By Steve Hawley
Technology supplier Synamedia launched Senza, a cloud-based service delivery platform for pay TV and entertainment, and for vertical segments including digital signage, hospitality, IoT and retail video applications. Synamedia claimed to have signed multiple customers but they could not be revealed as of the September 10th launch.
The name ‘Senza’ is Italian for ‘without’ – a play on the virtualized nature of the service platform, which operators can adopt ‘without’ large infrastructure or systems integration investments. While Senza’s Cloud Connector customer premises device is worthy of attention on its own, that device is just the nose in the consumer’s tent. The rest of the Senza platform is in the cloud.
Senza’s service platform renders the consumer experience – comprised of the video and its surrounding interactive user interface – all in the cloud, delivering it to an HTML5 client framework. This removes dependencies on video decoding techniques that are optimized for graphics applications, enabling Synamedia to use low-cost silicon in the Cloud Connector; which begins at $6 (€5.43) per unit and goes lower with volume.
The Senza platform is cloud-agnostic, including Google Cloud and Amazon. Senza platform pricing is based on usage, irrespective of the number of devices served by the system.
Security in the Senza platform
This being Piracy Monitor, we wanted to focus on the security aspects, which leverage Google technology. In contrast with purely OTT applications where root-of-trust is not firmly associated, Synamedia implemented Google Widevine L1 security, where video rendering, hardware-level decryption, and content decoding are executed within a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE).
But because secrets are stored in the cloud, a client-side TEE is not required. Each device is uniquely serialized and authenticated to the Synamedia platform in production, so that secure device authentication can be guaranteed. If an alarm is raised, the platform can revoke or blacklist the device.
Another benefit of moving security into the cloud is to accommodate the need to continually reconfigure security, to stay ahead of hacking attempts and the evolving threat landscape.
Because Synamedia owns Content Armor technology, watermarking can also be applied in the cloud. However, Synamedia will integrate with other watermarking solutions.
Opening to developers
Acknowledging the maturity of the video service market space, the Senza platform’s use of HTML5 will enable operators to accommodate non-Synamedia client devices. In 2025, and an ability to free license the hardware design and device software to third party OEMs in 2025.
In a first for the company, Synamedia will also open the Senza platform to software developers; giving content providers, service providers and independent developers access to its tool-set. These will include a simulator that connects through to Senza’s service cloud and provide developers with the same user interface and same delivery environment that end users would see.
“AI, linked to the cloud.”
During a demo, Synamedia described how the Senza platform uses AI to enrich the user experience. One example was how it could render the cursor to be design-coordinated with the content of a video title’s poster frame: like a sword over a fantasy title. Another example was to rearrange the screen as new content feeds were added, from a home security camera, a weather report or a feed from a user’s mobile app paired through Bluetooth.
Can Senza get operators to adopt anti-piracy?
For years, the pay TV industry limited its view of piracy to counterfeit set-tops and infringing software environments running on PCs. Not until sports leagues and movie studios began enforcing anti-piracy requirements did most pay TV operators begin to pay attention.
Synamedia gives pay TV operators a poke in the eye by saying Senza delivers an “immersive user experience with advanced graphics and AI-generated synthetic video by ‘writing once and running everywhere,’ a concept foreign to TV developers but commonplace for those developing for the Internet.” (their words, my italics)
But being squeezed between increasing costs for content, cost of delivery infrastructure, increasing competition and plummeting market share, many pay TV operators continue to put anti-piracy low on their infrastructure investment priority list.
For that reason, Synamedia is wise to expand its targeting to video service segments other than pay TV.
Further details
Synamedia Senza slashes tv application onboarding cost as it redefines the economics of on-screen content applications. Press release. September 10, 2024. Synamedia
Synamedia unveils the Senza network of innovation for developers and reseller partners. Landing page. Accessed Sept 11, 2024. Synamedia
Video Explainer. Synamedia video about Senza. September 2024. Synamedia
Why it matters
In a way, Senza is an example of the old made new. Synamedia’s IP video efforts have roots going deep into the pay TV industry. Its predecessor companies, Cisco’s service provider video unit and before that, NDS; launched their earliest interactive service platform offerngs nearly two decades ago – and TV client middleware even before that.
Two things make Senza different this time: one being the platform’s complete vertical integration: from video ingest and the Senza service cloud to the Senza Cloud Connector CPE device, and the other being the platform’s virtualized approach to security.
Over the years, Synamedia’s competitors included other technology suppliers into the pay TV industry, such as Irdeto Multiscreen and Nagra’s OpenTV, upstarts that were selling into the Telco video industry space born in 1999, such as Myrio (where I was Employee #25, the product manager) and Minerva Networks – not to mention Microsoft TV (later Mediaroom, then Ericsson Mediafirst), which was tried and later replaced by large operators around the world. In common among all of them was their multi-vendor nature and the large investment needed to implement them.
