WASHINGTON—Pearl TV, the consortium of nine station groups working to advance local NextGen TV, has added a new webinar scheduled for Aug. 19 to its ongoing series of ATSC 3.0 webcasts.
The consortium split the one-hour content security and protection webinar scheduled for Aug. 12 into two separate 60-minute educational webcasts, says Dave Folsom, Pearl TV lead technical engineer.
“We realized once we got into it that it was going to take more than just one webinar,” says Folsom. “It’s an awful lot to take in in just one hour.”
The Aug. 12 webinar on content security, presented by Peter Van Peenen, a technology consultant to Pearl TV, will examine the means by which ATSC 3.0 protects a broadcaster’s signal from “bad players” who might copy material or take other steps to distribute NextGen TV content illegally, says Folsom.
The webinar also will look at the role of the ATSC 3 Security Authority (A3SA), an independent organization set up by Pearl TV, the stations participating in the Phoenix Model Market and TV networks to oversee content security policies.
During the Aug. 19 webinar, Van Peenen and Oscar Marcia, president and CEO of Eonti Inc., will present on the service protection provisions of ATSC 3.0. Unlike content security, which is designed to protect against theft, service protection protects against “man-in-the-middle” attacks, says Folsom.
Using a certificate authentication process—not dissimilar to the concept used to ensure a web browser is on the website that a user desires—ATSC 3.0 provides for making sure a TV receiver is actually looking at a TV station, says Folsom. Eonti manages the public and private key authority set up to certify viewers are receiving the signal they intended to receive, he adds.
Online registration for the Content Security webinar on Aug. 12 and the Service Protection webinar on Aug. 19 is available on the Pearl TV website.
