Premiere Chooses NDS VideoGuard® to Secure its Pay-TV Platforms in Germany and Austria
Highlights:
- Premiere selects VideoGuard®, NDS’ market-leading
content protection technology, to secure its satellite platforms
- Migration to VideoGuard starts in second calendar quarter
of 2008
- Being selected to secure Premiere’s satellite subscriber
base represents another major success for NDS in Germany
LONDON (UK), MUNICH (GERMANY) – April 15, 2008 – NDS,
the leading provider of technology solutions for digital pay-TV,
today announced that Premiere, the largest pay-TV operator in
Germany and Austria, will deploy VideoGuard®, the market-leading
content protection solution from NDS, to secure its pay-TV satellite
platforms in Germany and Austria.
During the coming months Premiere and NDS will be working
closely to smoothly migrate the operator’s satellite
platforms and set-top box (STB) population to VideoGuard, the
world’s leading conditional access (CA) system which
now protects over 82.7 million active devices worldwide. As
part of this process, smart cards currently deployed will be
replaced and VideoGuard software will be downloaded to existing
STBs. New STBs will be equipped with VideoGuard. Premiere will
deploy NDS’ leading edge security technology to its subscribers
seamlessly, with no interruption to reception of programming.
In order to facilitate this migration process, Premiere plans
to use Simulcrypt technology in collaboration with its incumbent
CA provider.
Having already selected NDS’ MediaHighway® middleware
in 2006 to enhance its pay-TV business, Premiere will now benefit
from the advantages of an end-to-end technology infrastructure
from NDS, enabling the operator to securely deliver pay-TV content
as well as value-added, innovative services to its subscribers.
NDS middleware has been deployed in over 76.4 million devices
worldwide. Following major recent deployments of VideoGuard in
Germany, this new announcement represents the fourth agreement
for NDS’ content protection solutions in Germany.
Hans Seger, Chief Program and Technology Officer of Premiere,
said: “We decided to select NDS VideoGuard because of its
unsurpassed track record in securing digital Pay-TV platforms
around the world. A robust security technology is absolutely
a pre-requisite in order to achieve sustainable high growth for
our pay-TV operations,” he said. “We look forward
to benefitting from a fully secured platform and to developing
new value added services for our subscribers based on our end-to-end
digital TV solution from NDS. In line with previous announcements
we will be starting the swap-out in the second quarter,” he
continued.
Mr Seger added: “A secure encryption system is the most
important pre-condition for the pay TV business model to be successful.
We decided to select NDS VideoGuard as it is regarded as the
safest conditional access system in the world.”
Yves Padrines, Managing Director NDS GmbH and NDS Director,
Business Development, said: “We are more than proud to
expand our existing technology partnership with Premiere by now
also providing VideoGuard content protection. Being the largest
pay TV operator in Germany and Austria, Premiere’s decision
to choose VideoGuard is the ultimate endorsement for the leadership
of NDS security technology. We are looking forward to actively
supporting Premiere by protecting their premium content and enabling
new engaging services for customers.”
About Premiere
Premiere is the leading
pay TV operator in Germany and Austria. Today, about 11 million
viewers in about 4.2 million subscriber households (including
approximately 630,000 Arena and Unitymedia customers to whom
Premiere provides Top League Bundesliga football coverage) are
tuned in to enjoy Germany’s finest television. See www.premiere.de or www.info.premiere.de for more information about Premiere.
About NDS
NDS Group plc (NASDAQ: NNDS), a majority owned subsidiary of
News Corporation, supplies open end-to-end digital technology
and services to digital pay-television platform operators and
content providers. See www.nds.com for
more information about NDS.
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