Cablevision Shifts 300 Channel TV System to iPhone, iPod

New York maverick cableco Cablevision, which drew legal actions from TV networks when it began offering 300 TV channels to the iPad in April, has just gone ahead and added them to all iOS based Apple devices - including the iPhone and the iPod Touch. The system can also offer access to the cable company's VoD service.
But there is a huge twist to the Cablevision claims, which drew fire from Viacom in June, as it filed a suit to prevent the iPad service. At the time Viacom claimed that its carriage agreement with Cablevision was device dependent, and should only go to Cablevision set tops - but most other similar suits were over the fact that content was network dependent and could not go over the internet.

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Focal Points:

• Now Cablevision says openly that the system does not use the internet, but instead the iOS devices get the signal over the proprietary cable TV network straight into the "Optimum" branded App (peculiarly Optimum is the company's Broadband brand) . It says the content is not delivered over the Internet and that customers don't even need to have Internet access to use the Optimum App.
• This puts a different complexion on the underlying technology - probably an implementation of DTCP-IP, the streaming protection format favored by the DLNA, in a software implementation in the App. This will need to decrypt a conditional access signal and re-encrypt using DTCP-IP. Alternatively it could put the conditional access keys inside the App, but we think that's too risky.
• Underneath that the App will also need some form of software based strategy to avoid encryption keys being easily hacked, such as key and system obfuscation or a system that senses the presence of debugging software and switches off, or both. These are very new systems only available from a handful of suppliers and pretty advanced stuff, but without them no content owner is going to be happy that its content is secure. Most other TV strategies to phones are based entirely on adaptive streaming from a separate set of servers and could be delivered anywhere unless they are tethered to the home, using geo systems.
• Another part of Cablevision's legal argument has been that it has every right to deliver only to the homes that are already customers, and its approach is clearly permanently tethered to the home based equipment that originally decrypts the conditional access messages.
• Of course the devices can only be fed by a Wi-Fi signal, and the chances of a home having Wi-fi if it does not have internet access are slim to zero, but Cablevision may have stolen a march here on other US cable operators and genuinely have a way of marrying up iOS devices with its TV services without requiring new content rights. The legal action with Viacom has been set aside temporarily while the two try to reach an agreement and we can see that with this set up, it is likely that they will.
• In addition the new version of the iOS based App also allows the remote management of their home DVR, access to a TV guide from anywhere as well as TV program search capability and allows the devices to also be sued as remote controls for the cable TV.

Cablevision was the first company to offer its full cable television service on an iPad in the home with Time Warner Cable following closely on its heels. The Optimum App is available free in the Apple App Store and the company says that in just four months the iPad version has been downloaded 200,000 times.