PS4 and XB1 "Game Consoles" as home Media Servers in Playready 3 notes

[jeff_rigby]

To understand what's coming you need to at least watch the following two slide shows then you can jump to: What does this all mean.

Slides from Hotchips 18 "Who Owns the Living Room" below: These two slide shows from 2006 give an easy to follow overview for Vidipath. They are a must read!

Who Owns the Living Room? Bill Curtis - Hot Chips is all about the need for a common DRM = Playready for sharing commercial media. It also mentions that as media gets higher resolutions closer to master quality the need for more secure DRM increases.
Who Owns the Living Room? Glen Stone Director, Standards & Strategy Sony Electronics Inc. Chair: DLNA Technical Committee is all about open standards = DLNA for sharing media in the home.

Add the above two together and you have DLNA CVP2 = Vidipath For an Idea of what's coming for the PS3, XB1 and PS4 read the Vidipath Guidelines.




Summary of what the following cites mean

1) The FCC DSTAC will likely recommend Sony's passage and Microsoft Playready on TEE level (2.5 or above) hardware for a downloadable Cable TV DRM able to be used by PS4, XB1, Phones, Tablets and TVs with ARM trustzone and maybe a PS3. When will we know; Sept 2015, when can it be used; Jan 2016. No cable boxes needed and the XB1 and PS4 will be used as DVRs. REPORT OF WORKING GROUP 4 TO DSTAC DRAFT July 7, 2015
2) PS3 and PS4 will be Vidipath clients
3) Tuner support for both Cable and Antenna TV is coming (Game Consoles as DVRs)
4) A new smart TV or Set Top Box (game console) for older TVs is needed to display features coming to Antenna TV and Cable; the ATSC 2.0 features are 1080P, S3D and XTV. A Vidipath TV or STB supports ATSC 2.0 coming to Antenna TV.
5) New media delivery schemes and home media sharing using a common DRM (Playready) are to be implemented soon. The PS4 and XB1 will be supporting HEVC, likely the PS3 also to reduce the internet bandwidth used.
6) Playready ND support for in home 4K streaming support for game consoles which implies Playready 3 (OTT, Sideloaded, Ultraviolet, 4K blu-ray digital bridge)



Cites and what they mean:

For the PS3 a PDF on Passage was just released at the latest FCC DSTAC (Downloadable Security Technical Advisory Committee) meeting. Page 12 has a chart showing a PS3 being used as a Vidipath STB.

Top path is RVU which the PS3 already supports.
Direct Attach End to End (center path) which is all IPTV direct from a cable modem . The future but Cable can't currently support more than a small percentage of their customers going all IPTV.
Sony is definitely supporting Vidipath, page 12 bottom path (Traditional Cable TV with the DLNA CVP2 FCC mandate where a DVR with tuners converts a RF channel to IPTV streams )

Second Sony Passage Paper to the FCC DSTAC is about using clear QAM tuners (USB, PC Card and Network tuners) with PCs, PS4, Phones and Tablets as the client using the DSS (Downloadable Security Scheme) (page 10 and 11). A picture of the PS3 labeled PS4 on page 11 is using a Hauppauge USB Tuner. Also on that page is a HD Homerun network tuner feeding a home WiFi router to portables.

The 2010 Leaked Xbox 720 powerpoint (XB1) has the HD Homerun listed third row down, third column from the left. These two tuners were chosen by the W3C's TV working group as standards and their control schemes will be used as the APIs for the Network and USB tuner control standards supported by W3C extensions to Javascript. HTML5 TV tuner Control will work for both Cable TV and Antenna TV.

Comcast just signed an agreement with Sony to use Passage. This plus last year's Sony Job posting for a Sony representative to help cable companies with Vidipath, Miracast and more mean it's likely soon.

After Jan 2015 Microsoft is not charging for the use of their Playready server. They would only do that if they think it would become a standard used by Cable TV. This also gives us that Microsoft knows this is coming in 2015. The current listed DTCP-IP DRM for Vidipath is WMDRM10 which is a subset of Playready versions lower than 3. Vidipath's Cable TV FCC mandate was delayed by a Tivo suit to June 2015 and it was always planned for Vidipath to be upgraded to support HEVC and OTT 4K media by 2016. WMDRM10 is not secure enough to support what content owners want for 1080P and higher resolutions like 4K; thus Playready ND and Playready ports 2.5-3 (see Playready ports below).

Vidipath was supposed to be implemented June 2014 with Playready for OTT VOD from the cloud and the subset WMDRM10 supporting 1080i and lower resolutions for in home streaming (DTCP-IP) which were the limits of Cable TV broadcast at that time. There are now two versions of Playready in home streaming 1) WMDRM10 now called WMDRM ND and 2) Playready ND. Playready can Digital bridge between the two and media can tell Playready whether it's Master quality requiring the highest DRM security to lowest (500K pixels) not requiring DRM.

It appears Playready ND and WMDRM10 ND used for DTCP-IP can coexist. This paper from Microsoft section 8 deals with DTCP WMDRM ND media being issued a Playready ND license. Section 13 sets the same "local" home networking restrictions for Playready ND that are set for WMDRM ND when used with DTCP-IP.

From Microsoft's Playready 3 site: Supporting In-Home Content Distribution with PlayReady for Network Devices page 14

"The game console, acting as a PlayReady ND transmitter, has obtained a license from the service and it sends media files to valid PlayReady ND receivers that are part of the same in-home network. It also uses PlayReady technologies to build and issue local licenses to authorized receiving devices. Note that this model can also be applied to both live streams, video-on-demand and DVR content."

This confirms the XB1 and PS4 will be streaming 4K media in the home (from Cable TV and OTT) and supports both as 4K blu-ray players with digital bridge.

In addition the PS4 and XB1 will be DVRs and media servers of 1080P and 4K blu-ray using Playready ND or side loaded media from the cloud to Playready receivers. 4K will be downscaled to 1080P for platforms that don't support 4K or Playready 3.

Sony Delays in implementing Vidipath:

The current PS4 DLNA player is a placeholder for the final DLNA player. It does not support DRM and was built as a game mode app. The reason for the PS4 DLNA delay is the wait for Playready 3, HEVC and 4K blu-ray standards to be released. The reason the PS3 hasn't received any visible update to features is nearly the same; a wait for Playready, HTML5 <Video> ME (C-ENC format), HEVC and other standards to evolve. All these are part of what's required for Vidipath.

Sony's Playstation APPs are built with webkit native libraries and webkit and are called WebMAF. It was originally Firefox/Mozilla using Gnome native libraries but a Geko engine. A version of WebMAF using webkit instead of Geko was developed in 2009 and this is what Sony uses since 2012 when they ported Webkit to the PS3 and Vita. Since HTML5 <video> ME hadn't yet been created, Sony created Trilithium in 2008 which is the video player (assumption is that it uses the same APIs as Gstreamer) and some pixel/window frame manipulation routines seen in the PS3 XMB. Combining C++, WebMAF/Webkit and Trilithium allows Sony to create IPTV Apps. Trilithium has to be retired in favor of HTML5 <video> ME (embedded Playready with C-ENC format) and maybe WebGL. ALL IPTV apps on the PS3 created in 2012 have not been updated since 2012. Spotify is a WebMAF app just released a few months ago to the PS3 and it's a WEBMAF app without Video...which seems to indicate that DRM and Video player are the holdouts for updating IPTV apps on the PS3.


Sony is set to implement four business models for IPTV, they do have GetTV in those same markets mentioned for Playstation Vue and it's a OTA Network. All models take advantage of h.265 (HEVC)

1) DLNA CVP2 = Vidipath support for Cable TV channels with Sony offering VOD movies and TV programs in addition to those offered by Cable TV. Temporarily using Cable TV DVRs to convert RF to IPTV in the home and after 2016 using Sony Passage and USB or Network tuners with "Certified" DRM platforms and DSS (DSTAC's recommended Downloadable Security Scheme) which are also Vidipath. This is the transition scheme till consumers have STBs and cable develops it's infrastructure to handle all IPTV traffic (about 2017+). This is also in one of the Sony Passage PDFs.

2) Playstation Vue for the cable cutters in major cities with faster Internet and trunk lines that can carry the traffic.

3) OTA (Antenna TV) Media Hub ATSC 2.0 support for those not on cable and using even a slower Internet service like DSL. NRT or Sideloading movies downloaded at DSL speeds for later viewing. This goes along with Sony's GetTV OTA. All TVs except newer Smart TVs will require a Vidipath STB connected to them with either network tuners or USB tuners which are seen supported for Cable in the Sony Passage PDFs. A Vidipath STB or TV also has support for ATSC 2.0.

OTA (Antenna TV) for those with faster Internet; in addition to the above, Playstation Vue will be offered. Multiple networks are offering unbundled VOD channels for this model...so after 2016 a person on an Antenna can receive on average 35 channels from the antenna with some of them offering (ATSC 2.0) 1080P with S3D in addition to XTV support and their choice of Networks via VOD unbundled and untill recently only available on Cable TV.

4) Satellite whole home DVR DLNA RVU/RUI (Essentially DLNA CVP2 for satellite) with slower DSL or Cable Internet. This is already in place with the PS3 supporting DLNA RVU.

Playready ports:

Playready Porting has several versions based on the underlying security scheme with the higher being more secure as seen in the chart below. All versions of Playready stream and negotiate keys in the same manner but Playready knows higher porting versions like "3" are more secure and content owners of 4K media may require 3. The XB1 and PS4 support TEE level (Playready 3) DRM required for 4K media including the HDMI chip's HDCP with the PS4 supporting all ARM recommendations allowing on-line transaction support.



The PS3 did/does not have embedded playready support; it's currently being ported to the PS3. The purple block on the left represents Playready support provided by the player; I.E. Netflix would have playready in the app software. The next block labeled 2.5 has embedded Playready with various levels of support/security which the PS3 should support. The next to last is probably Intel which has it's own version of a security processor. The one on the far right is ARM TEE level DRM which is supported by all AMD's APUs and I think all ARM phones and tablets since sometime after 2006. The XB1 and PS4 have ARM blocks managed by a ARM trustzone processor in the APU and Southbridge respectively using Xtensa stream processors for Codecs and more.


PS4 and XB1 hardware to support being a media hub (includes 4K blu-ray support)
HTML5 browser used as RUI for Vidipath (start at last post and walk backwards)
Connected home starts when Vidipath platforms become ubiquitous



Since the PS4 and XB1 will be 4K blu-ray players I've also posted this on Blu-ray.com If I get banned on NeoGAF you can find me on Blu-ray.com