NAGRAVISION LAUNCHES GROUNDBREAKING PUSH VOD SERVICE OVER DVB WITH PREMIERE

• Content protection leader launches the world’s first Push VOD over a DVB system with leading German Pay-TV Operator Premiere

Cheseaux (Switzerland), Cologne (Germany), May 31, 2005 – Nagravision, the world's leading independent provider of value-added content protection solutions, announces it has launched its end-to-end push video-on-demand security solution for digital video broadcasting networks over the Premiere network in Germany. The solution will be shown on Nagravision booth N°A9 at the ANGA Cable 2005 trade fair in Cologne Fairgrounds, Germany, from May 31 to June 2. A live demo will be shown on the booth.

Nagra DVR Push Content-on-Demand secures Premiere’s new VOD service PREMIERE DIRECT+, the Premiere home video rental store, which enables subscribers to get up to 30 top movies per week downloaded on to the Premiere Digital Recorder (PDR). The movies are downloaded onto the hard-drive via a push video-on-demand system that operates via satellite. After the order via phone, text message or Internet, the movies are available for the viewer during 24 hours. Movie watching can be paused, rewound, fast-forwarded, viewed in slow motion and seamlessly resumed at will.

Nagra DVR Push Content-on-Demand is a complete end-to-end solution for operators wishing to provide transaction-based content-on-demand on digital video recorders. Using the Nagra Push Content-on-Demand system, content is encoded, encrypted, and transferred to the DVR hard-disk drive, and offered for rental or purchase to the subscriber. All rights associated to the stored content are managed by the Nagravision conditional access system. The transaction is also handled by the CA system and billing information provided to the Subscriber Management System in the head-end. Content can be in any format as file-based transfer is used to enable audio, video, data, games, etc. to be “pushed” by an operator to the subscribers’ hard-disk drive.

This system is currently the only DVB solution using file-based content download to enable the transmission of discrete content rather than the streaming of videos. While such systems are typical in Internet Protocol networks, Nagravision provides the first implementation of a content-on-demand system using MPEG-2 TS “files” that can be downloaded very quickly over DVB networks.

Nagravision’s smartcard technology and other security features enable the secure downloading of content– a pre-requisite for operators to obtain high quality content.
"The addition of “content-on-demand” services which can be charged on a per-transaction basis allows for the generation of additional revenue (ARPU) from subscribers,” said Pierre Roy, Chief Operating Officer of Nagravision. “With Nagra DVR Push Content-on-Demand, the complete chain is now in place to allow an operator to rapidly introduce business models incorporating transaction-based services from a hard-disk drive. We are very pleased to deploy it for the first time with Premiere, a major TV operator known for its growth and innovation.”

On the head-end side, the solution includes a sophisticated content management application that allows content to be imported, edited, planned, encoded, encrypted and played-out to the set-top-box at whatever bit rate and at whatever time the operator desires. All legal requirements such as contractual obligations and reporting are managed by the content management application.

DVR-based content-on-demand using the Nagravision solution can be deployed on any type of network. New business benefits can be seen on satellite and terrestrial networks that have traditionally been unable to provide “on demand” services. The Nagra content-on-demand system DRM components work in both one-way (no return path available) and two-way (return path available) models.

Since Premiere implemented the Nagravision’s conditional access system in 2003, the German Pay-TV operator has increased its subscribers’ count by 500,000, reaching some 3.3 million at present.

About the Kudelski Group/Nagravision
The Kudelski Group (www.nagra.com) is a world leader in digital security. Its technologies are used in a wide range of applications requiring access control and rights management, whether for securing transfer of information (digital television, broadband Internet, video-on-demand, interactive applications, etc.) or to control and manage access of people or vehicles to sites and events. The Kudelski Group is headquartered in Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Switzerland, and its stock is listed on the Swiss Market Index.

Nagravision (www.nagravision.com), a Kudelski Group company, is the world's leading independent supplier of open conditional access and integrated solutions for digital TV operators and content providers. Its technologies are currently being used by more than 100 leading operators worldwide serving over 50 million subscribers.

For more information or to arrange a meeting with Nagravision at the ANGA trade show, please contact :

Ivan Schnider
Communications Manager
Nagravision
+41 21 732 0940/+41 79 778 9412 (cell)
[email protected]

Marie-Vincente Pasdeloup
+33 1 70 71 61 73
[email protected]