<b>The biggest change in content protection (or not) in Asia in the past year is...</b>\\"Content owners have seen a huge increase in illegal downloads over the internet, especially in countries with high broadband penetration.\\" <i>Fabien Gauthier, Director Business Strategies and Partnerships, Asia Pacific, Sales and Account Management, NDS</i>\\"Markets and operators are growing at a fast pace and are constantly looking at new features and solutions to attract subscribers and differentiate their offerings.\\" <i>Fabien Gauthier, NDS</i>\\"Since 2003, cable operators in China have been investing in cable conversion from analogue to digital. At the same time they have been focused on executing a plan for three network convergence. In China, the digital penetration rate has reached 56%, and continues to grow steadily. With the rapid rise of digital TV, cable operators have begun to focus on developing VOD services. As a result, traditional conditional access (CA) protection is no longer enough.\\" <i>Weidong Li, General Manager of China Digital TV\\'s Digital Rights Management (DRM) centre</i>\\"The biggest change is really more of an intensification of an existing dynamic - consumers in Asia are showing an ever-greater desire for more content and more choice in how they access it, across channels and devices such as smartphones and tablets. Anyone creating or distributing premium content in this region over connected devices must also, to an increasing degree, manage the protection of that content... In an evolving digital ecosystem, we believe it\\'s necessary to stop looking at consumers and the issue of piracy though a black-orwhite lens. Treating consumers as one-size-fits-all can actually be counter-productive, since the reasoning behind pirating content is very different from one individual to the next.\\" <i>Bengt Jonsson, Vice President, Asia Pacific, Irdeto</i>\\"As analogue switch-off nears in some Asian countries, pay-TV operators are increasingly moving toward software-based conditional access solutions to reduce the total cost of ownership of running a CA system by up to 50%.\\" <i>Bengt Jonsson, Irdeto</i>\\"Growth of cardless-based/software-based content protection deployments.\\" <i>Ranjit Nigam, Vice President, Viaccess</i>\\"... implementation of new regulations in India and mandated deadlines for each province/major city to migrate from analogue to digital environment. Additionally, broadcasters have begun to embrace the challenges presented by consumer demand for over-the-top (OTT) content delivery and how to harness future opportunities offered by an evolving landscape including OTT content revenues.\\" <i>Are Mathisen, Vice President, Asia Sales, Conax</i><b>The biggest challenge in content protection in Asia is...</b>\\"Market demand is pushing prices down and the need for low-cost solutions both in content protection and with the set-top box is key.\\" <i>Fabien Gauthier, Director Business Strategies and Partnerships, Asia Pacific, Sales and Account Management, NDS</i>\\"A lot of Asian operators tend to start from nothing and grow very quickly to a large service offering, so their scale and the need to permanently add features make their systems more complex. This does not only involve conditional access but usually most of the system components including the set-top box software.\\" <i>Fabien Gauthier, NDS</i>?The protection of DRM is not currently high on the agenda of Chinese cable operators for two main reasons. First, they do not yet have robust content offerings and their customer base has not reached the size where they feel protecting content should be a top priority. Second, the hardware limitations such as bandwidth require significant improvements before these Chinese cable operators can shift their focus to content protection.\\" <i>Weidong Li, General Manager of China Digital TV\\'s Digital Rights Management (DRM) centre</i>\\"Nothing new. The main challenge continues to be remaining two steps ahead of the piracy industry by providing cutting-edge security technology and flexible solutions for distribution of pay-for-content both securely and efficiently.\\" <i>Are Mathisen, Vice President, Asia Sales, Conax</i>\\"The challenge in such a disparate region is not only that threats continue to evolve and multiply, but that market dynamics vary to a large degree from country to country. The patchy success of IPTV in Asia is an example of this; while in some areas upgrades in broadband networks will allow IPTV to become a significant rival to cable and DTH, in other areas its success is in doubt due to difficulties in sourcing affordable, compelling content, and to the limited infrastructure and network capacity in the region. In China, the government is proactively encouraging the conversion of analogue to digital. The sheer size of the growing Chinese market will see it account for over 50% of Asia Pacific\\'s digital homes by 2017. Average per-subscriber revenues in Asia are forecast to continue to grow as the number of services increases, but that brings with it the need to protect content on more devices, in more places.\\" <i>Bengt Jonsson, Vice President, Asia Pacific, Irdeto</i>\\"(1) Increasing and widespread piracy (Philippines, Indonesia, India, etc.) and (2) financial risk: supporting the operators, with financing plans, when launching the pay-tv business.\\" <i>Ranjit Nigam, Vice President, Viaccess</i><b>Which markets in Asia have made the most progress in installing new systems that protect content and expand payment options?</b>\\"Some markets like the Philippines and Thailand have suffered rampant piracy for years and operators are deciding to take action and invest in stronger content security solutions... For example, TrueVisions deployed NDS solutions to stop on-going piracy, including VideoGuard Conditional Access (CAS) in October 2011 for its premium service as a first priority. As HD content is becoming more available and popular, changing to NDS CAS has also allowed TrueVisions to secure new revenue streams.\\" <i>Fabien Gauthier, Director Business Strategies and Partnerships, Asia Pacific, Sales and Account Management, NDS</i>\\"India, China and Taiwan\\" <i>Ranjit Nigam, Vice President, Viaccess</i>\\"We\\'re working with customers in a number of markets to make content more secure and expand monetisation options. We\\'re seeing technology deployments especially in those markets experiencing exploding growth and new classes of connected consumers. Recent examples can be found in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and India.\\" <i>Bengt Jonsson, Vice President, Asia Pacific, Irdeto</i>\\"Both China and India are taking major steps in migration from analogue to digital environment. Digital TV enable TV broadcasters with new possibilities for offering advanced consumer services and more secure revenue streams. No major changes on payment options the last year, but that will evolve together with the implementation of new services, as many broadcasters are exploring flexible, new services to create a leading edge over their competition.\\" <i>Are Mathisen, Vice President, Asia Sales, Conax</i>\\"China is our major market, but this is an environment where operators and customers still are generally unwilling to pay for content. Operators with high-quality TV programmes or movies still prefer that their content is only available for select group of users. In addition, the country is developing Direct Broadcasting Satellite which also requires DRM protection. With the increasing awareness of copyright protection, it will create more room for the development of DRM.\\" <i>Weidong Li, General Manager, China Digital TV?s Digital Rights Management (DRM) centre</i>ContentAsia Issue Two 2012