This just in from the folks at Irdeto. Basically confirming what we said before, this cryptic poorly penned note kind of portrays Entriq as a science experiment that ultimately folded for unknown reasons.
Hello
Entriq is pleased to announce that the company has merged with our sister company Irdeto.
Entriq was started by some Irdeto employees back in 2000. For the past 9 years both companies have been growing rapidly in their respective digital media marketplaces. Irdeto was started in 1969 with a focus on Conditional Access Systems for Pay-TV. Entriq started as a pay-media company, and with its acquisition of Dayport last year added content management and distribution to target the packaging and distribution of digital media over the Internet.
As Entriq grew both organically and through acquisition, so did Irdeto. Its portfolio has been significantly enhanced over recent years through the acquisition of IDWay (middleware), and Cloakware allowing it to become a world class provider. With this breadth of capability Irdeto can enable content owners, service providers and device manufacturers to succeed by providing innovative and reliable software technologies that protect and monetize digital assets and maximize return on any content sent over any network, to any device.
As the digital entertainment marketplace continues to evolve, Irdeto has found that providing advanced media solutions over broadband is an increasingly essential capability for its customer base. Given this track record of success, it makes tremendous sense to bring Entriq’s portfolio back into Irdeto.
Entriq is now part of Irdeto under the portfolio capability of “Content Management”.
The Irdeto website has been updated with this new section and the customer support and media control login pages are now available directly via the Irdeto website. The Entriq Management Team remains as part of the Irdeto Management Team and the sales teams have been incorporated into the Irdeto regional teams.
The Entriq brand was decommissioned by the end of May 2009, and the website will be set to automatically refer visitors to www.irdeto.com.
If you have any questions or comments, please contact your sales representative or send an email to marketing@irdeto.com
Best Regards,
The Entriq (now Irdeto) Management Team
Update: 1530CST: The press release link is now live again on the Entriq site as well as the “News” Section. From my sources, it appears there was a small dustup over the release between Widevine and Synchrous, their reseller in Taiwan. I doubt we will ever hear what truly happened here.
Update: 1125CST: I just spoke with a very rude gentleman from ABI Research who told me that my request to speak with Zippy Aima regarding this announcement was denied because ABI “does not make their analysts available to anyone but customers.” Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Calling Widevine now.
Today my inbox was awash with emails from associates and news monitoring sites about Widevine’s announcement that:
“WIDEVINE LICENSES DRM AND ADAPTIVE STREAMING FOR APPLE IPHONE TO SYNCHRONOUS COMMUNICATIONS”
along with this link: www.widevine.com/pr/174_sync_iphone.html
Within 20 minutes of this happening, the link went dead and all info about the release has been scrubbed from Widevine’s website. I am going to speculate that Apple’s lawyers came down hard on Widevine for making this announcement. I am not exactly sure why but given it’s abrupt removal from their site, I can only speculate they got a Cease and Desist from Apple’s lawyers or a nasty phone call.
The release is gone and any mention of it is now gone from the News section of the Widevine site as well:
For those of you that missed this “announcement” the full text of the release is here:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WIDEVINE LICENSES DRM AND ADAPTIVE STREAMING FOR APPLE IPHONE TO SYNCHRONOUS COMMUNICATIONS
Enables service providers to deliver video entertainment direct to iPhone subscribers
Seattle, WA and Taipei, Taiwan, June 29, 2009 — Widevine® today announced Synchronous Communications Co. has become a licensed reseller of Widevine DRM and Adaptive Streaming for the Apple® (NASDAQ APPL) iPhone. Synchronous Communications is a long standing provider of IPTV DRM technology to Chunghwa Telecom (NYSE: CHT), one of the largest IPTV service operators globally and the exclusive distributor of the iPhone in Taiwan.
“Widevine has solved the iPhone delivery challenge by giving service providers complete control over the consumer experience from delivery to playback,” said Brian Baker, Widevine CEO. “Service providers everywhere can now utilize Widevine to extend mobile services through their own branded video portal.”
The Widevine DRM solution also enables Synchronous Communications to apply a variety of business and usage models to entertainment services targeted for the iPhone. These include: mobile PVR downloads, purchases, rentals, subscription services and offline playback. Widevine’s Adaptive Streaming solution adjusts video quality on the iPhone to available bandwidth, ensuring the best possible video experience at all times.
“Widevine is the enabler we’ve been looking for to extend TV services to mobile entertainment platforms,” said William Liu, General Manager of Synchronous Communications. “Their innovation and leadership continues to help us remain ahead of competition with a solution that would keep Chunghwa Telecom subscribers satisfied in the living room and on the road.”
Synchronous Communications and Widevine jointly supply content protection and network infrastructure solutions that power Chunghwa Telecom’s TV entertainment services. Chunghwa Telecom is the leading TV entertainment and mobile provider in Taiwan.
“The iPhone’s rise to smartphone dominance has transformed the potential for true mobile entertainment,” said Zippy Aima, Sr. Analyst at ABI Research. “Widevine’s support for the iPhone and iPod Touch is a great example of how PayTV and internet video providers can continue to expand high quality entertainment to ultramobile platforms while improving consumer loyalty, regardless of where or when they connect.”
Widevine’s multiplatform DRM and Adaptive Streaming is available for service providers globally. For more information visit: www.widevine.com/iphone.
About Widevine
Widevine provides digital media solutions for the delivery of digital entertainment to any device. Hundreds of service providers use Widevine’s multiplatform, multiformat DRM and video optimization solutions for securing high quality video and audio. Today, millions of consumers enjoy digital entertainment secured and optimized by Widevine on retail consumer electronics devices and legacy STBs from all major consumer brands. With over 55 patents Widevine is an industry leader and innovator of content protection and video optimization technologies.
Widevine is a privately held corporation headquartered in Seattle, WA, funded by Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), Charter Ventures, Constellation Ventures, Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd (DNP), PaceSetter Capital Group, Phoenix Partners, TELUS (NYSE: TU) and VantagePoint Venture Partners.
For more information: www.widevine.com.
Contact:
Matt Cannard
Widevine
+ 1 206 254 3124
mcannard@widevine.com
All Rights Reserved. Widevine, Widevine Cypher, Cypher Virtual SmartCard, Cypher VOD, Cypher DCP, Cypher Broadcast, Cypher Express and Widevine Mensor are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Widevine Technologies, Inc. All other trademarks and trade names are the property of their respective owners. No express or implied warranties are provided for herein and all specifications are subject to change. The descriptions of Widevine Technologies’ patents and other intellectual property herein are not intended for use in a legal proceeding to interpret or limit the scope or meaning of the patents or their claims, or indicate that a Widevine patent claim(s) are materially required to perform or implement any of the listed items.
We were contacted yesterday by someone “in the know” who provided us this update on the fate of Entriq:
“Christopher,
Entriq was folded into Irdeto and is now called Irdeto Digital Media Solutions. They have changed their position to focus on “Content Management” which you can see from the following link: http://www.irdeto.com/solutions/37-contentmanagement.html ”
Update 06.29.09
The Entriq product range is now rebranded to the Irdeto Content Management System (CMS) and remains the same superbly capable product:
- Supports Windows DRM
- Supports WM licences issued from a playready server
- Adobe DRM not supported, but of course flash is
So that pretty much sums it up. Entriq has been shutdown finally after an 8 year run and a rumored $140M in cash. So long and nice to know you Entriq.
All the best to Irdeto as they enter the Digital Media Marketplace.
Apparently, with or without DRM, the music industry is moving ahead. In light of the Universal/Virgin announcement yesterday, Nokia is apparently moving forward with their DRM-enabled “Comes With Music” offering. According to Digital Music News
It really is interesting how some of these news outlets are so fixated on DRM as if it were the driving reason behind the music industry’s woes. In one way it is because the labels enabled Apple to grow so large and so fast with iTunes that they didn’t have to license FairPlay DRM for the iPod. On the other hand it’s sad to continually see writers confused in their publications and confused about the real issues at hand.
Comes with Music has been rumored to be headed to the States later this year. More to come once we get an update from Nokia.
No suprise here. If you follow my posts around the web and at panels and in lists, you will see I have been saying for 2 years that DRM-free MP3s are a bust.
Why? IMHO because users associate MP3 with FREE. Furthermore, users don’t really care about DRM en masse. Yes some very technical writers and bloggers and the technorati slashdotters of the world don’t like DRM. I don’t like kimchi. What I do is avoid eating kimchi as a result. I think it’s clear that people that don’t like DRM can get DRM-free music anywhere they want however it’s hard to say how long these DRM-free offerings might remain viable.
Based on the LA Times Story titled: “Universal Music and Virgin Media, striking out with MP3s?” I would say that the answer is NOT LONG.
With Zune offering the ZunePass for $14.99 a month for content from all the majors… WITH DRM…. and Universal and Virgin indicating they might be headed towards an all you can eat model I suspect the wheels are about to come off the whole DRM-free MP3 thang. It always was just an experiment and just an excuse to try and sell content to the iPod.
14:59:00 and counting.
Well it was a long time coming if it is true. Entriq, as a subsidiary of the public South African company Naspers blew through a rumored $140M in just 9 years of operation and had a massive turnover problem in their sales/bizdev group year after year. Every show I went to in 2007/2008 I met a new head of BizDev or a new “West Coast Sales Director.”
The company had a strong platform in MediaSphere but suffered from a lack of identity and the need to do it all to book the revenue they needed to justify their cash run. With big customers like NBA, the UFC, Oprah’s Harpo Productions, CBS, BSkyB and many other monolithic media brands, you would have thought they would be rolling in greenbacks.
At some point early last year the company made a decision to get into the content delivery space which, IMHO, was the beginning of the end for them. I just placed a call into their former offices where the phones are now being answered by Irdeto staff with an Irdeto greeting. Doing a search at www.irdeto.com for the term “MediaSphere” pulls up a blank page and a search for the term “Entriq” pulls up exec bios and a Irdeto Support Portal link but nothing about the former company or it’s flagship product.
Paul Raglund is apparently the sole guy left in charge so we will have to see what he says if he returns our emails.
Ok so everyone who knows me knows I dislike Hulu. Actually I resent it as a broken business model that teaches many bad habits to content owners that I spent the past 8 years of my life trying to train out of them. I am confident Hulu will be shut down or turned into a Pay Media model within the year. There is no other viable future for Hulu.
Why give content away for free? If that model works, where did Cable TV and iTunes come from? Why take something that costs millions of dollars to produce and throw it up on the web for free in the hopes ads will cover your _ss?
That being said, I love Dennis Leary and have been watching Rescue Me since day one. There’s something about his Character that I just find very genuine and frank. That’s refreshing.
So I had to do a double take when I first saw news about this paper popping up on ARS Technica and other sites. After reading through it I think it’s patently clear that the author means well but has cloaked her results in an overly verbose and academic wrapper. The title alone is a mouthful: Technological accommodation of conflicts between freedom of expression and DRM, the first empirical assessment by Patrícia Akester, Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge.
I myself would have modified the title to something more readily accessible by people with limited time or interests. Maybe something more catchy like DRM Makes People Steal or something that really throws “it” out there and let’s the reader know they are setting sail on a voyage away from reality.
No, seriously, this is a real effort here that Patricia put forth and everyone should definitely check it out. My personal favorite part is the Data Collection Questions – DRM Developers.
Post-NAB, Microsoft made the move to go ahead and release this list to the public.
PlayReady is a baseline DRM technology that is in process of being deployed across a variety of platforms that Microsoft develops. The first PlayReady experience was included with Nokia handsets to power their music offering.
The next experience that is hitting the market is the Silverlight DRM experience which will provide support for encrypted content for the Silverlight browser plug-in. This is the technology behind Netflix’s offering.
PlayReady is also the technology behind BSkyB’s offerings.
Well it didn’t take long for the shine to wear off of the heavily polished online advertising industry. For years now I have said in public on panels and in blogs and in forums and to potential clients that advertising is an interesting model that only has relevance in a select few niches of online media. Time and time again we have seen advertising-only supported plays make a big PR splash only to make a bigger splash when they fell back to their watery graves.
PaidContent.org has a nice piece on the recent online-advertising “return to earth” today if it’s any indicator of the negative effect ads have had on deploying digital media business models, it’s time the industry at large focused on _selling_ content instead of finding “sponsors” for it. Forget fighting Piracy and forget trying to find ways to give content away with ads. Neither effort will generate enough sustainable revenue to stabilize and grow your business.
Sell your content. Do it today. That’s some free advice from an expert.
