The Alliance for User-Friendly Terminals for Horizontal Markets - Exchangeable Conditional Access and Digital Rights Management Systems

Today conditional access (CA) and digital rights management (DRM) systems for digital TV, either broadcast or broadband, show an impressive lack of interoperability. The German Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) has organized a collaboration of industry experts defining a truly interoperable architecture for CA/DRM systems for broadcast, broadband and “over the top (OTT)”. The architecture allows owners of consumer premises equipment (CPE), like set top boxes, personal video recorders or TV sets, to have embedded CA/DRM from any vendor. The required security kernel can be downloaded in a designated software container with standardized interfaces. The download process is protected by proven methods, and under control of a trusted third party. Open hardware facilities in the CPE with proven security further support enhanced security, ensuring the best possible protection of the content. The result is a highly consumer friendly interoperability solution, for the first time truly merging TV over Internet and broadcast, without any compromise regarding security.