” he says.

The key enabling technology for DLNA’s premium video support is Digital Transmission Content Protection over IP (DTCP/IP), which was developed by five companies: chip maker Intel and CE giants Hitachi, Panasonic, Sony and Toshiba. This group, referred to collectively as 5C, formed an entity called the Digital Transmission Licensing Administrator to license the DTCP technology.

Designed specifically for the home network, DTCP encrypts content between devices within the home after checking that they both support the standard. Crucially, the content itself can carry information defining its rights and indicating whether it can be copied and to what extent, with the hope this will satisfy the big rights holders such as Hollywood studios. For example, some content may only be played, while other content might be recordable but still protected from copying.

In this way DTCP/IP is a mechanism for enforcing rights defined by whatever DRM is used by the service provider, but it is not a DRM itself. “It is assumed the content is DRM protected, and DLNA is agnostic to DRM schemes,” says Nidhish Parikh, Chairman and President of DLNA. “When streaming that content, DLNA takes the trouble to make sure it is protected using DTCP-IP. Premium video is building on that protected stream layer.”

More than 12,000 products are now DLNA certified , including TVs and PCs but also other devices such as cameras, tablets and even appliances like fridges which, according to Parikh, will increasingly feature inset monitors for watching TV in the kitchen. The total number of devices now certified is 500 million, and will top 2 billion cumulatively by 2014, according to Parikh.

By Philip Hunter, Videonet