Secure | Enable | Interact NDS

Driving
        convergence

Managing pay-TV services to multiple consumer electronics devices has become a primary challenge for pay-TV operators that want to stay competitive.

There are many devices out there, from STBs, DVRs and Smart TVs to PCs, mobile devices, tablets and games consoles. With their different technical and operational requirements, managing these services is potentially costly and complex, especially when introducing new cross-platform services.

The NDS Unified Headend™ (UHE) enables your pay-TV business to manage a wide range of cross-platform video services from a single, central point. It is the key to delivering streamed or broadcast television and on-demand content to multiple devices efficiently.

Since its award-winning introduction in 2008, the UHE has enabled NDS' customers to introduce new services to their pay-TV businesses by adding business enhancing modules. These include:

  • NDS CMS (Content Management System) for preparing and publishing on-demand and linear television content to any consumer electronics device.
  • NDS SDP (Service Delivery Platform) enabling new, compelling applications that run on TV companion devices and synchronize with your TV platform.
  • VideoGuard Connect DRM solution with the UHE's unique DRM business and domain management modules providing robust protection and new business models for broadcast and OTT content delivery.

Empower your subscribers

With more video enabled consumer electronics devices at hand, your subscribers can choose how they watch TV. For example, a subscriber watching a prime-time episode at home on a TV may want to continue watching on their tablet. The UHE creates multiple content versions of the TV episode and manages the delivery to the relevant consumption device while also managing the device as part of the user's domain account.


Centralize
      your control

The Unified Headend from NDS maximizes your content and infrastructure investment while delivering more services to different CE devices through consolidation.

With the UHE's powerful modules, you can deploy just one platform to enable multiple electronic program guides and on-demand catalogs with appropriate DRM/CA business rules. This makes it considerably easier to deploy and integrate cross-platform services.

Drives new cross-platform business scenarios

Having a single platform means you can control content usage rights and metadata on all devices. You can also offer cross-platform content packages, promotions and recommendations through personalized catalogs and user interfaces. All these enhance the multi-device video experience demanded by today's subscribers.

Simple to add new services

The Unified Headend's modular infrastructure does more than just make your service easier to manage. It makes launching advanced applications cost-effective too. When you want to expand your service, simply add new CA/DRM, metadata delivery and content management elements. You can then support new services at your own pace.

Scalable for business growth

The Unified Headend is a scalable system that supports platforms serving ten thousand to ten million subscribers. Adding headend components as your subscriber base grows also protects your infrastructure investment.


Key components
      for success

The Unified Headend's key components offer a common framework for managing multiple security, content, metadata and delivery models.

Depending on your platform's current system configuration, you simply add any of the following components to begin your converged delivery program:

Business management

The Consumer Manager enables a subscriber to register multiple devices and users to one or more domains. The Offer Manager defines content offers for broadcast and on-demand services. The User Management System presides over transactions made from any CE device, and supports features such as bookmarking and near DVR (nDVR).

Content management

Designed to meet the growing demand for convergence, the NDS Content Management System (CMS) provides a comprehensive set of workflows for operators to manage, monetize and publish content on multiple platforms. Through a single workflow, the NDS CMS ingests content once and automatically publishes to multiple platforms.

CA/DRM

The Unified Headend platform integrates and manages device appropriate CA & DRM systems including NDS' own VideoGuard Connect DRM solution. It ensures the right delivery formats are used for each device and network including, broadcast, OTT (HTTP adaptive streaming and progressive download) and managed networks (real-time streaming for cable and IPTV).

Seamlessly integrates companion device apps

By deploying the NDS Service Delivery Platform (SDP) into your Unified Headend, you can extend your service to TV companion devices such as tablets and smartphones. Using the SDP, third-party developers can use our web-services APIs to write cool new applications that enable your subscribers to interact with your television service from their smart companion device. Applications could range from simply checking what time a favorite show starts to using rich interactive social and gaming applications that synchronize with the live broadcast.


Making convergence
           a reality


By managing your services, metadata, subscribers and rights through the NDS Unified Headend, you can reduce your management overhead and headaches when deploying to new, connected consumer electronics devices.

It lets you focus instead on creating attractive, cross-device business offers that keep you and your customers at the forefront of the entertainment revolution.

To learn more about how the NDS Unified Headend™ can turn your pay-TV business into a multi-device platform, visit the Web page or contact us.










NDS customers worldwide