M+E Daily

NAB 2023 MESA Round-Up: BuyDRM, EPAM, Eluvio, Irdeto, Whip Media

LAS VEGAS — More than 50 MESA members exhibited during NAB. Here’s what a few of them had to share at the show.

BuyDRM

Expanding the use of DRM in new arenas, building the brand in places like Asia and Latin America, and doing everything in its technological power to help studios fight piracy has been the name of the game for BuyDRM wince it was acquired in mid-2021 by Europe’s largest hosting company, OVHcloud.

“We build our technology to be able to scale to prevent concurrent streaming,” said Gabe Elton, VP of global sales for BuyDRM. “We’re looking to build up our media and entertainment vertical and having a parent like OVHcloud gives us a lot of compute to help address the shortcomings content owners face with DRM on the hardware side.”

BuyDRM came into the show with the news it had joined the SRT and WebRTC alliance, to help standardize where DRM fits into protocols designed with the intent of lowering latency. And while BuyDRM has historically been AWS-centric, the company is now taking a multi-cloud approach. BuyDRM also showed off its ability to offer DRM as a managed service, available as a hybrid of SaaS and software license.

And the big news: a new global business development team in vice president of global sales Gabe Elton, director of EU sales Cyprien Galesne, EU business development’s Elena Etkina.

“After 23 years of critical success, BuyDRM has built a world-class brand well-known throughout the streaming media industry,” Christopher Levy, BuyDRM CEO and co-founder, said of the hires. “Gabe, Cyprien, and Elena bring forth the best that BuyDRM has to offer in that they are all extremely knowledgeable, responsive, and work hard to ensure our clients’ needs are consistently met.”

Elton added: “BuyDRM offers the streaming industry a unique experience with industry-leading support, a well-documented history of success, and truly a great team of people dedicated to our clients and the protection of their content.”


EPAM Systems

Robert Koch, global head of the media and entertainment solution practice for EPAM Systems held court with clients and partners at NAB in a corner meeting suite of the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, a nod that the software engineering services and digital engineering product design firm doesn’t need a big flashy booth.

“NAB is always interesting for us because we don’t sell a product,” Koch said. No, EPAM’s just repeatedly named a top IT sourcing vendor in international markets, helps nearly 300 Fortune-listed companies refocus their businesses through a digital lens, and generated nearly $5 billion in revenue in fiscal 2022.

The late-2021 acquisition of professional services firm Optiva Media signaled EPAM’s push for a bigger global presence, expanding the company’s presence in Latin America and Western Europe, and Koch touted EPAM’s recent work with Epic Games, with EPAM supplying software engineering, AWS expertise, and big data services to help build an immersive platform for the Fortnite community.

Prior to NAB, EPAM launched an open metaverse for telecommunications providers, debuted a 5G virtual reality experience in Spain, and introduced the world to Vivien, a digital “metahuman” created using a combination of AI-enabled chatbots, motion capture and 3D gaming software. Vivien is intended to enable digital firms to offer remote, life-like interactive customer engagements with a human-like program.

“You can talk to her and she can do just about anything,” Koch said. “We see a real special market for it, a certain ‘wow’ factor.”

On the sports side, EPAM has built a personalized e-commerce offering for a Premiere League team, integrated metadata for a Spanish media company to up their sports delivery game, and created a social virtual reality event for a sporting event with 360-degree viewing.

“The opportunity [with sports] is to use data in new ways that make for interesting experiences that haven’t been done before,” Koch said. “And the tier ones are responding to what they see we’re capable of.”

Eluvio

When you come into NAB with an offering that promises content owners decentralized streaming, content distribution and storage direct to audiences (along with instant settlement and royalty payments when parties sell and distribute video and other content experiences), you’re gonna get feedback. The positive kind.

“It’s been fantastic, and this was the right time to launch, with the maturity of the market,” said Michelle Munson, CEO and co-founder of Eluvio, which introduces direct sell-through and streaming on its Blockchain Content Fabric, heading into Las Vegas. “We’re unlocking the value of the creative IP, and as with all unique products in this industry, you know it works when it sells itself.

“I think there’s this outpouring of interest because it’s a gateway to better distribution.”

The company’s new offerings include turnkey and customizable digital marketplaces, websites, and live events, enabling direct sell-through and streaming of video and immersive experience, with direct engagement between brands and users. Without the need for third-party cloud, transcoding, storage, or CDNs, the Eluvio Blockchain Content Fabric promises cost-efficient content monetization with ultra-low latency, high-quality 4K video streaming.

Available in June will be instant royalty settlements and payments to parties directly via the blockchain, and Eluvio has three levels of utility pricing rates, including “Pay as You Go Self-Service,” “Professional Creator,” and “Creative Enterprise.” For more details, visit https://eluv.io.

Irdeto

Digital platform security experts Irdeto “wants to be in the right places to offer technical advice” for the industry,” according to Andrew Bunten, COO of the company. That statement mimics the news from Irdeto out of NAB perfectly.

First was the announcement that Irdeto had become a member of the RDK Technical Advisory Board (RTAB), which advocates for innovation and a technical roadmap development for the RDK community. RDK is an open-source software solution now in more than 100 million devices, and standardizes core functions used in video, broadband, and IoT.

“We see a lot of opportunity with RDK, and our customers are showing a lot of interest in the technology,” Bunten said. “It nicely aligns with our parent company’s [multinational media group Naspers] strategy and there’s a lot of alignment.”

Irdeto has launched an RDK Video Accelerator program, which combines Irdeto’s content protection solutions and security certification for pay TV operators and features a certification service that lets operators fast-track the secure deployment of RDK Video Accelerators.

“Irdeto is a global leader in providing critical content protection services and capabilities to pay-TV operators around the globe,” said Jason Briggs, president and GM of RDK, when the partnership was announced. “As such, we are delighted to have them join the RDK Technology Advisory Board and provide their continued insights, guidance, and support to the RDK community.”

Toward the end of NAB, Irdeto made its second wave of the show: it was joining CharIN, a global association of 300 members dedicated to advancing interoperability of the CCS and MCS vehicle charging standards.

“We’re seeing a number of different opportunities in various markets, and we have a very diverse customer base,” Bunten said. “We’re bridging the world between broadcast and IP. We’re interested to see what’s next for streaming, and we’re here to help them remain competitive. Our brand is ascending.”

Whip Media

For Michael Sid, co-founder and chief strategy officer of enterprise software platform and data provider Whip Media, NAB 2023 was all about enabling free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) to easily solve reporting problems.

“It’s a whole set of software products geared toward FAST channels and distributors, and for AVOD (ad-supported video on demand) as well,” Sid said. “We’re able help them streamline this process that’s been cobbled together in the past. There are so many direct deals now, proper, quick reporting has become a must-have.”

Whip Media FASTrack is designed to solve reporting problems associated for mid and smaller tier clients operating AVOD and FAST channels, bringing together disparate data in various formats to make visible the entirety of distribution revenue in one, easy-to-navigate place.

FASTrack includes automated ingestion of performance data, revenue and viewership allocation down to the title level, automated generation of partner payments, and access to real-time actionable data via a customizable report builder and analytics dashboard. The new platform debuted as a beta service will launch partner Motorvision.TV, a lifestyle and entertainment channel, with two more partners already in the pipeline.

“Companies are getting this mish-mash of reporting, and they need an accurate count on viewership and revenue,” Sid said. “It’s been a huge problem. This is the solution.”

Prior to NAB, Whip Media also announced that smart TV player Vizio looked to Whip to manage automatic payments to content owners and ad revenue reporting for the FAST channel WatchFree+.