In an ex parte filing at FCC Oct. 8, IBM pitched the Commission s...
In an ex parte filing at FCC Oct. 8, IBM pitched the Commission staff on a home-grown encryption technology it said could secure terrestrial DTV content under the proposed broadcast flag. IBM touted the Extensible Content Protection (xCP) it…
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said had evolved from Content Protection for Recordable Media (CPRM) and, like CPRM, was relevant to the broadcast flag. The company told the Commission xCP could revoke the “keys” of circumventing devices and “selectively” eliminate them from the home network while not affecting devices that comply with the broadcast flag. The encryption is renewable, virtually unhackable and supports digital rights management, IBM said. Meanwhile, pushing the FCC to hasten a ruling on the broadcast flag, Thomson reiterated earlier claims that time was fleeting for TV makers to incorporate changes in time for product delivery next summer. That’s the deadline for complying with the FCC’s integrated tuner/decoder mandate and more recently approved “Digital Cable Ready” plug-and-play compatibility. If the FCC settles on a broadcast flag in the next 3-4 weeks, sets due next summer could have digital outputs with the necessary software to respond to a broadcast flag in an ATSC bitstream, Thomson said. It also requested a grandfather clause for existing DTV sets that didn’t comply with the prospective broadcast flag.