HITS

LAS VEGAS — To kick off the 2020 edition of CES, video software provider Synamedia shared its findings of a new anti-piracy study, showing more than three million streaming credentials and passwords are either being shared or are up for sale online, and that password sharing is costing at two streaming companies more than $72 million a year combined.

According to Synamedia’s research — done with the help of those two unnamed video service providers — more than three million streaming credentials have been compromised across both the dark and open web during the last six months. Additionally, the analysis found that the video service providers Synamedia worked with are losing more than $72 million of potential revenue each year, thanks to lost subscription fees, and password sharing among half a million non-paying users.

“The streaming wars are not going away, and the massive threat of streaming video piracy can no longer be ignored. It’s simply too costly,” said Jean-Marc Racine, chief product officer for Synamedia. “The eye-opening statistics from these investigations illustrate just a microcosm of the real impact we’re seeing worldwide.

Synamedia’s findings showed that the service providers it worked with were unaware of 15% (or more than 500,000) of users who were accessing content using passwords from the other 85% of paying subscribers. Converting just 7% of those “freeloaders” into paying subscribers would results in $5 million in additional revenue for each company, Synamedia concluded.

Synamedia pointed to estimates that OTT and pay TV operators saw a combined $9.1 billion in lost revenue in 2019, due to piracy and account sharing, as a main threat to their bottom line going forward.

“In order to survive, video providers must defend their livelihood with state-of-the-art technology, the intelligence of experts who think like pirates do, and who know how they work so they can move even faster than the relentless thieves,” Racine said.

Additionally at CES 2020, Synamedia announced it is joining Pearl TV within the Phoenix Model Market Initiative, in order to deliver encoding expertise and services for ATSC 3.0 deployment.

Also at CES 2020:

• DXC Technology’s Luxoft announced it would be working with LG Electronics, Amazon and Mapbox to debut a new shared mobility concept, featuring digital, consumer-grade, in-vehicle experiences, allowing for access to in-home content and services on the go.

Dubbed Luxoft HALO, the offering promises to give consumers all their content needs in the vehicles they drive, covering rear seat entertainment, cabin displays for ride-hailing systems, and more.

”Together with our key partners, we can now deliver a complete, highly personalized and intelligent in-vehicle consumer-grade experience, powered by webOS Auto, the platform for shared and intelligent mobility,” said Vildan Hasanbegovic, director of partnerships and head of marketing at Luxoft Automotive. ”It’s an open platform that delivers, with exceptional quality, an existing ecosystem of intelligent services and dynamic content – from in-vehicle infotainment to connected video streaming services and more – that is increasingly becoming an essential part of consumers‘ personal digital lifestyles.”

• Technicolor used CES 2020 to showcase a comprehensive range of technologies, including DOCSIS 3.1, 5G, Android TV and Reference Design Kit (RDK), Wi-Fi 6, 6Ghz wifi, and fiber Interoperability solutions.

“Over the course of 2020, the network service provider (NSP) community will continue to invest in open platform-based solutions thereby maximizing the number of revenue-generating services that can be delivered to consumers,” said Luis Martinez-Amago, deputy CEO and president of Technicolor Connected Home. “This is true for access technologies that bring broadband performance over cable, fiber and wireless to consumers, as well as the set-top box (STB) and Wi-Fi infrastructures that ensure ubiquitous, intelligent and high-quality connectivity within their homes.”

Among Technicolor Connected Home’s featured tech at CES is Jade, a 4K Ultra HD set-top that includes the latest technology standards, including wifi 6 and AV1 decoding; Ruby, a set-top that features Android P, wifi 5, Bluetooth and Zwave technologies; Wi-Fi XL, a comprehensive wireless network solution that improves coverage and quality of connectivity throughout the home; and Technicolor Fiber Labs, an initiative being used by NSP customers and technology partners to continuously test the latest developments in optical line termination (OLT) technology.