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The Digital Living Network Alliance Releases CVP-2 Guidelines for Viewing Subscription TV Content on Multiple Home Devices
[March 18, 2014]

The Digital Living Network Alliance Releases CVP-2 Guidelines for Viewing Subscription TV Content on Multiple Home Devices


PORTLAND, Ore. --(Business Wire)--

The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA®) today released the organization's CVP-2 Guidelines and announced that DLNA Members can begin certifying products to the specifications in September. The availability of devices such as TVs, game consoles, tablets, phones, PCs and set top boxes certified to the CVP-2 Guidelines will enable consumers to enjoy their service providers' full subscriber experiences on many different screens in the home.

"We are very pleased to be releasing DLNA's CVP-2 Guidelines," said Scott Lofgren, chairman and president of DLNA. "The availability of devices certified to the CVP-2 Guidelines will enable more consumers to view subscription TV content on more screens, all the while maintaining the full subscriber experience and user interface. Numerous DLNA members have been building and pre-testing products to the CVP-2 Guidelines and previewing their capabilities at a variety of industry venues and events, and we expect to see many exciting new products entering and achieving DLNA Certification in September."

CVP-2 Guidelines were developed through a close collaboration between service providers and members of the consumer electronics product development ecosystem. These Guidelines are an extension of the standard DLNA Guidelines and enable client devices certified to the CVP-2 Guidelines to interoperate and share media with the billions of existing DLNA Certified servers. As CVP-2 capabilities are built into home network products, consumer choice will be improved for seamlessly enjoying subscription TV content from providers on multiple devices in the home.

"Providing our products and services on the devices that our customers love and use is increasingly important to us," said Mark Hess, senior vice president, Comcast Cable. "The DLNA CVP-2 Guidelines will provide a standardized platform for Comcast customers to watch the content they want on a broad range of devices within the home."

"The CVP-2 standard enables the continued innovation and evolution of the multi-platform video experience," said Steve Necessary, vice president of product development, Cox Communications. "This effort will enable Cox (News - Alert) to expand the ecosystem of devices that integrate with our highly personalized Contour service offering by giving customers the flexibility to choose the device platform that best suits their needs."

"DLNA's new CVP-2 Guidelines provide the industry with a foundation to significantly enhance consumer enjoyment of premium content offerings from their service provider. Content providers' rights are preserved, devices will have greater functionality, and consumers will have greater viewing device options. This is a win for all stakeholders," said Tom Lookabaugh, chief R&D officer, CableLabs.

"DLNA has established a widely recognized and important standard for interoperability between networked home and mobile entertainment devices. CVP-2 extends the benefits of the DLNA standard to subscription TV content while supporting the full range of subscriber features, security and user interface capabilities," said Brett L. Sappington, director of research with Parks Associates. "Because of the FCC's (News - Alert) prompting for an industry standard that allows TV services to be delivered to CE devices, North American cable operators will be among the first to adopt CVP-2."

About the CVP-2 Guidelines

In addition to enabling a consistent user interface for viewing subscription content, CVP-2 Guidelines also preserve the rights of content providers. CVP-2 includes Digital Transmission Content Protection over Internet Protocol (DTCP-IP) to protect content streamed within the home, and authentication capabilities that establish a common, auomated and secure mechanism for verifying CVP-2 on client devices.



CVP-2 also provides for remote diagnostics and optimizes the consumer viewing experience by including support for Moving Picture Expert Group Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH), an adaptive delivery technology for high-quality streaming regardless of bandwidth variations on the home network. A Networked Device Power Save feature enables devices certified to the CVP-2 Guidelines to meet today's tighter power regulations and voluntary energy efficiency initiatives. Additional details about CVP-2 are available by downloading the DLNA CVP-2 white paper.

Click here to purchase the CVP-2 Guidelines.


Quotes from DLNA Members:

ACCESS

"For media sharing to really take off, it needs two key technologies: interoperability between CE devices and security mechanisms that are trusted by the studios," says Joerg Eggink, product director at ACCESS. "DLNA already provides the interoperability that the CE device industry demands. The DLNA CVP-2 Guidelines now provide the trusted framework that the content business requires, making premium media sharing truly ready for prime time. As a CVP-2 technology vendor, we see that CVP-2 Guidelines will underpin new and exciting business models and we're already seeing very high levels of interest from our broadcast and CE device customers."

Joerg Eggink, Product Director at ACCESS

Alcatel-Lucent

"CVP-2 helps move the industry towards a simplified method of video delivery to connected devices. Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) is convinced that ultimately operators will migrate the DLNA server function into the network so that client devices can stream content from sources within the cloud."

Paul Larbey, Head of Alcatel-Lucent's IP Video Business

Allegro Software

"The new DLNA CVP-2 standard allows both service providers and consumer equipment manufacturers to cost-effectively deploy premium digital media throughout the home," said Bob Van Andel, president of Allegro Software, a leading provider of DLNA Technology Components.

Bob Van Andel, President of Allegro Software

ARM

"The major benefit of DLNA's CVP-2 standard is the inclusion of HTML5 technology, which enables premium content consumption and consistent rich user interfaces across a myriad of devices," said Karthik Ranjan, marketing director, operator relations, ARM (News - Alert)®. "The ARM ecosystem has invested heavily in HTML5 technology within the mobile market, which will in turn provide huge commercial gains for the Pay TV sector as it will have access to the constant and rapid innovation. Adopting DLNA CVP-2 will offer operators, content providers and manufacturers a greater choice of energy-efficient and cost-effective system-on-chip platforms based on the latest ARM CPU, graphics and security technologies."

Karthik Ranjan, Marketing Director, Operator Relations

AwoX

"AwoX is convinced of the great added value for service providers to distribute their TV content and user interface on any regular smart TV and mobile, without requiring them to use an additional set top box," said Alain Molinié, president of AwoX. "AwoX is committed to delivering software development kits allowing our customers to deploy smart TVs certified to the CVP-2 Guidelines, on a variety of chipsets or operating systems."

Alain Molinié, President

Broadcom Corporation

"The new CVP-2 standard is an opportunity for service providers and operators to deliver content to more consumer devices," said Dr. Stephen Palm, Broadcom senior technical director, Broadband Communications Group. "Broadcom applauds DLNA's efforts to enable reduction of total energy consumption in the home using modular Energy Management and the integration of the IEEE 1905.1 nVoy standard to provide detailed home networking diagnostics."

Dr. Stephen Palm, Senior Technical Director, Broadband Communications Group

Myriad

"The announcement of these CVP-2 Guidelines is an important milestone for DLNA as it provides operators with a standardized, cost-effective way to rapidly reach more devices with premium content securely," said Olivier Bartholot, vice president of Corporate Development. "Myriad's modular CVP-2 product provides the ability to connect a wide range of consumer electronics devices, including Android, providing interoperability and access to operators' premium and cloud-based services on any device."

Olivier Bartholot, Vice President of Corporate Development

Videon

"As a provider of middleware and end-user apps, Videon uniquely understands the dual benefit of CVP-2. By allowing users to simply move protected media between devices and offering service providers greater control over the user experience, CVP-2 will enable a full range of content to be shared throughout the home."

Scott Kovesdy, Vice President of Marketing and Sales

About DLNA

The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) is a technology standards organization driven to build industry consensus to advance the interoperability of products in consumers' connected homes. Founded in 2003 with a current membership of more than 250 companies, this unique multi-industry collaboration continues to implement an innovative set of guidelines utilized by service providers, electronics manufacturers, and software developers to provide consistent performance in a connected home environment. Consumers can share and enjoy content, regardless of manufacturer, on a wide variety of products, including mobile devices, PCs, set top boxes, AV receivers, game consoles, TVs and more. DLNA has also created a robust certification program which tests and verifies the interoperability of products built to its standards, ensuring consumers that devices branded with the DLNA Certified mark will successfully connect and exchange content. Additional information about the Alliance is available at www.dlna.org. Find the Alliance on Facebook at www.facebook.com/dlnacertified or on Twitter @DLNA. DLNA's leading member companies include ACCESS, ARRIS, AwoX, Broadcom, CableLabs (News - Alert), Comcast, Dolby Laboratories, DTS, Intel, LG, Microsoft, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, Time Warner Cable and Verizon.


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